Former President Faure calls for help for Madagascar |25 June 2021

There is a need for the international community to deliver urgent emergency assistance to help the southern part of Madagascar which is on the brink of famine.

Former President Danny Faure made this call yesterday in a post on his Facebook page.

Mr Faure wrote: “Over 1.14 million people are on the brink of starvation in the southern part of Madagascar. Famine has already killed thousands of children. As former President of the Republic of Seychelles, I want to join two United Nations’ agencies ‒ the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) ‒ to appeal to the international community for urgent emergency assistance. Madagascar is facing a humanitarian crisis and deserves global attention and action.”

WFP executive director David Beasley has said climate change is the driving force of the developing food crisis in southern Madagascar.

According to reports, Mr Beasley noted that “the southern part of Madagascar has been plagued with back-to-back droughts ‒ its worst in four decades ‒ which have pushed 1.14 million people right to the very edge of starvation.”

He added that acute malnutrition has almost doubled over the last four months.

Speaking to Cable News Network (CNN), Mr Beasley said: "I met women and children who were holding on for dear life, they'd walked for hours to get to our food distribution points. These were the ones who were healthy enough to make it.

"Families are suffering and people are already dying from severe hunger. This is not because of war or conflict, this is because of climate change. This is an area of the world that has contributed nothing to climate change, but now, they're the ones paying the highest price."

Thousands in southern Madagascar have left their homes in search of food, while those who remain are resorting to extreme measures such as foraging for wild food to survive, added Mr Beasley.

"This is enough to bring even the most hardened humanitarian to tears. Families have been living on raw red cactus fruits, wild leaves and locusts for months now. We can't turn our backs on the people living here while the drought threatens thousands of innocent lives. Now is the time to stand up, act and keep supporting the Malagasy government to hold back the tide of climate change and save lives,” conclude Mr Beasley.

Gerard Govinden