UN raises $1.7bn for Sahel region aid

The United Nations says it has raised more than $1.7bn (£1.3bn) in pledges to fund urgent humanitarian aid efforts in the central Sahel region of Africa that it said was being pushed to ‘breaking point’.

At a virtual conference the UN Aid Chief, Mark Lowcock, described the Sahel as a preventable human tragedy where 13 million people were at risk and seven million were in a state of acute hunger.

Some 22 countries scaled-up aid to the sub-Saharan belt spanning Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.

The UN’s Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, said security in the Sahel had sharply deteriorated, violence was on the rise and internal displacement had increased twenty-fold in less than two years.

The donations fell short of the $2.4bn the UN was asking for overall for aid efforts until 2021.

Also, Mark Lowcock of Ocha pointed to conflicts arising from people having to compete for already strained resources – and the combination of ‘low development’, high poverty, accelerating climate change and rapid population growth.

His comments came as the UN hopes to raise $1bn (£770m) with a virtual donor conference hosted with Denmark, Germany, and the EU.

Armed militia operates in the Sahel, which has become a frontline in the war against Islamist militancy for almost a decade.

He said that people being forced from their homes is ‘a symptom of these underlying problems’.