24/6/2005
Starvation Looms In Mali And Niger

A lethal combination of locusts and drought has brought 4 million people in Niger - one third of the population - to the brink of famine. The situation in neighbouring Mali is little better. Appeals put out by UN agencies have received only a partial and inadequate response. 'Catastrophe is imminent said UN expert Jean Ziegler, this week.

Persistent drought and invasion by many thousands of locusts have destroyed an already fragile agriculture and despite the measures taken by the Government in Niamey. Malnutrition is particularly rife among children whose frail malnourished bodies have been arriving at feeding centres in disturbing numbers in the worst affected areas, according to the UN's Food Agency, the World Food Programme.

A nutrition survey in Niger in January suggested as many as 350,000 children under the age of five could be suffering from malnutrition. More recent surveys by Médecins sans Frontières corroborate these findings and point to a deteriorating situation. As many as 800,000 children under five are now thought to be going hungry.

To date, WFP has received only about a third of the $11 million required to fund its emergency operations, leaving a total of $7.2 million ($5.8 million for Mali and $1.4 million for Niger) needed immediately to ensure people make it through the next three months before they harvest again in October.

While developed nations talk of billions of dollars of debt relief for Africa, little more than $7 million is all that is needed to tilt the balance from despair to hope for the most vulnerable victims, mostly children of the current food crisis in two of the world's poorest countries, Niger and Mali, the agency said.

"The amount we are seeking to meet the immediate needs of some of the world's poorest people is spare change compared with the cost of many other operations, and yet we find ourselves banging the drum in their name," World Food Programme (WFP) Associate Director for Operations Jamie Wickens said in Dakar, Senegal. "Niger and Mali need help today, not tomorrow."