Sahrawi Red Crescent claims WFP is blocking refugee aid

0 Comments | AFP, January, 2007

ALGIERS (AFP) — The president of the Sahrawi Red Crescent accused a United Nations organisation of withholding funds needed to avert famine in Saharan refugee camps, Algeria's APS news agency said. "For three months the World Food Programme (WFP) has kept a Spanish donation valued at 1.5 million euros (1.94 million dollars) intended to help avert an imminent famine" in the Saharan refugee camps, Yahia Bouhabini said.

Since Morocco annexed Western Sahara in 1975, when around 300,000 Moroccans settled there during the "Green March," hundreds of thousands of Sahrawis have been forced to live in harsh desert refugee camps at Tindouf, across the border in southwest Algeria. Bouhabini urged the WFP to release the funds as "a matter of urgency" and said it had was also withholding...