The Republic of Chad has declared a food emergency at the same time that it has requested humanitarian aid from the different national actors and international partners for the populations identified in the “crisis phase” and “emergency phase”, as stated in a Chadian government decree.
“After the constant deterioration of the food and nutritional situation verified this year and in the face of the growing risk that the population will be in danger if humanitarian assistance is not provided (…) this decree declares a food emergency and resorts to emergency humanitarian assistance defined in the National Response Plan”, indicates the document collected today by the local press and quoted by the agency Eph.
#Madagascar: Since February 2021, @A & partners have reached 1.1 million people in the Grand Sud with humanitarian assistance which has played a critical role in averting the risk of famine.
But the situation remains fragile.
MORE ➡️ https://t.co/KJgLqeaAaq pic.twitter.com/firbSPRHKN
— UN Humanitarian (@UNOCHA) June 2, 2022
Signed by the country’s president, Mahamat Idriss Déby, the decree also states that a monitoring and evaluation unit will be created to supervise the distribution of humanitarian assistance.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a tool that indicates the state of food security, estimates that in 2022 around 1.67 million children under the age of five will suffer from acute malnutrition in Chad, including about 335,000 severe cases.
In addition, it is expected that in June and September 2022 there will be “a marked deterioration in the nutritional situation”, with two provinces and 17 departments in a crisis phase of food water and livelihoods and three provinces and 12 departments in a situation of humanitarian emergency. .
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has warned that up to 18 million people in the Sahel region (in which Chad is located), will face severe food insecurity in the next three months. It is the highest number since 2014.
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The executive director of the World Food Program (WFP), David Beasley, declared a few months ago that “the number of people on the verge of starvation in the Sahel has increased almost tenfold in the last three years and population displacements have increased by nearly 400% as the region faces its worst food crisis in more than a decade.”
In this sense, the PAM warned that this region is currently experiencing one of its driest periods since 2011. The current crisis is aggravated in relation to previous years due to the increase in poverty after the COVID-19 pandemic and the increase in the cost of staple foods due to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
With information from Eph.