The number of internal displaced people has reached a staggering 1.6 million today, up from 70,000 t
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that people across Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger are facing “catastrophic levels of hunger” should the international community fail to act.
Its statement came on the eve of a virtual donor conference on Tuesday aimed at raising funds for the conflict-hit countries in the Sahel, a vast strip of the land beneath the Sahara desert.
Violence and insecurity have already pushed some 7.4 million people into acute hunger, according to the WFP, which was recently awarded the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize.
The WFP said thousands in the Central Sahel region will be “pushed into further destitution”, unless access is urgently granted to humanitarian organizations.
Meanwhile, the number of internally displaced people has jumped to a staggering 1.6 million, up from 70,000 two years ago. That figure included more than 288,000 people in Mali, some 265,000 in Niger and one million in Burkina Faso, which is now home to the world’s fastest-growing displacement crisis.
“When we can’t get to vulnerable communities, we’re seeing tragic spikes in food insecurity,” said Chris Nikoi, WFP regional director for West Africa.
He explained that “dreadful violence and conflict” in parts of northern Burkina Faso have left more than 10,000 people there “one step short of famine”.
Armed groups affiliated to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS), once confined to lawless areas of northern Mali, have in recent years spread across the arid scrublands of the Sahel, into Burkina Faso and Niger, stoking ethnic tensions while jockeying for power and attacking security forces, which have also faced accusations of grave abuses.
The deteriorating security situation has created an enormous humanitarian crisis, destroying fragile agricultural economies and hobbling aid efforts.
Speaking before the virtual meeting, which is hosted by the UN, Denmark, Germany and the European Union, UN emergency aid chief Mark Lowcock said the funds raised would go towards not just preventing hunger but would also include provision for schooling, healthcare and shelters.
The head of the International Rescue Committee in Niger, Paolo Cernuschi, said he anticipated seeing “a shift in how the international community responds” to the crisis.
“What we expect out of the conference is some firm commitments, some firm political commitments to the region in terms of guaranteeing basic humanitarian access to humanitarian actors,” Cernuschi said.
“So [we expect] to move away from what has been primarily an overly securitised, militarised response to the crisis and start recognizing that a militarised response to a complex crisis is not going to address the underlying causes of the crisis.”
Organisers hope Tuesday’s meeting will help them secure $1bn in urgently needed funds.
The UN has so far only been able to gather 34 percent of the $1.4bn required to provide urgent aid to 13 million people across the three countries.
