Africa: Widen fight against Boko Haram to tackle climate change, migration - UN
Source(s):
Thomson Reuters Foundation, trust.org
The four countries fighting the Boko Haram insurgency in West Africa's Lake Chad region should unite behind a broader strategy to ease the poverty and climate change that are spurring millions to migrate to Europe, a U.N. official said on Monday, according to a report by Reuters.
"The population in the Sahel will increase by 150 million people in the next 30 years. That's a very compelling reason not to allow this region to become any poorer or more marginalised or affected by climate change because at the end of the day, if people are poor or persecuted they will walk," said said Lanzer, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the Sahel, an arid region stretching across West Africa from Senegal to Chad.