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Horn of Africa headed toward hunger crisis amid conflict, climate change

Saturday August 24 2024
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Women and children wait to be registered prior to a food distribution carried out by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Thonyor, Leer state, South Sudan on February 26, 2017. PHOTO | REUTERS

By PAULINE KAIRU

In the dusty, war-ravaged outskirts of North Darfur, a mother at the Zamzam camp cradles her emaciated child, her eyes hollow with exhaustion and fear. This is Fatima, a 32-year-old widow, who once led a simple but stable life, selling groceries in a local market in El Fasher, the besieged capital of her homeland in North Darfur.

Now she has become the depiction of Sudan’s hunger crisis where her camp has now reported famine, the impact of forfeited crop cultivation and subdued supplies from the ongoing war.

But Sudan’s 25.6 million people currently facing hunger aren’t the only group. New data says that even peaceful regions of the wider Horn of Africa are just in trouble, with the culprit being economic shocks and climate change that is causing erratic weather.

Read more here

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