UN food agency’s fund-raising campaign records progress

AMMAN — The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) managed to collect one-third of its target in the #ADollarALifeline social media campaign that was launched on Thursday to raise the $64 million needed to reinstate food assistance through e-vouchers this December.

Elisabeth Byrs, WFP spokesperson in Geneva, said $21.5 million had been donated until Friday and there might be more to come for this campaign that ended on Saturday.

The endeavour was launched after the suspension of the food assistance programme directed to Syrian refugees in host communities in countries with refugee populations, including Jordan. 

In remarks over the phone to The Jordan Times from Geneva, Byrs said the WFP has even exhausted its internal loan mechanism.

“We can’t borrow through the UN internal mechanism… and we have to give the money we borrowed back,” she said.

Last Monday WFP announced that it has been forced to suspend a critical programme providing vouchers to more than 1.7 million Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries.

In the Kingdom, 440,000 Syrian refugees are affected by the suspension.

“We will resume the programme as soon as we get the funding,” Byrs said, adding that on December 18, there will be a meeting in Berlin where the UN agencies will launch their revised appeal to deal with the Syrian crisis.

“We will once again appeal for more funds and we will revise our requirements for Syrians inside Syria and in the host countries,” she explained.