UN, partners launch 2022 humanitarian response plan for Mali

United Nations, Feb 15 The UN and humanitarian partners have launched the 2022 humanitarian response plan for Mali that seeks $686 million, said the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The humanitarian response plan aims to help 5.3 million most vulnerable people out of the 7.5 million people in humanitarian need, Xinhua news agency quoted OCHA as saying.

The level of needs is higher than at any point since 2012, it added.

The year 2021 was characterized by a deterioration in the humanitarian situation due to growing insecurity in the central region of the country and the security crisis is now expanding to the southern region, noted the Office.

Violence and climate shocks have increased the number of people facing severe food insecurity and some 1.8 million people will need food assistance in 2022, 51 per cent more than in 2021, it said.

Civilian casualties also sharply increased in northern and central Mali in 2021 with civil increasingly the target of violent attacks by armed groups and increased inter-communal violence and the risks posed by improvised explosive devices, it added.

Mali was one of the 10 least funded humanitarian response plans in 2021.

The request for $563 millions to assist 4.7 million people was only 38 per cent met, with the deficit in funding preventing a timely, at-scale and appropriate response, said OCHA.

Despite mounting challenges, humanitarian organisations reached more than 2.5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in 2021, it added.

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