Up to 15 million at risk in African drought without urgent action by Unicef, Red Cross. UN News 2:42am 13th Feb, 2012   United Nations and Humanitarian organizations request $1.6 billion to help 18.7 million crisis-affected people in Sahel - UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.    Geneva, 19 June 2012: The United Nations and humanitarian partners today launched new and updated humanitarian appeals for the crisis-stricken Sahel region of West Africa. The combined request for the region now amounts to US$1.6 billion for food, nutrition, health services, sanitation and other urgent assistance to 18.7 million people.    Three new appeals were launched for Burkina Faso, Mali and Mauritania, while two existing appeals for Chad and Niger have been revised. Life-saving and life-sustaining humanitarian aid is also required in Cameroon, Gambia, Nigeria and Senegal.    "It is crucial that momentum be maintained in the months to come, not only to address critical needs but also to prepare for rebuilding lives and livelihoods of people affected by the crisis," said David Gressly, Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sahel, at the appeal launch in Geneva.    The humanitarian situation in the Sahel region has deteriorated dramatically through 2012 due to a lethal combination of drought and sporadic rains, poor harvest, rising food prices, displacement and insecurity. Cereal production in the region has dwindled 27 per cent compared to last year and food prices have soared. In Mali, the price of the staple food, millet, has increased 116 per cent compared to the 5-year average.    In Niger, the number of food-insecure people has gone up by 18.5 per cent between January and April to reach 6.4 million people. During the same period, the number of affected people has shot up by 125 per cent to reach 3.6 million in Chad.    As a result, more than 1 million children under five are at risk of dying from severe acute malnutrition and require immediate relief. An additional 3 million children are at risk of moderate acute malnutrition.    Humanitarian organizations have supported governments in the region to respond to the crisis by deploying staff and scaling up programmes. So far, donors have generously provided 43 per cent of the funding required; however, the concern remains that if assistance is not sustained, the transition from acute emergency to recovery may fail.    16 March 2012    The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is warning that more than a million children below the age of five in the Sahel are facing a disaster amid the ongoing food crisis in the drought-prone region of Africa.    They are among the some 15 million people estimated to be at risk of food insecurity in countries in the Sahel, including 5.4 million people in Niger, three million in Mali, 1.7 million in Burkina Faso and 3.6 million in Chad, as well as hundreds of thousands in Senegal, the Gambia, and Mauritania, according to UN figures.    UNICEF stated that the dry, ‘lean’ season in the affected countries is imminent, and will be marked by rising numbers of children in feeding centres who will need life-saving treatment. “A multiple disaster is stalking children in the Sahel,” said the agency’s Regional Director, David Gressly. “Even in a best case scenario we are expecting more than a million children suffering from severe and acute malnutrition to enter feeding centres over the next six months.    “More extreme conditions could see the number rise to around 1.5 million, and funding is still not coming at the rate we need to prepare properly,” he added.    The agency noted that it has so far received $24 million against an emergency appeal of $119 million for 2012.    UN agencies and their partners have been responding to the food crisis in the Sahel, which is the result of poor rainfall and failed harvests.    “Without a good emergency response and a sustained effort to reduce risk in the medium to long term, an entire generation faces a future of dependency, poverty and threatened survival.”    Earlier this month, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) called for $69.8 million in additional funding to prevent a full-blown food and nutrition crisis from unfolding in the Sahel.    February 14, 2012    United Nations and international aid agencies warn drought and food shortages in the Sahel region of West Africa are causing millions of people to go hungry and threatening lives.    The agencies are urging the international community to respond quickly to the region"s acute needs.    Aid agencies warn that international donors are starving Africa’s Sahel region of money needed to avert a humanitarian catastrophe.    Momodou Larmin Fye, the Sahel regional representative in Dakar for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, says the estimated 10 to 14 million people currently affected by drought in the Sahel could rise to 23 million if this region continues to be neglected.    “Like the Horn of Africa, the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement is extremely concerned that the situation unfolding in the Sahel could quickly develop into a humanitarian disaster if the world does not start paying attention to the plight of these people,” he said.    The United Nations notes aid agencies have received only $135 million of the $720 million needed to fund humanitarian operations in six countries of the Sahel.    The region has been hit by recurring droughts and food crises since 1973.    Niger, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Senegal once again are experiencing food insecurity due to poor harvests, caused by failed rains, pest attacks and localized flooding. Aid agencies say people are facing a crisis on a scale they have not experienced before.    They say people are particularly vulnerable now because they lack the coping mechanisms to deal with this new emergency.    In addition, the director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, Corinne Momal-Vanian, says insecurity is making it difficult for humanitarian agencies to access the region. She says last year"s unrest in Libya, and to a lesser extent the crisis in Ivory Coast, are having significant consequences.    “The return of hundreds of thousands of people has added to the vulnerability of the communities where they come from," she said. "And, of course, remittances have been lost, trade has been halted. So, these factors are added factors this year. But, many of the vulnerabilities existed before the Libyan crisis.”    The Sahel is plagued with chronic levels of food insecurity, poverty and malnutrition. The International Red Cross Federation reports more than 50 percent of the rural population lives on the edge of the crisis.    It notes food prices in the region have increased between 35 and 85 percent over the past five years.    The Red Cross says it is scaling up its operations. It says its priorities include food distribution, access to clean water and sanitation, and providing basic health care.    The agency says it is very concerned about preventing and containing outbreaks of diseases, such as cholera, meningitis and measles.    UNICEF"s Martin Dawes says that over one million children across the Sahel are currently malnourished.    “It’s already a crisis because we have looked at the figures and across the Sahel belt there’s more than a million children under five who are going to need medical treatment for severe and acute malnutrition," he said. "And this doesn’t also take into account the 1.6 million who will be what we call moderately to acute malnourished.    It’s a bad year, there’s been a dip in the production of food, and prices have gone higher. And this is enough to put an awful lot of children from the crisis they face every day where effectively their bodies are being injured, into a deeper crisis where effectively their lives will have to be saved.”    Both agencies say more funds are needed to tackle the crisis in the short term and long term.    “Basically what will save lives in this crisis is when affected children get the right treatment given by a professional in the right place and there is access to those places so that supplies can continue," added Dawes.    "It’s cheaper for us to do it now than it would be to fly it all in in the peak of a really intense emergency.”    Malnutrition has long-term effects including irreversible cognitive effects on development and stunting. UNICEF says 35% of deaths of children under five have malnutrition as their root cause.    “The sad fact is that many people really say that it isn’t a headline when it’s a famine but it’s a headline when there’s multiple deaths," he said.    "That’s not our job. Our job is to warn, to prevent and to try and ensure that the worst consequences of food insecurity does not happen, that communities are strengthened and most critically of all as far as we are concerned, that the indicators of a bad food crisis, which are children, do not die in huge numbers.”    The UN has been sounding the alarm since last September that the situation in the Sahel region was likely to become a major humanitarian situation by the northern spring this year unless something was done to reverse the trend.    “We are extremely concerned that millions of people will be affected by a combination of drought, poverty and high grain prices, which, coupled with environmental degradation and chronic underdevelopment, is expected to result in a new food and nutrition crisis,” Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Catherine Bragg told reporters in New York.    Ms. Bragg, who visited Senegal last week, said that people in that country, as well as Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Chad, northern Cameroon and northern Nigeria, are all likely to be affected over the coming months.    “For many, the crisis has already begun,” she stated. “We already know that an estimated 10 million people or more are struggling to get enough to eat, including 5.4 million in Niger alone.”    In the region, more than a million children under the age of five risk severe acute malnutrition – that is up from 300,000 last year, she added.    Ms. Bragg said the governments of Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad have all declared an emergency situation and called for international assistance, and most have put forward plans to deal with the crisis and to build people’s resilience to such shocks.    Essential activities include selling cereal and pasture at subsidized prices, distributing seeds and providing livestock support, as well as income-generating activities and the replenishment of national food security shocks.    “We learned from experience in the Horn of Africa that early warning must be followed by early action,” said Ms. Bragg. “Today, we know what is coming, and we know what to do to save lives.”    “Not long ago, we were calling for early action to contain the food crisis in the Horn of Africa. We now have an opportunity to demonstrate that we have learned our lessons from that crisis: that both early action and efforts to re-build resilience are critical to the Sahel,” said Ms. Bragg, who is also Deputy UN Emergency Relief Coordinator.    “The needs of the millions affected by drought in the Sahel are enormous, and the time to act is now,” said Josette Sheeran, Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme(WFP). http://www.unocha.org/crisis/sahel Visit the related web page
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