Nearly 1 million children in Mali face acute malnutrition by the end of the year without life-saving humanitarian aid as 200,000 face the dire prospect of death by starvation, the UN warned Friday.

About one in four people in Mali are suffering from moderate or acute food insecurity as about 2,500 people, including many children, in the conflict-riven region of Menaka face a first-of-its-kind famine, the UN said following a visit to the country by senior officials from UNICEF and the United Nations World Food Program (WFP).

“Mali is going through a complex humanitarian crisis and needs urgent support to avert a disaster for children, who are again paying the highest price for a crisis not of their making,” Ted Chaiban, UNICEF’s senior official for humanitarian action, said in a statement.

“UNICEF, WFP and partners have been present on the ground during some of Mali’s hardest years and we will continue to work on humanitarian and development issues for as long as our services are needed,” he added.

UNICEF is the UN’s agency for providing humanitarian aid to children around the world.

Roughly 5 million children in Mali are in urgent need of humanitarian aid, a dramatic increase of 1.5 million children in need since 2020.

Mali has been wracked by conflict for over a decade, including two coups in two successive years beginning in 2020. (Anadolu Agency)