Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 18:47:34 +0100
Nearly 25 million food insecure in Sahel
DAKAR, 29 October 2014 (IRIN) - Food security and malnutrition rates across
the Sahel are deteriorating, due in large part to ongoing conflict and
instability in the Central African Republic (CAR), northern Mali, and
northeast Nigeria, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Nearly five million more people have joined the ranks of the food insecure
since the beginning of the year, bringing the estimated total to 24.7
million - more than double the number in 2013, says OCHA.
"The dramatic rise in insecurity across the region over the last year has
generated a tremendous number of people that need to be fed and housed and
given health care, because they've been ripped from their livelihoods, as
well as their homes," said Robert Piper, the UN regional humanitarian
coordinator for the Sahel. "It has also, of course, had an impact on the
market and some food prices."
Negative coping mechanisms
Some 6.5 million people have crossed the emergency threshold from being
moderately food insecure to facing an acute food and livelihood crisis. This
is four million more people in this category than in January.
"There's a big difference between Phase 2 [moderately food insecure], where
you are food insecure but using coping mechanisms to deal with it, and Phase
3 [acute food and livelihood crisis], where you have started to use negative
coping mechanisms that have potentially very long-term negative
consequences," Piper said.
Negative coping mechanisms include taking out a loan that must be repaid
from profits from the following year's harvest, eating seeds that should be
saved for next year's planting season, and reducing the number of daily
meals from three down to two, or even one.
"It becomes a very slippery slide, and one that is of great concern to us,"
Piper said.
Food production
Experts say it is still too early to determine what the final crop output
will look like this year, but late and erratic rains across much of the
region meant many seeds were lost before they had a chance to sprout. Others
never had the chance to finish their growth cycles, according to the UN's
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
"We are still monitoring the situation, as there are many variables [such as
how long the rains will last and who managed to produce what crops] that
need to be monitored to see what the future will hold in terms of harvest at
the end of this agricultural season," said Patrick David, FAO's deputy
coordinator for food security analysis for West Africa and the Sahel. "But
the trend is worrying in some areas."
A preliminary joint assessment by the World Food Programme (WFP) and FAO in
late August found that record rainfall deficits, which were recorded along
the Atlantic Coast - from southern Mauritania south to Guinea Bissau, as
well as northern Ghana, Benin and Togo - negatively affected agricultural
activities.
In some areas, such as Côte d'Ivoire, Mali and Niger, the rain fell heavily,
causing crop and flood damage.
In others, the rains came early, lasted briefly, and then disappeared for a
long time. Those farmers who had the means to reseed did, but many others,
who did not, could not.
While most crops are expected to reach full maturity across much of the
region following the start of steady rains across the region at the end of
July, overall production is expected to be less than the five-year average
in Guinea Bissau, Gambia, Senegal and Mauritania, according to WFP.
CAR is also expected to have below-average food production this year due to
ongoing civil conflict, which has interrupted agricultural activities in
many areas, says the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET).
Food Prices
Average food prices across the region, with the exception of meat, fell for
the fifth consecutive month in August, according to the latest data from
FAO's food price index. Cereal prices averaged 11.7 percent below the
average in August 2013.
The WFP says, however, that prices in some markets in Mali, Chad and
Senegal, are higher than average due to a longer than usual lean season this
year. Market prices have also risen in Niger's Diffa region, due to the
continued arrival of refugees from Nigeria.
"This [increased food prices] is certainly having an impact on many
households, and can really affect the food security of the most vulnerable
households," David said.
While the Ebola outbreak has not yet directly affected food prices in the
Sahel, border closings and movement restrictions have impacted trade flows,
particularly along Senegal's border with Guinea, where the closure of 16
markets have reduced trade volume by up to 50 percent, WFP says.
Pastoralists
Due to the late onset of rains in areas such as Mauritania, northern Niger,
Chad, Senegal and northern Cameroon, pastoralists had a much longer lean
season than usual in 2014.
"They were waiting for their pasture, because as soon as the rains come, of
course the fodder starts to grow, and then animals get fed and there is a
supply of drinking water," Piper said. "But they had to wait a very, very
long time this year."
Some of the animals died. Others never became large or healthy enough to
sell for a decent profit.
"We've now left the period of hardship for the pastoralists and this
situation has improved some," David said. "But they passed a very difficult
time in certain zones and it's possible that this will affect the incomes of
those that were most vulnerable."
The security situation in CAR - a key frontier for the movement of animals
into and out of the Sahel and northern Nigeria, and a key market for buying
and selling animals - also meant that many pastoralists were unable to
follow their normal trade routes.
Nutrition
There are now more than 6.4 million acutely malnourished children under the
age of five in the Sahel, including 1.6 million who are severely
malnourished and 4.8 million who are moderately malnourished, according to
OCHA.
"Malnutrition is stubbornly high and remains high in all the countries, but
has deteriorated significantly at the moderate levels in northeast Nigeria,"
Piper said, adding that around 1.4 million more children have become
malnourished since the beginning of the year.
The majority of this increase comes from northeastern Nigeria, where ongoing
violence and conflict between Boko Haram, Nigerian security forces and
civilian militias continues to displace people in considerable numbers.
There are now an estimated 1.5 million displaced people in Nigeria,
according to OCHA - mostly women and children.
Funding shortfall
More than US$1.9 billion is needed to meet humanitarian needs in the Sahel
this year, up from 1.7 billion in 2013 and 1.6 billion in 2012, OCHA
reports.
As of 17 October, OCHA's Strategic Response Plan (SRP) appeal was just 39
percent funded. An additional $300 million has been pledged outside the SRP
towards Sahel projects, bringing the total funded appeal to an estimated 50
percent.
"Over a billion dollars has been committed towards the Sahel thus far, but
the bottom line is, the numbers keep going up and so our budget keeps going
up as result," Piper said. "It is clearly insufficient for the task this
year and has forced us to make some severe cuts in some parts of some
programmes," Piper said.
This includes reducing rations to refugee groups, suspending assistance to
pregnant and lactating mothers in certain countries, and making choices
between urgent lifesaving measures and important, but often overlooked
preventive long-term needs, such as investment in water and sanitation
programmes.
"There is a growing body of people across the region that are so acutely
vulnerable, that it only takes a small push for them to go from just coping
to crisis," Piper said. "This represents a humanitarian crisis but also a
governance crisis and also much more profound structural development
challenges. So it's these issues that need to be addressed successfully in
order to start turning these trends around."
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Photo: <http://www.irinnews.org/photo/> Jennifer Lazuta/IRIN
A young boy in Burkina Faso takes his father's herd of sheep and goats out
in search of food and water
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