The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Friday said that at least ten million children living in Central Sahel’s Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger are in urgent need of humanitarian aid, twice the number reported in 2020 due to intensifying conflict, reported The Africa News.
In a report published on Friday, the United Nations agency said nearly four million more children are at risk in neighboring countries as hostilities between armed groups and national security forces spill across borders.
“Children are increasingly caught up in the armed conflict, as victims of intensifying military clashes, or targeted by non-state armed groups,” said Marie-Pierre Poirier, UNICEF Regional Director for West and Central Africa.
She said the year 2022 was particularly violent for children in the central Sahel. As per UNICEF’s report, in Burkina Faso, three times more children were killed in the first nine months of 2022 compared with the same period in 2021.
Ms. Poirier appealed to all parties involved in the conflict to urgently stop attacks both on children, and their schools, health centers, and homes.
According to UNICEF, armed groups opposed to the state-run education system are burning and looting schools, as well as threatening, abducting, or executing teachers.
More than 8,300 schools have closed in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, either because they have been targeted or because parents have been displaced or are afraid to send their children there.
The Sahel’ refers to 10 West and Central African countries including Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, The Gambia, Guinea, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal. It is considered one of the toughest places in the world for children to grow up. The central Sahel has been facing major instability since ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda-affiliated armed groups are fighting government forces to gain power.
According to recent projections, over 20,000 people in the border area between Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger will be in ‘catastrophe’-level food insecurity by June 2023.
