A United Nations official has warned that more than 25,000 people could face starvation in conflict-plagued parts of West Africa next year
More than 25,000 people could face starvation in conflict-plagued parts of West Africa next year, a United Nations official warned Friday.
Federico Doehnert of the World Food Program said violence and the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine are largely driving the threat to people in Nigeria, Mali and Burkina Faso.
“One of the most striking things is that where we already had issues with severe food insecurity last year, this year we’re seeing a further deterioration” Doehnert said while presenting findings of the latest joint U.N. food security report in Dakar, Senegal.
The cross-border region between Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger is the epicenter of West Africa’s escalating humanitarian crisis, which is compounded by climate change, severe floods and droughts placing more than 10 million people in need of assistance, the U.N. said in a statement this week.
Doehnert said nearly 80% of people facing catastrophic hunger – some 20,000 – are in Burkina Faso’s Sahel region, where jihadis linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have besieged cities and cut off assistance. Residents of the city of Djibo have been blockaded for months, unable to access their farms.
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