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Nearly 90% of Somalia is now in a severe drought, following three consecutive failed rain seasons. Some areas facing their driest season in 40 years. Nearly 3.5 million people are already acutely food insecure and millions more are now at risk of going hungry by the beginning of next year.

Ten of the world’s worst climate hotspots – those with the highest number of UN appeals driven by extreme weather events – have suffered a 123% rise in acute hunger over just the past six years, according to an Oxfam report published today.

Oxfam water engineers are having to drill deeper, more expensive and harder-to-maintain water boreholes used by some of the poorest communities around the world, more often now only to find dry, depleted or polluted reservoirs. 

The amount of money needed for UN humanitarian appeals involving extreme weather events like floods or drought is now eight times higher than 20 years ago — and donors are failing to keep up, reveals a new Oxfam brief today. For every $2 needed for UN weather-related appeals, donor countries are only providing $1.

Oxfam warns that over six million people from farming families in Zambia are facing acute food shortages and malnutrition until next growing season, which is twelve months away, due to a severe drought, exacerbated by climate change and El Nino, which has caused massive crop failures for half of the nation’s “planted area”. 

In response to the latest figures shared in OCHA's Burkina Faso Humanitarian Response Plan, Oxfam warns of the alarming deterioration of the humanitarian crisis and calls upon the international community to immediately mobilize funding to meet the urgently needed humanitarian support.  More than 1.9 million people in Burkina Faso are in dire need of water, sanitation and hygiene support. 

More than a million women and girls in Burkina Faso are facing increased sexual violence, hunger and water shortage as a result of the coronavirus pandemic on top of the existing conflict, said Oxfam today.

Only 28 percent of the world’s most influential food and agriculture corporations report they are reducing their water withdrawals and just 23 percent say they are taking action to reduce water pollution. Oxfam’s new analysis of 350 corporations using World Benchmarking Alliance data comes ahead of World Water Day (March 22). 

Despite promises, nearly three-quarters of African governments reduced their agricultural budgets while paying almost double that on arms.

The crises the Sahel faces, whether they be of a humanitarian, environmental, or security nature, are all rooted in the inequality and profound sense of injustice that permeate Sahelian societies.