Mali

The United Nations and its humanitarian partners, together with the Government of Mali, launched on Tuesday a $770 million Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP) to help millions of people across Mali this year. The plan aims to respond to the urgent needs of 4.7 million people affected by conflict, displacement, health emergencies and climate shocks, out of a projected 6.4 million people in need of assistance in 2025.

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.

An independent rights expert warns that multifaceted crises facing Mali, propelled by increasing attacks from Islamist armed groups, are leading to a rapid deterioration of the country’s security situation and surging human rights violations, with potentially serious effects in the region. The warning comes as Mali is experiencing enormous humanitarian needs, with 30 percent of the population - 7.1 million - in need of assistance this year.

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.

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.

The international human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement Monday that Mali’s armed forces and “apparently” the Wagner Group mercenaries “have summarily executed and forcibly disappeared several dozen civilians in Mali’s central region since December 2022.” Malian forces and the Wagner Group have also “destroyed and looted civilian property and allegedly tortured detainees in an army camp,” according to HRW.

Persistent heavy rains and severe flooding have hit several countries in the Sahel, affecting millions of people and displacing hundreds of thousands, most recently in northeastern Nigeria. The extreme weather has also exacerbated existing humanitarian crises in Chad, Cameroon, Mali and Niger. Aid agencies are urgently calling for increased international support to reach the most vulnerable.

The lives of more than 35 million people in the Sahel region are being affected by a complex and interdependent pattern of crises, exacerbated by deteriorating security, political instability, and the effects of climate change, leaving them in urgent need of humanitarian assistance and protection. UN agencies warn that lives will be at risk if aid organizations are not given the resources they need to respond to these crises and help the region's most vulnerable people.

Violence against children in the central Sahel region increased sharply in the last quarter of 2023, surging by 70 percent compared to the previous three months, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) warned on Wednesday. The UN agency said that in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, cases of recruitment and use of children by armed groups, as well as killings and maiming, jumped by more than 130 percent between the two reporting periods.

The heads of more than a dozen United Nations agencies and international humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have issued a rare joint statement Friday calling for action to address the crisis gripping the Central Sahel as exacerbating humanitarian and protection needs are threatening to reverse development gains. In 2024, some 17 million people – one fifth of the population - in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are in need of humanitarian assistance and protection.

With no political solution in sight, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) warns that Niger’s political crisis could rapidly deteriorate into a humanitarian emergency as attacks by non-state armed groups (NSAGs) continue and sanctions imposed by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on the country begin to take effect. Meanwhile, 45 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), working in the Sahel country, are calling on the international community to introduce humanitarian exemptions to the collective sanctions imposed against Niger.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Friday that without urgent funding, life-saving food aid in Africa's Sahel region will come to a halt in April 2025. The warning comes as the lean season, the period between harvests when hunger peaks, is expected to arrive earlier than usual across the region this year. Millions of children, women and men, including refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs), continue to rely on WFP food assistance to survive.

Acute food insecurity is set to increase in scale and severity in 18 hunger hotspots, a new United Nations early warning report said on Wednesday. The report highlights the urgent need for humanitarian assistance to prevent famine in Gaza and Sudan, and further deterioration of the devastating hunger crises in Haiti, Mali and South Sudan. It also warns of the lingering effects of El Niño and the looming threat of La Niña, bringing more climate extremes that could disrupt livelihoods.

Ten million children in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are in dire need of humanitarian assistance – twice as many as in 2020 – largely due to spiraling conflict in the Central Sahel region, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned in an analysis released Friday. According to the UNICEF Child Alert, nearly 4 million children are at risk in neighboring countries as hostilities between armed groups and national security forces spill across borders.

With the onset of the rainy season, severe flooding in Cameroon, Chad, Mali, Niger and Nigeria has significantly worsened the situation of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in affected areas, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). UNHCR spokesman William Spindler on Friday reminded government authorities of the importance of including displaced people in national response plans.

Nearly 55 million people in West and Central Africa will struggle to feed themselves during the lean season between June and August 2024, according to a March 2023 food security analysis. In a joint statement on Friday, UN humanitarian agencies warned that the number of people who are food insecure in the Sahel and beyond has increased by four million compared to the November 2023 forecast and has quadrupled in the last five years.

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.