The United Nations on Monday appealed for more than $2 billion to feed and care for a record 20 million people across Africa's Sahel region, but aid workers said they feared that donor fatigue and a weak global economic recovery may prevent them from reaching the target. Conflicts in Mali, Nigeria, Sudan, and Central African Republic (CAR) have disrupted markets and caused food shortages across the savannah region south of the Sahara desert, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned. The problems in the Sahel, a semi-arid region that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, also have hurt U.N. efforts to protect refugees, another component of its aid appeal. More than 1.6 million people have abandoned their homes, and about half as many have sought refuge in countries like Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad that already are under strain. The impact is to distort local food production and make it more difficult for countries to feed their own populations. Food insecurity—a measure of hunger within a population due to conflict or climate—has nearly doubled in the last year in the Sahel, a region that sees cyclical floods and droughts as well as locust infestations and epidemics. Robert Piper, the U.N. regional humanitarian coordinator for the Sahel, said funding may fall short because of a slow global economic recovery and a $6.5 billion appeal for Syria, the biggest U.N. humanitarian campaign in history. Donors met about 60 percent of the $1.72 billion U.N. appeal for the Sahel last year. "This year is make or break for the Sahel," Piper said. "It's the year we see if we can translate theory into practice and start bringing aid workers together to work with national governments and reverse these trends that have been deteriorating year after year."
