UN raises billions for Sahel aid

NEW YORK: The United Nations raised more than $US1.7 billion ($NZ2.57 billion) in pledges yesterday to fund aid efforts for the rest of 2020 and 2021 in Africa’s Sahel region, which includes Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, as UN aid chief Mark Lowcock warned a ‘‘preventable tragedy is looming’’.

Lowcock told a virtual pledging conference some 13 million people, including 5 million children, needed emergency humanitarian assistance to survive.

More than 7 million people had been pushed into acute hunger, he said.

‘‘Humanitarian needs in the central Sahel are higher than they have ever been and the rate at which needs have increased is truly alarming,’’ he told the conference, organised by the United Nations, the European Union, Germany and Denmark.

The pledges from 22 countries, the EU and the Education Cannot Wait fund fell short of the $2.4 billion the United Nations said it needed.

‘‘The central Sahel region is at a breaking point,’’ UN Secretarygeneral Antonio Guterres said.

‘‘The Sahel is a microcosm of cascading global risks converging in one region.’’

Lowcock cited chronic poverty and underdevelopment, demographic growth and climate change, intercommunal conflict, violent criminal gangs and extremists as some of the causes of the humanitarian crisis.

France, a former colonial power in the region, is leading a coalition of West African and European allies to fight Islamist militants in the Sahel. — Reuters