3.2 million people in need of emergency food assistance and that word that sounds like a catastrophe alarm in every humanitarian report: “famine”. Burkina Faso, marked by increasingly widespread insecurity and clashes between armed groups and government forces, plagued by an economic and social crisis aggravated by the coronavirus pandemic, is today officially a humanitarian emergency.
Burkina Faso is no longer on the fringes of the Sahel crisis, with programs mainly aimed at development cooperation, but has become one of its main hot spots. The growing conflict and destabilization in the area, with the emergence of new armed actors, weighed above all. And, in 2020, the harsh effects of the lockdown and the difficulties of the local economy, which led to a collapse in the purchasing power of families.
The data on the food situation that we present are those of a recent report by the World Food Program, reading which the emergency is told with cold but significant numbers. “Phase 5”, food catastrophe, the highest level of famine, which already affects about 15,000 people in the Sahel Region and which, after being absent from the country for over a decade, risks spreading to other areas. “Phase 4”, already very high alarm level, and a race against time to avoid the victims of hunger, as for over 20 thousand people in the Boucle de Mouhoun Region.
In the photo of this article, one of the distributions of food and cooking utensils made by INTERSOS in the Eastern Region.
“The situation is extremely volatile – underlines our Emergency Coordinator Sara Gamha – and insecurity often makes it too dangerous for many people to stay in their village. The result is the abandonment of many cultivated areas and the concentration of the population in areas close to cities where there are insufficient resources to guarantee everyone the satisfaction of basic needs such as access to water, food and education. This is why our first commitment is to ensure an always updated assessment of needs, addressing both the displaced and the host communities”.
INTERSOS intervention (also operational in neighboring Niger) is based on an integrated and multi-sectoral approach. A strategy that always has at its center the protection of the most vulnerable and that includes food security projects, access to clean water and hygiene, monitoring of cases of abuse and violation of human rights, taking care of women victims of violence, also through direct economic support, child protection, also with educational spaces in emergency.
Here too, as in many crises, insufficient funds are weighing. The United Nations has launched an appeal to donors for $ 425 million, but the funding received to date only covers a third of the growing needs.