The Sahel, a semi-arid geographical region at the edge of the Sahara, has been a ticking time bomb of a food crisis for some time. Even in “normal” years, child malnutrition rates in Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Chad can reach levels unfathomable to most of us here in Canada.
Usually, the region’s hunger season comes in the spring, but it has arrived months early this year.
Early warning indicators for famine show that a combination of irregular rainfall, disappearing pasture lands, birds and pests has taken a toll on agricultural output in the region. Countries like Chad and Mauritania harvested only half the cereals they did last year.
Food prices are 10-40 per cent higher than average and current food reserves will not meet people’s needs in a crisis. At the same time, remittances from family members living in war-affected countries such as Libya and Côte d’Ivoire have fallen.
Like most very poor households, food eats up the majority of household expenditure. Most families in the Sahel spend all but a fifth of their incomes on food. This characteristic makes them extremely vulnerable to increases in food prices.
The situation of children in the region remains particularly dire. Half of all children under the age of five in the Sahel are chronically undernourished and 300,000 die from malnutrition-related causes every year. At the same time acute malnutrition rate are ten per cent above the threshold level that defines an emergency.
In Chad alone, as many as 450,000 children require special therapeutic treatment for acute malnutrition. The cost of such treatment can reach between $200 and $250.
The state of vulnerable populations in the Sahel in the wake of famine in Somalia has prompted discussion on the action—or rather inaction—of the international community to food-related crises. Recently, major aid groups, Oxfam and Safe the Children, released a report stating that knowledge that the East Africa crisis was imminent came as early as January 2011. However, no major action was taken until July, when the number of casualties began to rise.
Similarly, in Yemen, concerns have been voiced over the fact that international donors want to see the serious outcomes of crisis before deploying funds—instead of looking to warning signs and acting to prevent the crisis in the first place.
Even yesterday, Reuters AlertNet reported that the International Medical Corps (IMC) has also identified this trend. The group says that Chad will continue hurtling from one crisis to the next unless donors break free of their “repetitive amnesia.”
While the environmental and economic factors are certainly prominent, improving food security for children also comes down to social interventions—changing attitudes toward breastfeeding, for example. Many mothers in Chad continue to give their babies water, increasing the risk of diarrhea and denying their babies the nutrients and antibodies that come from breast milk. The World Health Organization generally recommends that all children up to six months old are exclusively breastfed.
Without action as many as 12 million people living in the Sahel could be affected by hunger. As it stands, there are 5-9 million people in danger. Last year’s food crisis in the Sahel affected 10 million people.