Prometheus 6

NANGWESHI REFUGEE CAMP, Zambia — Hundreds of refugees from Angola's civil war have walked away from this remote United Nations outpost where most have lived for years, many roaming on foot as far as the Namibia border, 85 miles away. The journey was not by choice. The refugees were looking for food.

In January, to stretch its thinning supplies, the United Nations cut its already basic food rations to war refugees in Zambia by almost 40 percent — not just for the Nangweshi camp's 15,100 residents, but also for 57,000 refugees from Congo in four other camps.

The cuts were made after the developed world did not respond to United Nations' pleas for help to feed the refugees. Like similar appeals, they went unheeded in a year of many disasters and what aid specialists call a growing malaise among donors about such emergencies.

That thousands of war refugees cared for by the United Nations should go hungry for want of about $8.5 million, what amounts to a rounding error in the budgets of wealthy countries, may seem surprising. But the international system that is supposed to protect refugees from hunger and privation is prone to breakdowns like this one, which has rendered 72,000 war victims in Zambia hungry for weeks on end.

The food reductions in the camps prevented the United Nations' World Food Program from running out of rations. But even a brief visit to Nangweshi, a grid of wide dirt roads and thousands of mud huts beside the Zambezi River, makes the cost of the move painfully evident. Only a month after rations were reduced, refugees have left to seek food and money to feed their families. Malnutrition among the camp's remaining children has risen by more than one third.