Children of the Sahel, first victims of violence according to UNICEF

Children in the Sahel on the front line of violence. Hundreds of them were killed, mutilated or forcibly separated from their parents in 2019, warns UNICEF in a document published Tuesday, January 28.

In Mali alone, one of the three worst hit Sahel countries with Burkina Faso and Niger, 277 children were killed or maimed in the first nine months of 2019, double the total number in 2018, says the document from the UN agency for children.

"Traumatic experiences"

But it is the entire central Sahel which is accusing a "significant increase in violence against children caught in the crossfire, hundreds of them having been forcibly separated from their families, killed or mutilated," said this plea. supporting an urgent appeal for the raising of $ 208 million to finance UNICEF operations.

Mali is the only country for which UNICEF has such figures, said a spokesperson for the organization in Dakar, but in Burkina Faso and Niger too, children have been victims of murder, sexual abuse , abduction or forced recruitment into armed groups.

"Hundreds of thousands of them have had traumatic experiences," said UNICEF regional director Marie-Pierre Poirier, quoted in a press release.

Mali, where the conflict erupted in 2012 before spreading, Burkina Faso and Niger are in the grip of an alarming deterioration in security. They are the scene of a strong jihadist push fought by the national and foreign armies, of inter-community brutality and of multiple trafficking fueling violence. This has left thousands of dead, combatants and civilians, and hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

"Women and children are the first victims of violence," says UNICEF. In all, 4.9 million children are in need of humanitarian assistance. "In November 2019, 1.2 million people were displaced," a doubling in one year, she reports, and "more than half were children," with 670,000 of them forced to flee their homes. home. In Burkina Faso, the number of displaced has increased fivefold.

The specter of food insecurity

In some of the poorest countries in the world, the agency highlights the "devastating impact" of violence on access to food, water and healthcare, with an increased risk of the spread of infectious diseases that are already the leading causes of infant mortality.

More than 709,000 children under the age of five will suffer from severe acute malnutrition (SAM) in the three countries in 2020, according to estimates reported by UNICEF. Over 4.8 million people may be food insecure.

The agency insists on the extent of the damage caused to education. Between April 2017 and December 2019, as a result of increasingly common attacks on schools, teachers and students, school closings were multiplied by six in the central Sahel. More than eight million children between the ages of 6 and 14 are out of school, almost 55% of this age group.

The deterioration in security makes it difficult, dangerous, if not impossible, for humanitarian workers to intervene, says UNICEF. It calls on all parties to protect children and respect for the "humanitarian space".

With AFP

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