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[DAKAR, 28 March 2006] - Hunger will kill more than 300,000 children in West Africa this year if donor nations fail to stump up enough money to provide food aid, the United Nations said on Tuesday. The world body said it needed $92 million to help feed over five million people - many of them women and children - at risk of malnutrition in four countries bordering the Sahara desert: Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Mauritania. "This year malnutrition will be the cause of death for more than 300,000 children in the Sahel region if the necessary measures are not taken in time," said Theophane Nikyema, deputy director in West Africa for the U.N. children's agency UNICEF. "We know what must be done, but we need the resources to do so immediately," he said. Aid workers blamed a late response by the international community for exacerbating a food crisis in Niger last year, when donations only started pouring in once images of emaciated infants gained worldwide media prominence. Niger had warned months in advance that drought and locusts had wiped out harvests, confronting 3.6 million people with food shortages, but children had already started to die of hunger and disease by the time significant funding started to flow in. Although this year's harvests were much stronger, market prices for cereals remain way above historical norms and many families are still paying off debts accumulated during last year's crisis, meaning they are struggling to feed themselves. In addition, aid workers warn that malnutrition has long-lasting effects from which many children are still suffering. "It is vitally important that this situation is understood so we avoid falling into the same crisis we had last year," said Christine van Nieuwenhuyse, deputy director of the UN World Food Programme's operations in West Africa. "We've become used to the misery in this region. This situation here is not new. It is not today that suddenly 39 per cent of children suffer from chronic malnutrition," she said. DONOR FATIGUE While massive crises such as that in Sudan's Darfur region attract huge media and donor attention, the grinding poverty that is a fact of daily life for many in Africa's poorest countries goes largely unnoticed, aid workers say. The Sahel - a band of arid savannah which stretches across the southern fringe of the Sahara - suffers from perpetual food insecurity and last-minute emergency aid only helps alleviate the problem in the short term. The region has been gripped by the worst drought in modern history since the 1970s. Longer-term commitments from donor nations are harder to secure, particularly in the case of what aid workers call "silent crises" such as that in the Sahel, where there is no constant diet of shocking images to prick donor consciences. "We can't expect immediate results," said Herve Ludovic de Lys, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in West Africa. "The projects that need to be put in place to correct the structural causes (of this crisis) will take years. But in the meantime, we have an obligation to save lives," he said. The problem was compounded by neighbouring countries including Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria, which import grains from the Sahel, further reducing supplies for local people. The UN said it latest appeal aimed to help 2.9 million people at risk in Niger, 1.3 million in Burkina Faso, 740,000 in Mali and more than 400,000 in Mauritania. More information
pdf: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L28392062.htm