U.N. fears repeat of Sahel food crisis,asks for aid
July 18, 2006 (DAKAR) — U.N. agencies fear a repetition of last year’s crisis in West Africa’s arid Sahel belt as food stocks dwindle, but donors have stumped up only half the funds required to fight malnutrition and disease.
A ‘lean season’ of food shortages across the Sahel started earlier than usual in May as meagre food inventories from last year began to run out, well ahead of the new harvest in October, humanitarian workers say.
Last year, a plague of locusts combined with a poor harvest left an estimated 3.6 million people short of food in Niger — shocking the West with television images of emaciated children.
“We fear a repetition of last year’s nutritional crisis, not just in Niger but across the whole of the region,” said Maya Siblini, spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Many poor families ran up heavy debts to survive last year’s shortages or sold off some of their flocks, leaving them in a vulnerable position to face hardship this year.
“It is not so much that there is no food but that it is too expensive, particularly as people struggle to pay their debts,” Siblini said.
An annual U.N. appeal to tackle crises in West Africa — one of the world’s poorest regions — has so far raised only 51 percent of the $243 million required for 2006. More than 65 percent of the money is earmarked for fighting hunger.
Last year, the United Nations raised 69 percent of its target of $202 million but was criticised for being slow to react to shortages in Niger.
The parched Sahel region running from Mauritania on the Atlantic coast to Sudan in the east is in the grip of a three-decade drought — the worst in recorded history.
Although last October’s harvest was a good one, signs of difficulty are emerging, aid workers say. In northern Mauritania, a rural exodus has begun as poor farmers abandon their villages and head for the towns in search of food.
In Niger, about 143,800 children have been treated in nutritional centres this year, according to OCHA, with the number expected to rise sharply as food stocks dwindle.
U.N. aid workers say about 300,000 children under the age of five risk death every year from malnutrition in the Sahel — which includes Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso.
“West Africa is one of the most dangerous places for the survival of children … the response from the international community, while positive, remains insufficient,” said Esther Guluma, head of U.N. Children’s Fund Unicef for West and Central Africa. “We need to do more.”
(Reuters)