UN: Madagascar droughts push 400,000 toward starvation

The UN World Food Program says southern Madagascar is in the throes of back-to-back droughts that are pushing 400,000 people toward starvation, and have already caused deaths from severe hunger.

Lola Castro, WFP's regional director in southern Africa, told a news conference Friday that she witnessed "a very dramatic and desperate situation" during her recent visit with WFP chief David Beasley to the Indian Ocean island nation of 26 million people. Hundreds of adults and children were "wasted," and hundreds of kids were skin and bones and receiving nutritional support, she said.

In 28 years working for WFP on four continents, Castro said she had "never seen anything this bad" except in 1998 in Bahr el-Gazal in what is now South Sudan.

The U.N. and Madagascar's government are launching an appeal for about $155 million in a few days to provide life-saving food and prevent a major famine, she said. Thousands of people have left their homes in rural areas and moved to more urban environments in search of food, she added. Beasley tweeted Friday that 400,000 people are "marching towards starvation," 14,000 are "in famine-like conditions," and "if we do not act ASAP, the number of people facing starvation will reach 500,000 in a few short months." "Families have been living on raw red cactus fruits, wild leaves and locusts for months now," he said Wednesday.

"This is not because of war or conflict, this is because of climate change," Beasley stressed. "This is an area of the world that has contributed nothing to climate change, but now, they're the ones paying the highest price."

According to WFP, 1.14 million people in southern Madagascar don't have enough food including 14,000 in "catastrophic" conditions, and this will double to 28,000 by October.

Madagascar is the only country that isn't in conflict but still has people facing "Famine-Humanitarian Catastrophe" in the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification known as the IPC, which is a global partnership of 15 U.N. agencies and international humanitarian organizations that uses five categories to measure food security, Castro said.

Meanwhile, A draft U.N. Security Council resolution circulated Friday would authorize the delivery of humanitarian aid to Syria across the borders of Turkey and Iraq, but Syria's close ally Russia holds the key to its adoption.

Russia has come under intense pressure from the U.N., U.S. and others who warn of dire humanitarian consequences for over a million Syrians if all border crossings are closed. Russia says aid should be delivered across conflict lines within Syria to reinforce the country's sovereignty over the entire country.

The Security Council approved four border crossings when deliveries began in 2014, three years after the start of the Syrian conflict. But in January 2020, Russia used its veto threat in the council to limit aid deliveries to two border crossings, and in July 2020, its veto threat cut another. So today, aid can only be delivered through the Bab al-Hawa crossing from Turkey to Syria's rebel-held northwest, and its mandate ends on July 10.

The draft resolution circulated by Norway and Ireland and obtained by The Associated Press would keep the Bab al-Hawa crossing and restore aid deliveries through the Al-Yaroubiya crossing point from Iraq in the mainly Kurdish-controlled northeast that was closed in January 2020. It would also end the sixmonth mandate Russia insisted on and restore a oneyear mandate.

Security Council experts are expected to discuss the proposed resolution early next week. The one-page draft resolution states that "the devastating humanitarian situation in Syria continues to constitute a threat to peace and security in the region."

Former U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock, who just stepped down, told the council last month that delivering aid across conflict lines cannot replace crossborder deliveries and called the cross-border operation at Bab al-Hawa "a lifeline."

If it isn't reauthorized, he warned, food deliveries for 1.4 million people every month, millions of medical treatments, nutrition for tens of thousands of children and mothers and education supplies for tens of thousands of students will stop.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who recently visited the Bab alHawa crossing, expressed disappointment that the resolution "falls short" of the three crossings the United Stated is seeking to restore. She said a second crossing from Turkey to the northwest at Bab al-Salam that was closed in July 2020 should also be restored.

Since then, she said, not a single cross-line convoy has reached Idlib in the rebel-held northwest.