Islamic Relief - Emergencies And Appeals

Niger and Mali Food Crisis

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Background

IR Response

Children Starve in Forgotten Niger and Mali Crisis
10 August 2005

Child in Niger with skin disease caused by poor nutrition.

Starving Children

Children across Niger and Northern Mali are starving as the world ignores appeals for help.

Some 150,000 children will die soon without aid, according to Jan Egeland, head of UN Humanitarian Affairs.

Disaster Strikes

A deadly combination of poor rains and locust invasions have devastated last year’s crops leaving around 3.5 million people with little or no food.

Experts say this is the worst food crisis for 20 years in Niger, which is the second poorest country in the world.

Children wait hungrily for their parents to return from the desert with food.

Millions Affected

Around 3.5 million people are suffering from food shortages according to the government of Niger.

Another 1.5 million people in the north of neighbouring Mali are also affected.

These hungry children are at risk of severe malnutrition.

Rocketing Food Prices

Livestock are dying in great numbers as their pasture and fodder has been destroyed. In addition, failed harvests have sent many farmers spiralling into poverty and hunger.

The little food available for sale in markets is too expensive for most people to buy in a country where two thirds of the population lives on less than $1 a day. Cereal prices have more than doubled in some areas.

It takes years to build up herds of animals, which now lie dead and rotting.

Desperate Search for Food

Dozens of villages have been abandoned as their hungry residents wander the deserts in search of food. Some people head for the towns and cities, or even neighbouring countries.

Seeds which are usually stored for the next harvest have instead been eaten. Even wild edible plants are becoming scarce in places, as so many people are relying on them for food.

Women dig deeper and deeper holes in the parched earth to gather small amounts of dirty water.

Living Wild

Some wild plants contain poisons which have to be processed out before they can be eaten. Despite this, side-effects of eating wild berries and leaves can include nausea and swollen stomachs.

Wild plants such as the bitter grain called ‘anza’ are only ever eaten in famine situations.

These Quran students have not eaten for 24 hours, despite begging from family to family across their village in Dimamou, Mali.

Eating Leaves and Berries

Zali Adamou, a 90-year-old widow from the Tillabery region in Niger explains how she processes the wild grain.

“I look for a stone or a mortar to mill the grains to remove the cover and dry the kernel. After that I boil it six times and throw away the bitter water. I then give the boiled grains to each child using a ladle to measure out equal portions.”

Processing a grain called 'anza' which grows wild and has bitter taste

Critical Situation

According to the UN, around 40 per cent of Niger’s children were already suffering from malnutrition, even before the current crisis.

Pregnant and lactating mothers are amongst the most vulnerable group. Mothers who are breast-feeding young babies run out of milk due to lack of food.

Undernourished children are more likely to fall ill with lethal infections which attack their weakened immune systems.

Babies and children under five are amongst the first to feel the effects of the food crisis.

Islamic Relief in Action

Teams from Islamic Relief's Mali office were amongst the first to reach some of the worst affected regions in Niger and Northern Mali.

Islamic Relief's Niger assessment team established that the worst affected areas in Niger are Tillaberi, Tahoua, Maradi, Diffa, Agadez and Zinder.

An Islamic Relief office has been set up in Niamey, the capital of Niger, to work closely with Islamic Relief’s established office in Bamako, Mali.

Islamic Relief staff unload urgently needed food aid in Niger.

Emergency Food Aid

• In Mali, 95 tonnes of food have already been distributed to families in Banikane, Bambara Maoude, Haribomo, Fintourou and Gouniaka in the Gourma Rharous region of North Mali.

• Monthly food distributions are planned to target the most vulnerable including children, women and the elderly in Tillaberi, Tahoua and Ouallam districts in Niger.

Villagers in north Mali show an aid worker their small supply of wild food.

Emergency Nutrition

• Islamic Relief is establishing 30 Supplementary and Therapeutic Feeding entres across four districts, Tillaberi, Ouallam, Filingue and Tera in Niger.

• The Supplementary Feeding Centres are designed to help moderately malnourished patients. They refer severely malnourished cases to Therapeutic Feeding Centres where more intensive care is provided.

• UNICEF has donated 6 tonnes of food for Islamic Relief’s feeding and nutritional centres

Malnourished child with swollen abdomen in a village in Niger.

Medical Aid

Tillaberi is one of the worst affected areas in Niger where only one other international NGO is working so far.

Islamic Relief is providing urgently needed medical equipment to the main hospital in Tillaberi.

Islamic Relief aid truck delivering emergency food in Niger.

Medical Relief

Islamic Relief will provide free medical aid for the most vulnerable people in the Tillaberi region, who would otherwise be unable to afford healthcare.

A Mobile Nutritional Monitoring Team is planned to visit local villages and health centres around Tillaberi to monitor diseases and nutrition, and to refer severely malnourished cases to the hospital. The team will work closely with the Ministry of Health.

Islamic Relief aid being unloaded from relief trucks.

Life and Death Struggle

As the media begins to react belatedly to the hunger crisis in Niger, terrible pictures of starving children fill our television screens once again. Time is critical as people are already weakened from their struggle to survive over the last few months.

“I have no means to face this famine,” explains Zali Adamou, a 90-year-old widow from the Tillaberi region in Niger. “I have no food, livestock, nothing. I only have God!”