Natural disasters displace three times as many people as conflicts
In 2018, natural disasters including drought, cyclones and floods forced almost 2.6 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa to flee their homes. This triggers competition over depleted natural resources which can spark conflict between communities or compound pre-existing vulnerabilities.
In West and Central Africa, the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme is at the heart of the climate action for building resilience to climate change and peace promotion.
Myanmar is highly susceptible to natural disasters and ranks second out of 187 countries in the 2016 Global Climate Risk Index. Prolonged conflict fuelled by ethnic tensions has exacerbated Myanmar’s vulnerability to natural disasters, so much so that the Government of Myanmar has placed emergency response and disaster preparedness at the top of its priority list.
It takes two hours to cover the 60 kilometers between Batouri, the capital of the Kadey department to the Lolo refugee site. Near the border with the Central African Republic (CAR) in the commune of Kentzou, the camp hosts a population of over 13,000 refugees from CAR. Fleeing a war-torn country, these vulnerable communities, predominately Muslims, settled at the site from the beginning of 2014.
It takes two hours to cover the 60 kilometers between Batouri, the capital of the Kadey department to the Lolo refugee site. Near the border with the Central African Republic (CAR) in the commune of Kentzou, the camp hosts a population of over 13,000 refugees from CAR. Fleeing a war-torn country, these vulnerable communities, predominately Muslims, settled at the site from the beginning of 2014.
M. Hayikou Euloge est Volontaire international des Nations Unies au Burundi depuis 2016. De nationalité béninoise, il est chargé de la logistique et de la gestion des stocks de vivres pour le Programme alimentaire mondial (PAM) au bureau de Ngozi. Il coordonne les activités liées à la gestion et à la qualité des vivres stockés dans des entrepôts d’une capacité de 8200 tonnes, avant leur acheminement vers les points de distribution.
Mariagiovanna Costa is a UN Volunteer of Italian nationality serving at the sub-office of the World Food Program (WFP) in the Mopti region. She visits the internally displaced families of the ‘CAN 2002 Socoura’ camp, named after the former training football stadium of the African Cup of Nations.
A food crisis is affecting the region of Mopti, and Mali as a whole, due to drought and conflict which have displaced more than 99,000 people across the country. In Mopti, nearly 180,000 people suffer from food insecurity and more than 46,000 are internally displaced.
Takako Kaneda (Japan) serves as a UN Volunteer Logistics Officer with WFP under the Human Resource Development Programme for Peacebuilding and Development. Dedicated to project and information management, HRD-UN Volunteer Takako Kaneda provided technical support to those WFP country offices in the Eastern Africa, including the most volatile countries Somalia and South Sudan.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the most malnourished countries on earth, with over 4.6m children acutely malnourished, including 2.2m children suffering from severe acute malnutrition. The country is also facing an epidemic of sexual violence. Spiraling humanitarian needs and the rapid escalation in grave protection violations against women and children in the DRC should be of concern to everyone.
In Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states, the ongoing threat of horrific acts by the insurgency of Boko Haram coupled with the worse drought in recent history have made tending of the land and harvesting of crops nearly impossible for rural populations. This double scourge is pushing millions of Nigerians beyond the brink.