HCASSC has significantly expanded its drought emergency response in northern Burkina Faso, extending operations from three to nine districts across the Sahel and Nord regions following a third consecutive year of critically below-average rainfall that has left an estimated 120,000 people facing severe food insecurity.
The scale-up involves the distribution of emergency food rations to 4,000 households (approximately 28,000 individuals), trucking of safe drinking water to 18 communities where wells have run dry, distribution of livestock feed and veterinary support kits to 600 pastoralist families whose herds are at risk of collapse, and the establishment of four emergency nutrition stabilisation centres for children under five with severe acute malnutrition.
HCASSC field teams are working under extremely difficult conditions, with road access to several communities only possible by motorbike or on foot. Security constraints in the region require all field movements to be coordinated with the UN Security Management System and local community protection networks.
"The dry season this year was unlike anything elders here can remember," said HCASSC Emergency Coordinator Mariam Sawadogo. "Wells that have served communities for 40 years have gone dry. We are in a race against time before the situation becomes catastrophic."
HCASSC is calling on governments and institutional donors to accelerate contributions to its Burkina Faso Emergency Fund, warning that without a significant increase in international support, the humanitarian situation will deteriorate sharply by September 2025.
