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 in Dakar while presenting findings from the latest food security report by regional governments, the UN and aid groups.
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 UN said in a statement this week.
Doehnert said nearly 80 percent 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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