The European Commission has decided to award €58 million in emergency aid to the vulnerable populations of the Sahel region (€50 million) and the Central African Republic (€8 million), which are facing a serious humanitarian crisis, the institution announced on Monday 29 October.
The money will pay for food and nutritional support, drinking water, shelter and medical assistance.
The aid to the Sahel will be divided up as follows: Nigeria (€10 million), Mali (€6 million), Niger (€6 million), Burkina Faso (€8 million), Mauritania (€5 million), Chad (€12 million), Cameroon (€3 million), plus a regional envelope of €3 million for vital malnutrition treatment.
The aim is to “address the major food crisis in the region”, the European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management, Christos Stylianides, said in a press release. He reported cases of “acute malnutrition and food insecurity that is affecting millions, especially children”.
For the Central African Republic, the €8 million will help to address the needs of internally displaced persons. In CAR, nearly 2.5 million people, or half of the population, are in need of humanitarian aid and one person in every four (around 1.2 million people) has been forcibly displaced due to violence. This extra aid brings the EU's humanitarian effort to €270 million for the Sahel and €25.4 million for CAR this year. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)