Millioner af børn i Sahel-landet Niger vil gå sultne i seng igen i år og det samme gælder børn og voksne i en stribe andre lande i det karrige Sahelbælte i Saharas sydlige udkant – FN slår alarm over manglende midler fra donorerne i de rige lande.
DAKAR, 4 August 2014 (IRIN): More donor support is needed to help close the 1.5 billion US dollar (8,25 milliarder DKR) funding gap in the Sahel this year and protect the livelihoods of the estimated 20.2 million people who are at risk of food insecurity – going hungry.
(De 8,25 milliarder kr. svarer til halvdelen af Danmarks årlige udviklingsbistand, red.)
Only 30 percent of the 2.2 billion dollar appeal to fight hunger and malnutrition, and build resilience in the region has been met by donors as of July, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
“The funding for the whole effort is what I would characterize as pretty anaemic (blodfattig),” said Robert Piper, the UN regional humanitarian coordinator for the Sahel, noting:
“We are well short of what we require, and to make the task even more difficult, the budget has increased since the beginning of the year.”
Due to the influx of refugees from the ongoing crisis in the Central African Republic into neighbouring Sahel countries, an additional 200 million dollar was added to the initial appeal.
The aim is to provide life-saving assistance to the more than 2.4 million refugees, internally displaced people and returnees now living in the region, as well as the host communities taking them in.
Needs increasing
“Outside the usual recurring situations in the Sahel, the conflict in CAR and northern Nigeria is quite worrisome this year, as are the collateral effects in neighbouring Chad and Cameroon,” said Stephane Doyon, a regional emergency response representative for Médecins Sans Frontières.
“The refugees have lots of needs, which are additional needs to be met”, stated she.
Since the beginning of the year, the number of people who have crossed the threshold from food insecure to severely food insecure, also rose, jumping from 2.5 million in January, to 5 or 6 million now, as the lean (magre) season begins.
“So we started the year with some big numbers, and the trend, sadly, is on the increase and not the decrease,” Robert Piper said.
This has put even more of Sahel’s already vulnerable households at risk of developing negative coping strategies, such as migrating, begging, selling livestock or assets, and reducing their number of daily meals.
Stubbornly high malnutrition rates
Moderate and severe acute malnutrition rates among children under five remain “stubbornly high”, at around 3.5 million and 1.5 million, respectively.
While experts say it is too early to make any definitive predictions about crop production this year, there is concern about certain parts of the Sahel, including the coastal areas of Senegal, Mauritania and the Gambia, and the area around Lake Chad.
Here, more than a month into the normal wet season, there still has been little to no rain.
In other parts of these countries, rains started on time, but have since stopped, or come with long gaps in between, and the seeds that were planted have died.
A delayed rainy season has also meant a longer than usual lean season for pastoralists, who rely on rainfall for vegetation to feed their animals.
A period of further hardship
“The current situation in the Sahel is quite difficult, and we are now entering a period of further hardship,” said Patrick David.
He is a food security analyst for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Regional Resilience, Emergency and Rehabilitation Office for West Africa and the Sahel.
He said many households have already used up last year’s food stocks and been forced to buy from the market, where rising food prices further strain already limited resources.
FAO says it is working to build resilience in the Sahel through activities such as supporting animal husbandry, agriculture, cereal banks, access to credit and other social protection programmes.
However, only 7.5 million dollar, or 14 percent, of FAO’s 116 million appeal (included in the inter-agency Sahel appeal) has been met.
While this is nearly on a par with last year’s July funding gap of 14.8 percent, it is much lower than 25 percent that was met at this time in 2012.
“We need to be vigilant”
“We really need to continue to be vigilant about hunger in the Sahel and donors need to continue to aid response efforts”, Patrick David of FAO said, adding:
“Those vulnerable households who are currently moderately food insecure, who don’t have support or who are maybe at their limit for food security, they could become severely food insecure over the coming year”.
The World Food Programme (WFP) says it has been experiencing similar difficulties.
While the WFP has tried to keep all its programmes running, many have been scaled down due to a 230 million dollar shortfall of funds across all the countries the organization works in.
“It is really difficult for us to continue implementing these programmes without adequate funding,” said Benoit Thiry, WFP’s country director in Niger.
He said that in Niger, for example, WFP planned to target close to two million people in 2014, but has so far only been able to assist 500,000 because of budget constraints.
Competition for funds
Læs videre på http://www.irinnews.org/report/100442/donor-support-to-sahel-anaemic
