UN humanitarian chief: Sahel is very close to tipping point

U.N. humanitarian chief warned Tuesday that daunting problems in Africa’s Sahel region are getting worse and region “is very close to a tipping point — and so by extension are its African neighbors, Europe, and world.”

Mark Lowcock said in a virtual speech to students at Paris Institute for Political Science that he deals with world’s worst humanitarian trdies, and “where scares me more than Sahel.”

He said six central Sahel countries -- Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ch, Mali, Niger, and rast Nigeria -- are at “a true epicenter of conflict and insecurity, weak governance, chronic underdevelopment and poverty, demographic pressures, and climate change.”

Lowcock said re are conflicts between farmers and herders mainly over scarce resources, conflicts instigated by terrorist and extremist groups seeking to undermine governments, and violence from organized crime groups running trafficking networks who “st kidnappings, loot assets and steal natural resources for profit.”

Before 2012, only one militant Islamist group, Al Qaeda in Maghreb, operated in Mali, he said, but extremist groups took lessons from strength and territorial gains of Islamic State extremist movement in Iraq and Syria after 2014 and “by 2018, more than 10 groups were active in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, in dition to groups like Boko Haram in Lake Ch Basin.”

“re were more violent episodes in 2018 alone than in whole of 2009-15 period,” Lowcock said.

In dition, “since 1970s, Sahel has warmed twice as fast as rest of world,” which has seriously affected livelihoods, he said. And “fertility rates in Sahel are highest in world, with annual population growth of 3 per cent on aver.”

As U.N.’s undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, Lowcock said, “I have come to realize more and more that humanitarian aid can only be a Band-Aid on a much deeper wound. And right w, wound is growing faster than Band-Aid.”

On Oct. 20, Germany, Denmark, European Union and U.N. are sponsoring a high-level virtual conference on Sahel t only for pledging of funds but for making “concrete policy commitments,” he said.

“This is very timely because, as of today, most public policy efforts, at both national and international levels, are treating symptoms rar than ir causes,” Lowcock said.

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