Sahel Dashboard: Humanitarian Overview (As of 16 October 2023)

The security and humanitarian situation across the eight countries of the Sahel is extremely concerning, with an estimated 35.2 million people requiring some form of life-saving assistance. To date, only 9.6 million of the 23.6 million targeted for 2023 have been reached with aid.

As of June, about 5.6 million people have been displaced within borders, and the number of refugees has increased by 15 per cent in the Central Sahel region, in particular in the west of Niger. As conflict continues to intensify in Sudan, thousands of families are fleeing into Chad, further stretching the resources in a region where the humanitarian situation is extremely dire. Women and children continue to be among the most affected and the most vulnerable in the region, as close to 7,800 gender-based violence incidents have been reported in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad and Mali. The overall operating context for aid agencies remains particularly challenging, due to a high number of access impediments and a tense security situation: since the beginning of the year, six aid workers have been killed while on duty in Burkina Faso, Niger and Nigeria.

As the year enters its final quarter, humanitarian agencies have received merely a third of the USD 4.6 billion required to implement activities planned in the countries’ 2023 humanitarian response plans. An additional 3.1 billion is urgently required to avoid preventable loss of life and mitigate the suffering of millions of women, children and men.