schema:articleBody
| - International donors agreed Tuesday to give $1.7 billion in humanitarian aid to the central Sahel, after the United Nations said the northern African region was at "breaking point". The humanitarian situation is worsening dramatically in the middle section of the semi-arid sub-Saharan belt, spanning Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, according the UN, with a record 13.4 million people needing assistance. Following a ministerial conference, donor countries announced the scale-up of aid to the region "to help stem what could otherwise become one of the world's biggest humanitarian crises", the UN said in a statement. Denmark -- in partnership with Germany, the European Union and the UN -- hosted the virtual conference in a bid to instil a more acute sense of urgency and get donors to dig deep. "The central Sahel region is at a breaking point," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the conference in a video message. "The Sahel is a microcosm of cascading global risks converging in one region. It is a warning sign for us all requiring urgent attention and resolution. "We must act -- and act now." Guterres said security had sharply deteriorated, violence was on the rise and internal displacement had increased 20-fold in less than two years. The number of families facing hunger has tripled, while climate change threatens livelihoods, with the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbating the problems, he added. "We need to reverse this downward spiral with a renewed push for peace and reconciliation." The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that in Mali, the number of people who needed humanitarian assistance between January and August 2020 rose from 4.3 million to 6.8 million, meaning one in three people needed emergency aid. An estimated 7.4 million people are struggling with crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity during the current lean season, said OCHA -- treble the number of acutely food insecure people than one year ago. Compared to the average of the last five years, acute food insecurity has increased by 514 percent in Burkina Faso, 130 percent in Mali and 144 percent in Niger. rjm/pvh
|