The U.N. Now Has an 850-Calorie “Diet” for Refugees

In rich countries such as the United States, most doctors don’t recommend eating fewer than 1,200 calories a day. Consuming anything less is considered starving yourself (or in some circles, the latest juice cleanse).

So earlier this month, when the United Nations announced it was cutting food rations in half to 850 calories a day for roughly 450,000 African war refugees, Francisco Toro was shocked.

Toro isn’t the latest weight-loss guru or Dr. Oz protégé. He’s a development expert and blogger who has been trying to point out what 850 calories really means. “This,” he says, “is not a normal thing. There is going to be a famine inside U.N. camps.”

For many Americans, 850 calories is roughly equivalent to an indulgent snack: a large bag of AMC movie theater popcorn or a chocolate-covered cheesecake blizzard at Dairy Queen. For refugees, however, it means they’re eating only three small bowls of rice and lentils each day.

The U.N., of course, doesn’t want to cut food aid. But the agencies involves—the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Food Programme—have a $189 million funding gap. “Donor countries’ budgets are depressed,” says Toro. “We just can’t feed [the refugees] properly.”

Meanwhile, the total number of African war refugees is growing every day, up to 2.4 million currently, as conflicts rage in places in Africa such as Darfur, South Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic.

As Steve Taravella of the World Food Programme puts it, “We are facing a crisis like we’ve never faced before.”

Mythili Sampathkumar is a freelance journalist based in New York City. She reports on international trade, the United Nations, development and climate change. Twitter: @RestlessRani