Famine, Drought Stalk Millions In West Africa's Sahel

Nearly half of Niger’s population of 15 million and millions more in Mali and western Chad are struggling to find food, and the situation will worsen unless the international community can urgently mobilize funding say UN aid agencies and NGO’s working in the region. 

A revised Emergency Humanitarian Action Plan (EHAP) presented today at the United Nations in New York, requests an additional 180 million dollars to help people in the affected areas survive until the October harvest season. Poor rain falls in 2009 greatly affected agricultural production, and although government officials and international observers have been prepared for food shortages since last fall, the scope of need is greater than expected. 

 “This is a catastrophic drought” says World Food Programme executive director Josette Sheehan “Donor support is so crucial at this stage.We have now six weeks until it is agreed we will be out of the severe danger zone and the ramp-up has to happen not in a few weeks but now.”  Sheehan says pregnant women and children under the age of 5, for whom the affects of severe malnutrition leave permanent and debilitating consequences, are the focus of aid agencies work. Since January, more than 120 000 children have been treated for acute malnutrition but hundreds of thousands more remain at risk.

The crisis has also led to a significant jump in school drop-out rates among children and increased migration from the country-side to larger urban areas, where many are forced to beg or turn to prostitution. Oxfam consultant Eveline Rooijmans says food is available in many parts of Mali and Niger, but as most of the population cannot afford to purchase it, financial support to the population remains the fastest way to prevent the crisis from growing.