Niger overshadows Mali crisis
2005-08-08 21:59
Marsi - Tears course from Sidi Mohammed's protruding eyes and the frail 12-month-old boy squirms and mewls in his mother's arms as she tries to get him to drink from a blue plastic cup of vitamin-rich gruel aid workers have brought to northeastern Mali.
The aid workers say the food crisis here is raging largely unnoticed by a world preoccupied with hunger in next-door Niger. There are fears of a replay of the drama in Niger, where the world ignored repeated warnings and only rushed in when images of starving children hit the airwaves.
Across the chronically dry and dusty West African region on the edge of the Sahara, malnutrition is a yearly occurrence for many. Poor rains and a plague of locusts in 2004 has made the situation worse, leaving hundreds of thousands in dire need of help. Burkina Faso and Mauritania also are affected.
"We had nothing to eat except the milk of our three sheep. What could I do for my children?" says Sidi's mother, 25-year old Ahmetan Ahmedu.
Thousands could die of hunger
In Mali, a nation of 11 million to Niger's west, the government says some 1.5 million people are in the midst of a food crisis after their crops were wiped out and herds thinned last year, with an estimated 144 000 malnourished children on the edge in the sere north and east.
The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) said on July 28 that 5 000 children in the north were suffering acute malnutrition after agricultural production was 42% lower in 2004 than the year earlier.
In the worst-affected areas, between 16% and 33% of Malian children are believed malnourished.
The WFP said an appeal for $7.5m was facing a shortfall of 85%. The UN agency calls the lack of funding for Mali "devastating".
A similar appeal for Niger had reached 70% of the $16m sought, with Australia, Germany and the United States the biggest Niger donors. But the first calls for help for the entire region went out in November and the response for Niger came only in recent weeks.
Aid workers say the crisis is unfolding deep in Mali's dusty bush, where many of Mali's widely wandering Fulani, Tuareg and Tamachek people tend their flocks.
Crisis especially bad this year
Mali's government made its own appeal in May and also started free food distributions early this year to partially cover a deficit of 347 000 tons of grains and other harvest goods.
But Mali's government still says it needs 5 000 tons of enriched foodstuffs for very young children.
"The situation is always difficult, particularly now in the lean season" says Lansry Nana Yaya Haidara, Mali's minister for food security.
Patricia Hoorelbeke, mission chief for Niger and Mali for the French-based charity Action Contre la Faim that provided Sidi Mohammed with his food, said: "If there's a forgotten crisis, it's here. We have a grave crisis, and the world needs to react immediately."
- AP