Washington, DC - The United States is profoundly concerned about funding shortfalls being experienced by humanitarian organizations in many places around the world. Nowhere is this shortfall more dire than in Africa.

On November 14, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) announced that insufficient funding would force it to cut food rations in half for over 500,000 refugees now in Kenya, most of them from war-torn South Sudan and Somalia, until the end of January 2015. That cut has now been made.

The United States government provided more than $5 billion in humanitarian assistance around the world in FY 2014 and is the single largest donor to WFP. The United States provided over $111 million to assist refugees in Kenya in FY2014.

We welcome the important contributions the United Kingdom and Denmark announced recently for Kenya and urge other countries and entities to make further donations as well to address the growing food insecurity for refugees, both in Kenya and worldwide.