In Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, more than 4,000 people have died as a result of terrorist attacks in 2019, the head of the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel told members of the Security Council today. The number of displaced people has increased 10-fold to about half a million, he added.
Zambia
The Government of Zambia, the United Nations and partners launched a response plan after the poorest rainfall in decades is expected to leave 2.4 million severely food insecure. Meanwhile, humanitarian partners in Somalia and South Sudan are scaling up responses to severe seasonal flooding that affected 1 million.
Drought hits the Sahel region hard, with more than 10 million people expected to need emergency food assistance, up from 7.1 million currently, if adequate assistance is not provided in time. Poor rains in 2017 are now deeply affecting parts of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has reported that refugees fleeing militia violence in the south-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and arriving in Zambia have crossed the 12,000 mark, with 80 per cent of them women and children, driven out by extreme brutality of rampaging militias.
BIO/4982
The new Permanent Representative of Zambia to the United Nations, Lazarous Kapambwe, presented his credentials to UN Secretary-General António Guterres today.
The number of children used in “suicide” attacks in the Lake Chad Basin conflict has surged to 27 in the first quarter of 2017, compared to nine over the same period last year, according to UNICEF, which states, in a report released today, that the increase reflects an alarming tactic by the insurgents.