KATHMANDU — The United Nations said Thursday it had been forced to cut food rations to 90,000 Bhutanese refugees living in camps in Nepal due to a severe funding shortage.
The UN's World Food Programme provides rice, lentils and other food to the refugees, who fled Bhutan when ethnic tensions flared nearly two decades ago and came to eastern Nepal, where they have lived ever since in camps.
The move, which comes after the UN warned on Wednesday that the global economic crisis had led to declines in foreign aid and investment in poor countries, marks the first time rations have been cut in the camps.
Nepal country representative Richard Ragan said the WFP was "extremely concerned" about the consequences of reduced rations on the refugees' health, and that further ration cuts may be necessary in the coming months.
"The Bhutanese refugees have no legal right to own land or work, leaving them almost entirely dependent upon WFP food to meet their basic needs," the organisation said in a statement.
A representative of the refugees told AFP it would be hard to live on the reduced rations.
"I don't know how I'm going to survive for 14 days on 2.8 kilos (six pounds) of rice. I will have to eat very little so I don't run out of food," camp secretary Tek Bahadur Gurung said by telephone from the Beldangi camp.
Bhutan has refused to allow the refugees to return, but more than 20,000 have now left Nepal for Western countries under a resettlement programme launched in 2007.
The UN said the programme could take up to five years to complete, and called for urgent funding to allow it to continue feeding the refugees.
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