Burkina Faso

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is warning of surging needs for more than 3.4 million displaced people and their hosts communities in the face of recent destructive flooding in Africa’s Sahel region and beyond. In Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and Cameroon above-average rain falls and flooding have killed hundreds, displaced thousands and affected millions.

Cameroon, Ethiopia, and Mozambique are the three most neglected displacement crises in the world, according to a new report from the non-governmental organization (NGO) Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). The international humanitarian aid agency says that while shifting domestic priorities, economic uncertainty, and political fatigue have led to severe cuts in support, decision-makers must recognize that displacement is a shared responsibility that cannot be ignored.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that halfway through 2024, only 18 percent - or US$8.8 billion - of the US$48.7 billion needed to help people in need around the world this year has been received. This is far less than at the same time last year, when there was already a massive shortfall. At the same time, more than 300 million people around the world are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

Funding constraints mean that the World Food Programme (WFP) has been forced to limit emergency aid to only 6.2 million of the most vulnerable people in need across West Africa, scaling back from an initial target of assisting 11.6 million, the United Nations agency said on Wednesday. Millions in the Sahel will be stranded without aid as the lean season sets in and hunger starts to peak. 

The 2024 Humanitarian Response Plan for Mali was launched this week in Bamako, the capital of the country. The United Nations, along with humanitarian partner organizations, will need over US$700 million to assist more than 4.1 million people across the Sahel country in 2024, UN officials announced on Thursday. An estimated 7.1 million people in Mali require humanitarian assistance this year, among them are some 3.8 million children.

Angola is once again number one among the top ten forgotten humanitarian crises that received the least media attention last year, according to the international humanitarian organization CARE.  For the eighth time, CARE has published its "Breaking the Silence" report to draw attention to forgotten crises around the world which are most neglected. Zambia and Burundi follow this year on second and third place.

Acute food insecurity is set to increase in magnitude and severity in 18 hunger hotspots comprising a total of 22 countries, a new UN early warning report has found. The analysis issued Monday by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) calls for urgent humanitarian action to save lives and livelihoods and prevent starvation and death in countries where acute hunger is at a high risk of worsening from June to November 2023.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that floods in the Sahel and other parts of West and Central Africa have reached catastrophic levels, affecting more than 5 million people in 16 countries so far this year. Chad, Niger and Nigeria are among the hardest hit, accounting for more than 80 percent of those impacted.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) warn that acute food insecurity is likely to deteriorate further in 18 hunger hotspots – comprising a total of 22 countries or territories including two regions – during the period from November 2023 to April 2024.

190 million children in 10 African countries are at the highest risk from a convergence of three water-related threats – inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH); related diseases; and climate hazards – according to a new analysis released Monday by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). The triple threat was found to be most acute in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Somalia.

The non-governmental organization (NGO) Save the Children says more than 140,000 people in the Malian town of Menaka, including 80,000 children, face malnutrition and disease due to a blockade by Islamic State-linked insurgents. The humanitarian organization warns that the months-long blockade has driven supplies to alarmingly low levels as aid agencies and Malian government programs struggle to deliver basic necessities.

Acute food insecurity is on track to reach a ten-year high in the Sahel and West Africa by June of this year - a new study shows - with a worrying expansion of food insecurity into coastal countries, and catastrophic levels of hunger hitting conflict-affected areas of Burkina Faso and Mali where humanitarian assistance is severely hindered by insecurity. 

In 2023, children living in situations of war and conflict experienced intolerable levels of violence, according to a new United Nations Secretary-General's report on children and armed conflict released this week. Children were recruited and used, including on the front lines, attacked in their homes, abducted on their way to school, their schools used for military purposes, their doctors targeted, and the horrific list goes on.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), humanitarian operations in Niger are currently on hold following the attempted coup in the country. The United Nations, the United States, the West African economic bloc ECOWAS, the African Union and the European Union have called for the release of Niger’s president, Mohamed Bazoum, after a group of soldiers claimed to have removed him from power Wednesday. President Bazoum has urged democratic forces in the country to resist the power grab.

As protracted and new armed conflicts have continued to rage in 2022, the number of children severely affected by hostilities has remained shockingly high at almost 19,000 children in 25 countries and the Lake Chad Basin region, according to a new UN report published Tuesday. While there were 27,180 grave violations verified overall, the conflicts with the highest numbers of children affected last year were in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, Somalia, Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Yemen.

In Niger, a country already affected by multiple crises, humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are warning that further instability could strongly deteriorate the living conditions of the most vulnerable people, and hamper the humanitarian response. In a joined statement Saturday, the NGOs said the combination of sanctions and conflict could have devastating effects on the lives of over 4.3 million people in the country who are already in need of humanitarian assistance.

A combination of protracted armed conflict, internal displacement, and restricted humanitarian access risks pushing nearly one million children under the age of five in Mali into acute malnutrition by December 2023 – with at least 200,000 at risk of dying of hunger if life-saving aid fails to reach them, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) warned in a joined statement Friday.