The United Nations said Thursday it is racing to aid many thousands of people in Africa’s flood-devastated Sahel region, urging governments to help refugees and host communities impacted by the worst rains in over a decade.
More than 700,000 people in the region have been affected by the disaster and dozens have died including a displaced pregnant mother and her teenage daughter, the UN refugee agency said in a statement
Thousands more people urgently need shelter, clean water, and health services across large areas of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, and Niger, the UNHCR statement noted.
The rains which began in August are believed to be the worst in over a decade. Homes have been destroyed, health centres damaged, and farmlands submerged across the Sahel - where violent conflict had already forced more than 3.5 million to flee both within countries and across borders.
“Refugees, internally displaced, and their hosts were already on the brink and in urgent need of our assistance,” said Millicent Mutuli, UNHCR’s Regional Bureau Director for West and Central Africa.
“The floods bring a menacing new level of hardship, while hampering our efforts to respond to one of the world’s worst and fastest-growing humanitarian crises,” Mutuli added.
Infrastructure including medical facilities have been badly damaged across the Sahel, impacting national responses to COVID-19 and other illnesses such as malaria and measles. With water sources contaminated and latrines flooded, fears are growing that cholera could spread.
Crops have been destroyed in the floods, increasing food shortages and jeopardising the livelihoods of farmers and their families who depend on the harvests.
Niger has the been hardest hit among Sahel countries. Nigerien authorities have reported 71 deaths, 90 injured, and over 350,000 people impacted by the floods across the country, particularly the Maradi region. UNHCR has been scaling up help to internally displaced people (IDPs) in areas where they must wade through waist-deep water or paddle in canoes, said the agency.
Six sites hosting displaced people have been hit by the floods, leaving more than 9,000 refugees and IDPs in urgent need of shelter. UNHCR has already distributed 1,900 shelter kits as well as relief items such as clothing, blankets and hygiene kits, depleting the agency's emergency stocks in some areas.
In Burkina Faso, the floods affected all 13 regions, causing the death of 41 people, injuring 112, and leaving 12,378 households without shelter. The torrential rains have caused extensive damage in a country that currently hosts more than one million IDPs - half of the internally displaced population in the Sahel, UNHCR noted.
UNHCR teams are working to reinforce existing shelters, build new ones in safer areas, and to relocate displaced families hit by the floods, the agency said.
In Chad, where more than 236,000 people have been affected by the floods, UNHCR and other partners are urgently providing shelter, food, core relief and health care.
In Mali, thousands of IDPs and local communities have been affected Hundreds of homes have been destroyed in the most severely hit regions of Gao, Mopti, Ségou and Sikasso, UNHCR reported.
Rising global temperatures are changing rainfall patterns across the Sahel, increasing the frequency and intensity of floods, droughts, and sandstorms, while the COVID-19 pandemic has left many across the region struggling, UNHCR underlined.
These events are multiplying risks for host and displaced communities that are already grappling with extreme poverty, food insecurity, armed conflict and climate risks, critically compounded this year by the Coronavirus, the statement concluded.
