Algiers, 21/06/2015 (SPS) .- The joint appeal launched by representatives of the World Food Programme (WFP), UNHCR and the UN Children's Fund (Unicef) to collect funds is a crushing denial to the incessant moroccan propaganda on the alleged diversion of aids destinated to the sahrawi refugee camps.
The three institutions have warned on "the progressive and continuous reduction of funding" for the Saharawi refugees, in a joint document released Saturday on the occasion of the World Refugee Day.
On this occasion, Hamdi Bukhari, UNHCR representative in Algeria, noted at the end of a meeting that brought together the three UN agencies (WFP, UNICEF and UNHCR) that "the degree of attention to the crisis fell sharply", saying that "it is overshadowed by the unprecedented number of humanitarian emergencies that affect the world ".
For the WFP representative in Algeria, Romain Sirios, "the time to stop food assistance could not be worse", highlighting that "the risk is to reverse recent progress registered on the nutritional level, of launching unpredictable consequences and marking the beginning of social instability, food distribution being an essential condition of survival for refugees who are victims of a prolonged crisis ".
The UNICEF representative in Algeria, Thomas Davin, declared, for its part, that "these refugees have demonstrated extraordinary perseverance to face adversity."
He added that United Nations agencies working in the Saharawi refugee camps "will continue to advocate refocusing attention to this forgotten and underfunded crisis".
Recalling, in this regard, that "the crisis of Sahrawi refugees enter in its 40th year," the three UN agencies estimated that "the sharp reduction of funds allocated to the most forgotten crisis in the world, is arriving at a very delicate moment : extremely long duration of this crisis and total lack of prospects for political settlement. "
Fot this reason, UN agencies demand that humanitarian assistance to Sahrawi refugees "takes account of the prolonged nature of the crisis".
The Saharawi crisis is the oldest prolonged UNHCR operation and ranks second among the longest refugee crises in the world.
It should be recalled that the Moroccan government, through its political and media relay whose consciousness has been purchased by means of a very little orthodox methods, lead smear campaigns, accusing the Polisario and the Algerian state of "misappropriation of humanitarian aid " destined to the Sahrawi refugees, in order to starve them in the illusive goal to see them leaving Algeria and going to Morocco. SPS
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