Lake Chad Forgotten Crisis

Ecological degradation in the Chad Basin has triggered Africa's latest humanitarian crisis. It's time, the basin countries looked beyond the excuse of insurgency.

- Kundan Pandey

LAST YEAR when Nigeria declared a nutrition emergency in Borno, indicating acute food insecurity in the state, and said the region stands to lose 80 children every day, it caught the world's attention. More than a dozen humanitarian organisations working in West Africa issued a joint statement, saying the ongoing conflict with the jihadist militant group Boko Haram has pushed the number of people facing severe hunger in the region to more than 6 million. In January this year, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien informed the Security Council: “The humanitarian crisis across northeast Nigeria and parts of Cameroon, Chad and Niger, triggered by the horrendous, violent and inhuman campaign of Boko Haram, is deepening.” The UN has since revised its appeal and called for more funds for lifesaving humanitarian assistance in the region, also known as the Chad Basin. International organisations have also scaled up their response to ensure food security, reduce malnutrition and provide shelter to refugees and internally displaced people in the region.

While almost all the discussions seem to revolve around the immediate crisis, the humanitarian emergency unfolding in the basin has actually been in the making for decades. ªThe recent civil, armed conflict and related security threats only significantly exacerbate the pre-existing regional food insecurity and nutrition problems,” states a World Food Programme (WFP) report, released in 2016. ªWhile the security threats are undeniable aspects of the crisis, recent media and reports (SIC) on the alarming regional emergency situation attributing the crisis to Boko Haram activities, risk grossly oversimplifying the complicated interrelated socio-ecological issues at hand leading up to insurgency in the basin,” it says.

A protracted crisis