Press Release: European Commission requests further humanitarian funding to respond to the worsening food crisis in the Sahel and Sudan

In response to the worsening food crisis affecting the Sahel and Sudan, European Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, Kristalina Georgieva announced on 3 August 2010 that the Commission has proposed an additional €40 million in humanitarian funding to be drawn from the EU budget's Emergency Aid Reserve.

€30 million of this would be additional funding for the Sahel and €10 million for Sudan. This extra €30 million will bring the total humanitarian aid funds allocated by the Commission to fighting malnutrition in the Sahel since the end of 2009 to €98 million.

The additional funds will be used to boost the humanitarian aid operations carried out by European Commission humanitarian aid partners and will help provide food assistance to over 500,000 extra beneficiaries during the next critical months until harvest time in October.

Currently, over 10 million people in the Sahel region are at risk of food insecurity. Of these over 7 million are in Niger and 3 million of these are considered to be severely food insecure and in need of urgent food assistance.

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