UN / BRAGG SAHEL

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Just back from a trip to Senegal, UN Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator Catherine Bragg said today that across the Sahel region, millions of people are being affected by a combination of drought, poverty and high grain prices that, coupled with environmental degradation and chronic under-development, "is expected to result in a new food and nutrition crisis." UNTV / FILE
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STORY: UN / BRAGG SAHEL
TRT: 2.33
SOURCE: UNTV / UNICEF
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS

DATELINE: 14 FEBRUARY 2012, NEW YORK / FILE

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Shotlist

FILE – 2011, UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS

1. Wide shot, exterior United Nations Headquarters

14 FEBRUARY 2012, NEW YORK

2. Wide shot, Catherine Bragg, Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator in the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs takes her seat
3. Cutaway, journalists
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Catherine Bragg, Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator in the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, United Nations:
“Across the Sahel Region of West Africa we are extremely concerned that millions of people will be affected by a combination of drought, poverty and high grain prices which, coupled with environmental degradation and chronic underdevelopment, IS expected to result in a new food and nutrition crisis.”
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Catherine Bragg, Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator in the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, United Nations:
“We already know that an estimated 10 million people or more are struggling to get enough to eat, including 5.4 million in Niger alone. In the region, more than a million children under the age of five risk severe acute malnutrition. That is up from 300,000 last year.”
6. Cutaway, journalists listening
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Catherine Bragg, Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator in the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, United Nations:
“Since September last year we have been sounding the alarm that the situation in the Sahel was likely to become a major humanitarian crisis by spring of this year if nothing was done to reverse the trend. Malnutrition figures were difficult to ascertain in 2011, but the early warning signs were clear. The poorest households who had barely recovered from the previous crisis of 2010 were dealing with a poor and uneven rainy season last year, increasingly high food prices, falling cereal production and the loss of remittances due to the return of some 420,000 migrants from Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire.”
8. Cutaway, journalists
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Catherine Bragg, Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator in the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, United Nations:
“The area where this crisis is looming also involves countries that are consistently in the lowest ten of the human development index so it is important that not only do we do early action right now, but even if our projections were wrong, we should be doing this on the ‘no-regrets basis,’ because given the current known condition already, it already requires intervention.”

FILE – UNICEF - DECEMBER 2010, CHAD

10. Close up, emaciated child
11. Tilt down, emaciated child sitting next to his mother in hospital ward
12. Close shot, malnourished child refuses to drink milk offered by his mother

FILE – UNICEF - 21 JULY 2011, DAKAR, SENEGAL

13. Med shot, woman in the millet field, standing on parched earth
14. Pan left to right, woman picking millet in the dry field

FILE – UNICEF - APRIL 2011, LAKE CHAD, CHAD,

15. Med shot, man breaking up soil in the field

FILE – UNICEF - 4 JUNE 2010, MARADI DISTRICT, NIGER

16. Close shot, malnourished child sleeping
17. Close shot, malnourished child

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Storyline

The United Nations (UN) Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator today in New York briefed on the emerging food and nutrition crisis in the Sahel.

Catherine Bragg told journalists at a press conference that the UN was extremely concerned that millions of people across the Sahel Region of West Africa would be affected by a combination of drought, poverty and high grain prices. Compounding that situation, Bragg said environmental degradation and chronic under-development are expected to result in a new food and nutrition crisis in the region.

People in Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Chad, as well as northern areas of Cameroon and Nigeria are all likely to be affected over the coming months.

Bragg said an estimated 10 million people or more are struggling to get enough to eat, including 5.4 million in Niger alone. “More than a million children under the age of five risk severe acute malnutrition” in the region, she added.

Bragg noted that since September 2011 the UN had been “sounding the alarm that the situation in the Sahel was likely to become a major humanitarian crisis by spring of this year if nothing was done to reverse the trend”.

She stressed that malnutrition figures were difficult to ascertain in 2011, but “the early warning signs were clear.”

Now, the poorest households, which had barely recovered from the previous crisis of 2010, were dealing with a poor and uneven rainy season from last year, increasingly high food prices, falling cereal production and the loss of remittances due to the return of some 420,000 migrants from Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire.

The area where this crisis is looming, Bragg said, also involves countries that were consistently in the lowest ten of the human development index. Underlining the urgency of taking action, she said “it is important not only do we do early action right now, but even if our projections were wrong, we should be doing this on the ‘no-regrets basis,’ because given the current known condition already, it already requires intervention.”

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