Liptako-Gourma: 2.7 million acutely food-insecure people

The Liptako-Gourma area – composed of border areas of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger – is the second acute food insecurity hotspot in the region. While geographic definitions may vary, the border areas of these three countries concentrate a disproportional large share of severely food-insecure people compared to the rest of their respective territories. Nearly half of the food insecure people of the three countries (2.7 million out of 5.5 million people) live in this area. According to the CH June update of Burkina Faso, the number of people in “Crisis” or worse situation in Burkina Faso’s northern areas increased by nearly 400 000 people, notably in the Sahel region. This brings the total number of people in need of emergency assistance to over 3 million people. Acute food insecurity worsened primarily because of increasing insecurity and violence in cross-border areas, including terrorist attacks on civilian populations. Some 3 242 security incidents have been reported since 2014 and nearly 10 000 people have died (WFP, 2020). The persistent security crisis triggered massive internal displacement.