Crisis, Emergency, and Catastrophe: this is what 38.1 million people are going through in West and Central Africa, according to a report published by NGOs, including INTERSOS, and UN agencies working in the area. The latest Cadre Harmonisé (CH) analysis classifies the severity of food and nutrition insecurity based on the international classification scale the situation is alarming.
Food insecurity and protection risks amplify each other. Communities report twice as many cases of gender-based violence and four times more instances of extortion in areas projected to be in phases 3 (Crisis) and 4 (Emergency) of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification for 2024. This is where INTERSOS comes in out of the fourteen countries analysed in the study (Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone, Benin, Nigeria, and Cameroon), INTERSOS works in 5 of them, covering the Sahel region and implementing projects aimed at strengthening nutritional security and the protection of the most vulnerable and isolated populations.
“The nutritional security of the populations of West Africa is at its lowest level in 5 years. The situation is dire in the countries and project areas where we work, with combined impacts of climate change, displacement of forces, and economic difficulties” says Papy Kabwe, Regional Director for West Africa at INTERSOS. He continues: “For INTERSOS it is urgent to mobilise, before June 2024, the international community and the countries concerned to considerably increase the resources allocated to integrated multi-sectoral responses. The survival and physical security of the most fragile people are at stake, notably pregnant and breastfeeding women and children under 5 years old, particularly in Chad, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Nigeria”.
Active within the local communities most affected by this worsening crisis, INTERSOS is doing everything it can to save lives and improve the health and safety of people in the short and medium term. Still, time is running out to strengthen this action quickly with all our national partners and donors.
Ph. Christian Tasso