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Mali's Food Crisis Goes Little Noticed
By EDWARD HARRIS
Associated Press Writer
August 8, 2005, 2:52 PM EDT
MARSI, Mali -- While the world's attention has been fixed on famished Niger,
Sidi Mohammed's big, tearful eyes and cries of hunger reveal another food
crisis unfolding next door.
The year-old baby, mewling as his mother tries to feed him a cup of
vitamin-rich gruel provided by aid workers, is one of an estimated 1.5
million of Mali's 11 million people are said to be facing hunger, among them
an estimated 144,000 children already suffering malnourishment.
Aid workers say they fear a replay of what happened in neighboring Niger,
where the world ignored repeated warnings and only rushed in aid in recent
weeks when images of starving children hit TV screens.
The U.N. World Food Program said an appeal for $7.5 million was facing a
shortfall of 85 percent, which it called "devastating.
A similar appeal for Niger got 70 percent of the $16 million sought, mostly
from Australia, Germany and the United States. But that was at least seven
months after the first calls for help went out for the entire region.
Across the chronically dry and dusty West African region on the edge of the
Sahara, malnutrition is a yearly blight. Poor rains and locusts worsened the
situation last year, and now Sidi and his three siblings are dangerously
underfed and dependent on food aid. Burkina Faso and Mauritania also are
affected.
"We had nothing to eat except the milk of our three sheep. I was very
afraid. What could I do for my children?" says Sidi's mother, 25-year-old
Ahmetan Ahmedu.
The shortages that have struck northeastern Mali aren't thought to be as bad
as Niger's -- yet. The U.N.'s World Food Program said on July 28 that 5,000
children in the north were suffering acute malnutrition after last year's
farm output fell 42 percent from 2003's.
In the worst hit areas, up to a third of Malian children are believed to be
suffering some measure of malnutrition, which can kill or stunt growth and
cause behavior difficulties in later years, the government and aid groups
say.
Relief workers say the crisis is unfolding deep in Mali's dusty bush, where
semi-nomadic Fulani, Tuareg and Tamachek people tend their flocks.
"The TV cameras whose horrific images of hunger in Niger caught the
international community's attention have not yet reached the affected areas
of Mali," the World Food Program said.
Mali's government made its own appeal in May and also started doling out
free food to partially cover a shortfall of 347,000 tons of grains and other
crops.
But it says it still needs 5,000 tons of enriched foodstuffs for very young
children -- always the first and worst hit.
Things are always difficult at this time of year, but after last year's
drought and locusts, "it's a particularly, particularly difficult moment,"
Lansry Nana Yaya Haidara, Mali's minister for food security, said in her
office in the capital, Bamako.
"If there's a forgotten crisis, it's here," said Patricia Hoorelbeke of
Action Contre la Faim, the French-based charity that fed Sidi Mohammed.
"Here you always have a problem, but this year it's three or four times
worse."
Action Contre la Faim (Action Against Hunger), Britain's Oxfam and a few
other organizations have been working for weeks to get food to the north,
near the fabled trans-Saharan way station of Timbuktu, and the east, near
the city of Gao.
In the markets near Gao, food prices have skyrocketed. At Gao's hospital,
two malnourished children have died and some 20 others are being treated,
aid workers say.
In Marsi, a village of grass huts 50 miles from Gao down a sandy track,
Tamachek children wander naked, bellies protruding, their skin gray and
their faces gaunt. They wear green bracelets to identify them as
malnourished. Among the village's 40 families, about one in five children
checked has been diagnosed as malnourished, Action Contre la Faim says.
"This year, everyone is having problems," says Ahmed Abdoulaye, 38. His
13-month-old son, Youssouf Ahmed, was diagnosed as malnourished, but after a
few emergency meals, was smiling broadly.
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