UN launches $92 million appeal to stave off new hunger, deaths in West Africa
Facing a difficult new lean season which could mean death for more than 300,000 children in four West African sub-Saharan countries unless steps are taken now, the United Nations today launched an appeal for nearly $92 million to feed one of the world’s poorest regions.
Facing a difficult new lean season which could mean death for more than 300,000 children in four West African sub-Saharan countries unless steps are taken now, the United Nations today launched an appeal for nearly $92 million to feed one of the world’s poorest regions.
“We cannot wait for thousands of people, the majority of them women and children, to die of hunger or malnutrition to react,” Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Representative for West Africa, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, said.
The new request covers the four Sahelian countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, which suffered a food crisis last year, and includes 22 projects in the areas of agriculture, food, nutrition and health.
“This year, malnutrition will be the cause of death for more than 300,000 children in the Sahel if the necessary measures are not taken in time. We know what must be done, but we need the resources to do so immediately,” the Deputy Director of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) regional office, Théophane Nikyema, said.
In the countries of the Sahel, the first victims of malnutrition are the children; according to UNICEF studies, with those under three years of age the most vulnerable.
The programmes will be implemented by seven UN agencies: the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), UNICEF, UN Development Programme (UNDP), UN Population Fund (UNFPA), World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) along with the non-governmental organization (NGO) Afrique verte.
Today’s appeal revises the 2006 Consolidated Appeal for West Africa, originally launched in November 2005, which requested $145 million.
In the absence of a good harvest, the countries of the Sahel are preparing for a difficult new lean season this year (April to October). Many households are already vulnerable due to the impact of past crises, OCHA said. For example, many are still paying off debts incurred during last year’s crisis.
In another crisis hotspot, the UN is appealing for $4.5 million to feed up to 50,000 people in the Central African Republic (CAR) for the next six months to prevent what it warns could be a “humanitarian tragedy.” Over half of those at risk are believed to be internally displaced persons (IDPs), uprooted by warfare in 2002-2003 and living in the forest without food supplies, adequate medical care, or shelter, OCHA said. Attacks, looting and the burning of fields have intensified since December and food scarcity is rapidly increasing, it added.
In a related development, WFP reported today that its emergency funds are perilously low as it struggles to feed more than 50 million people in Africa this year, with only $20 million left in its Immediate Response Account (IRA) after it was forced to allocate an unprecedented $100 million from the account in 2005.
Despite persistent appeals to the international community to support its operations across the continent, an acute shortage of project donations has increasingly forced WFP to deplete its own reserves to finance immediate needs. Many people are now only receiving aid because the agency has drawn down substantially from these reserves to stave off suffering and starvation.
“We have put financial systems in place to help ensure people do not starve if donations are not immediately forthcoming. But these internal loans cannot be repeated if the international community does not step in to replenish funds,” WFP Executive Director James Morris said.