{"id":86216,"date":"2017-02-06T12:00:47","date_gmt":"2017-02-06T12:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=86216"},"modified":"2017-02-02T15:44:01","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T15:44:01","slug":"insecurity-fuelling-food-shortages-in-lake-chad-basin-un-coordinator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/02\/insecurity-fuelling-food-shortages-in-lake-chad-basin-un-coordinator\/","title":{"rendered":"Insecurity Fuelling Food Shortages in Lake Chad Basin: UN Coordinator"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

Toby Lanzer, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sahel speaks at the International Peace Institute. Credit: L Rowlands \/ IPS.<\/p><\/div>\n

30 Jan 2017<\/em> – Children less than five years of age are not surviving due to severe food shortages in some parts of the Lake Chad region, says Toby Lanzer, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sahel.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw adults sapped of energy who couldn\u2019t stand up, I saw an entire town devoid of two-year olds, three-year olds, four-year olds, and when we asked where the children are \u2013 and I get upset when I say this \u2013 we were told that they had died, they had starved.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was the situation Lanzer saw on a visit to the town of Bama in Northern Nigeria in 2016. He described the visit at a discussion with policy makers, diplomats and journalists at the International Peace Institute \u2013 a New York think tank \u2013 on Wednesday 25 January.<\/p>\n

Communities across the Lake Chad basin have lost the last three planting seasons – Toby Lanzer.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The crisis has\u00a0left millions of people living on the edge in the Lake Chad basin, due to a combination of abject poverty, climate change and violent extremism, said Lanzer. Four countries \u2013\u00a0Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria \u2013 border Lake Chad, which has shrunk dramatically since the 1960s.<\/p>\n

\u201cAround Lake Chad there are now well over 10 million people who I could categorise as desperately in need of \u2026 life-saving aid,\u201d he said, including 7.1 million people categorised as \u201cseverely food insecure.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response to a question from IPS, Lanzer described how ongoing violence in the region has contributed to the food shortages:<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout 85 percent of people across this part of the world depend on the weather and agriculture livestock \u2013 it\u2019s an agro-pastoralist community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf your movement is confined you may not plant and communities across the Lake Chad basin have lost the last three planting seasons if you don\u2019t plant than you don\u2019t harvest and if you don\u2019t harvest than you don\u2019t have food,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf your cattle or your goats or your livestock isn\u2019t moving cows that don\u2019t walk get sick and they die and then you\u2019ve lost your livelihood,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Lanzer, whose humanitarian career has seen him work in Sudan, South Sudan, Timor-Leste, and the Central African Republic said that the poverty in the Lake Chad region is some of the worst he has witnessed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve been to villages before where people don\u2019t have flip-flops, where people don\u2019t have plastic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

However Lanzer noted that ongoing violence in the region \u2013 including due to extremist group Boko Haram \u2013 was one of the biggest factors disrupting the lives of people in the region.<\/p>\n

Els Debuf, Senior Adviser and Head of Humanitarian Affairs at the International Peace Institute\u00a0said that although the crisis in the Lake Chad region is one of the most severe it is also one of the most under-reported.<\/p>\n

She noted that despite the region\u2019s extreme poverty, communities were also sheltering refugees and internally displaced persons:<\/p>\n

\u201cClose to two and half million refugees and internally displaced people \u2013 the vast majority of whom are children \u2013 are sheltered throughout the region by communities who are themselves among the poorest and most vulnerable in the world,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The governments of Norway, Nigeria and Germany are planning a pledging conference to raise funds for the crisis in Nigeria and the Lake Chad region on\u00a024 February in Oslo, Norway.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 ipsnews.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI saw adults sapped of energy who couldn\u2019t stand up, I saw an entire town devoid of two-year olds, three-year olds, four-year olds, and when we asked where the children are \u2013 and I get upset when I say this \u2013 we were told that they had died, they had starved.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}