famine - The African Mirror

Jun

2021

EXCLUSIVE: 350 000 people in Ethiopia’s Tigray in famine

GIULIA PARAVICINI and MICHELLE NICHOLS AN analysis by United Nations agencies and aid groups estimates that about 350,000 people in Ethiopia's conflict-torn Tigray region are in famine conditions, according to an internal U.N. document seen by Reuters. The Ethiopian government disputes the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis, according to the notes of a meeting on the situation in Tigray of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) - made up of the heads of at least 18 U.N. and non-U.N. organizations. "On the risk of famine, it was noted that the unpublished IPC analysis figures were being disputed by the…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

‘Famine looms in southern Madagascar’

NEWS

STEPHANIE NEBEHAY FAMINE threatens southern Madagascar after drought and sandstorms ruined harvests, reducing people to eating locusts and leaves, the United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday. The lives of children are in danger, especially those under five years old whose malnutrition rates have reached "alarming levels", Amer Daoudi, senior director of global WFP operations, said by videolink from Madagascar's capital Antananarivo. At least 1.35 million people are in need of food assistance in the region, but the WFP is only reaching 750,000 with "half-rations" due to financial constraints, he said. "Famine looms in southern Madagascar as communities…

Feb

2021

By The African Mirror

Floods, fighting, famine: Inside South Sudan’s triple crisis

NEWS

SAM MEDNICK PIBOR, South Sudan Tucked away behind the bend of a swollen river, an hour and a half by motorboat from the region’s main health centre, local residents in the remote South Sudanese village of Lekuangole say their children are starving to death. There’s the three-year-old son of Ngalan Luryen who died of hunger last February after a week hiding in a forest from militiamen. And there’s the nine-year-old grandson of Anna Korok who lost his life in July when conflict split him from his family and left him nothing to eat. “We need food,” Korok told The New…

Dec

2020

By The African Mirror

In Sudan camp, a Tigray farmer once displaced by famine now shelters from war

NEWS

SEHAM ELORABY and BAZ RATNER ETHIOPIAN farmer Berhan Halie came to Sudan 35 years ago to escape hunger. Now 65 and walking with a stick, he is back again, this time to escape the bullets and bombs of the conflict in Tigray, fleeing from his village as neighbours lay dead on the ground. Berhan and his family spent days walking to the border crossing with Sudan, among more than 45,000 who have fled from fighting between the Ethiopian government and rebellious Tigray forces. After crossing two weeks ago, he was brought by bus to the Um Rakuba camp in Sudan's…

Nov

2020

By The African Mirror

As millions face famine, women at risk as they eat last and least

HUMAN RIGHTS

SONIA ELKS WITH millions on the brink of famine in four nations, women and girls will be hardest hit due to cultural beliefs and COVID-19's economic impacts, according to the charity CARE. The coronavirus pandemic could nearly double the number of acutely food insecure people to more than 270 million by the end of 2020, the United Nations said this week, with famine looming in parts of Yemen, South Sudan, Burkina Faso and Nigeria. "There is a huge risk that millions of women and girls around the world are already going hungry," Sarah Fuhrman, a humanitarian policy specialist with CARE,…