Today's top news: Sudan, Nigeria

Sudan

 
The situation in Sudan is increasingly dire.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says it has received reports that as of 25 April, 190 children have been killed in the fighting. UNICEF is unable to confirm casualty estimates due to the intensity of the violence but says another 1,700 children were reportedly injured during the first 11 days of the conflict.

In a statement issued yesterday, UNICEF’s Executive Director Catherine Russell said that for the sake of Sudan’s children, the violence must stop – and she called for the unlimited, unimpeded and uninterrupted imports of humanitarian and essential commercial supplies.

Meanwhile, in a new report out today, the World Food Programme projected that the number of acutely food insecure people in Sudan will increase by between 2 and 2.5 million people – to a total of 19 million people – in the next three to six months, if the current conflict continues.

The states expected to see the highest food insecurity in the coming months are West Darfur, West Kordofan, Blue Nile, Red Sea, and North Darfur.
 

Nigeria

Our colleagues in the country warn about widespread hunger and child malnutrition in the north-east of the country as the leans season is set to begin next month.

Some 4.3 million people in the conflict-affected states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe are projected to face severe hunger between June and August, according to UN analysis, with almost 600,000 people facing emergency levels of food shortage, or IPC phase 4.

An estimated 2 million children under five in the three states are facing wasting, the most immediate and life-threatening form of malnutrition. Nearly 700,000 of them are at risk of severe wasting. They are 11 times more likely to die compared to well-nourished children and need immediate interventions.

The World Food Programme is scaling up operations to provide emergency food and nutrition assistance to 2.1 million people while the UN Children Fund is providing therapeutic treatment to severely wasted children. The Food and Agriculture Organization is also scaling up to reach 2 million people with seed packages to ensure production of cereals for the next harvest.

The message from our humanitarian partners in Nigeria is urgent: we must further scale up interventions including food, therapeutic food, and livelihood assistance, because the longer families go unassisted, the greater the risk of starvation and negative coping mechanisms such as child labour and the selling off of productive assets.

Humanitarian partners in the north-east need US$1.3 billion this year but have so far received just over 11 per cent of that amount.