Children paying a disproportionate price as famine looms across Somalia, South Sudan, north-east Nigeria and Yemen

This is a summary of a prepared statement by Justin Forsyth, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director – to whom quoted text may be attributed – today to the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Multilateral International Development, Multilateral Institutional Economic, Energy and Environmental Policy.
The statement came as UNICEF released its annual Humanitarian Action Study, highlighting UNICEF’s global response in 2016. Last year, UNICEF responded to 344 humanitarian situations in 108 countries, more than ever before.

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Children are paying a disproportionate price as famine looms across Somalia, South Sudan, north-east Nigeria and Yemen. Nearly 1.4 million children face imminent risk of death, and more than five million children face malnourishment this year.

The joint international effort to support national and local authorities and communities respond to this crisis is making a difference. Together we are saving lives. Humanitarian actors including UNICEF, other parts of the United Nations and non-governmental organisations are reaching at least 10 million people each month in the four countries with life-saving assistance.

But the threat of famine has not passed. Unless we sustain and further scale up our collective efforts, there is the risk that many more millions of children will die of hunger or be permanently stunted. And the longer these crises go on, the greater the risk of new emergencies within these emergencies – like the cholera outbreak in Yemen.

We must re-double our efforts to deliver at scale, to find ways to address the obstacles that so far are preventing us reaching some of the most vulnerable children and communities, avert new emergencies and help put millions of families on a path to sustainable recovery. And much more needs to be done to address the root causes of these crises, bringing an end to protracted conflicts and human rights violations and linking our emergency humanitarian response to effective development support which addresses the underlying vulnerabilities of communities.

Conflict, extreme climate events like drought, environmental degradation, climate change, loss of livelihoods and poverty all underpin these looming famines and crises. Unless we address these causes we will continue to get recurrent crises.

Civilians caught up in conflict need the United Nations Security Council and influential international actors to do more to require parties to these conflicts to meet their obligations under international norms and laws. Better protection for civilians caught up in conflicts and unimpeded access for every person in need, wherever they are, would rapidly reduce human suffering. A renewed diplomatic push is needed to end these protracted conflicts. The diplomatic efforts of the United States are needed more than ever.

This also means that countries, regions and the international community need to do more to prepare for and build resilience against environmental and climate-related crisis such as recurring drought.  The stakes for children across these four countries and their sub-regions could not be higher. Nearly 1.4 million children are at imminent risk of death, and many more millions of children are at risk unless we turn these crises around and build sustainable recovery. The longer we wait to address these children’s needs, the more we jeopardize their future. Children and families facing the gravest threats count on the leadership and generosity of the people of the United States to stand with them, to help them survive this crisis and go on to build a brighter future for themselves and their countries.

FULL STATEMENT
Children are paying a disproportionate toll as famine looms across Somalia, South Sudan, north-east Nigeria and Yemen. Nearly 1.4 million children face imminent risk of death, and more than five million children face malnourishment this year.

As we work to keep children alive, we must not forget that if children are subjected to malnutrition at a very young age, the long term impact on stunting brain development can be devastating. Stunting hampers not only the future ability of a child to learn and earn, but also has an impact on the social and economic progress of the countries in which they live. It cuts school performance, translating into a reduction in adult income by 22 per cent on average. It also leads to increased risk of health problems in adult life. As we work to save lives, this is also a struggle for the long term future of millions of children – a generation – and indeed the future of their countries.

The joint international effort to support national and local authorities and communities respond to this crisis is making a difference. Together we are saving lives. Humanitarian actors including UNICEF, other parts of the United Nations and non-governmental organisations are reaching at least 10 million people each month in the four countries with life-saving assistance. More concretely, in the first half of 2017 UNICEF treated more than 300,000 children suffering severe acute malnutrition.  Along with our partners we have vaccinated 6.4 million children against measles. Over four million of those reached were in north-east Nigeria where we doubled our initial target due to increased access. More than 2.3 million people in the four countries have been provided with safe water.

But the threat of famine has not passed. Unless we sustain and further scale up our collective efforts, there is the risk that many more millions of children will die of hunger or be permanently stunted. And the longer these crises go on, the greater the risk of new emergencies within these emergencies – like the cholera outbreak in Yemen.

We must re-double our efforts to deliver at scale, to find ways to address the obstacles that so far are preventing us reaching some of the most vulnerable children and communities, avert new emergencies and help put millions of families on a path to sustainable recovery. And much more needs to be done to address the root causes of these crises, bringing an end to protracted conflicts and human rights violations and linking our emergency humanitarian response to effective development support which addresses the underlying vulnerabilities of communities.

The scale of the crisis for children
Conflict, drought, displacement and disease are combining to threaten children and families across the four countries, as well as the sub-regions of the Horn of Africa and the Lake Chad Basin.

In South Sudan, more than 1.1 million children are estimated to be facing acute malnourishment, with almost 276,000 severely malnourished at imminent risk of death. In Nigeria, some 450,000 children are estimated to face severe acute malnutrition in the conflict-affected states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe. In Somalia, the projected number of children who are or will be acutely malnourished is 1.4 million – including 275,000 who have or will suffer from severe acute malnutrition. And in Yemen, about 1.8 million children are threatened with acute malnutrition, 385,000 of them with severe acute malnutrition.

Malnutrition is compounded by the increasing threat of water borne diseases. Cholera has become a deadly factor in each of the four countries, and our response to this threat is increasingly critical to saving many thousands of children’s lives.

The cholera outbreak in Yemen has spread rapidly since April. Children under the age of 15 account for 41 per cent of the more than 300,000 reported cases of suspected cholera/acute watery diarrhoea, and more than a quarter of the more than 1,700 deaths have been children. The health crisis in Yemen is a result of two years of heavy conflict – collapsing health, water and sanitation systems have cut off 14.5 million people from regular access to clean water and sanitation, increasing the ability of diseases to spread. There are no longer any doctors present in 49 of the country’s 333 districts, health workers in Yemen have not been paid for months, and there are only two functioning laboratories in the country.

In Somalia, prolonged drought has led to the largest outbreak of cholera in the last five years, with more than 53,000 cases of suspected cholera – close to   half of them children under five – and 795 deaths. South Sudan is experiencing a protracted, widespread cholera outbreak, with nearly 7,000 cases reported this year, the highest since 2014. Investing in safe water, sanitation and better hygiene practices is a critical step to saving children and families threatened by famine.

Forced displacement is a factor which compounds all the other drivers of this crisis. Whether fleeing the threat of fighting and attacks or in desperate search of food and water in drought-stricken areas, families who are forced to leave their homes also lose access to essential services like health clinics and water sources as well as livelihoods. Uprooted children and families are much more vulnerable, both to famine and disease as well as human rights abuses. Children on the move are at greater risk, especially when they are unaccompanied or separated from families. In contexts of conflict and displacements, women and girls face greater risk of sexual and gender based violence, and boys are increasingly vulnerable to forced recruitment into armed groups and other forms of violence.

Original source: UNICEF. 
Posted on 18 July. 2017.