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Humanitarian response plan launched in hunger-hit Burundi

Xinhua, January 20, 2017 Adjust font size:

Burundi and a UN agency on Thursday evening launched the country's 2017 humanitarian response plan (HRP) to address hunger affecting a quarter of the country's population.

"The situation of hunger is due to natural disasters that are behind climate change, on the one hand, and to degrading relations between Burundi and some of its partners," Burundi's foreign minister Alain Aime Nyamitwe said at the launch of the plan.

He also seized the opportunity to invite the international community to support vulnerable people through "tangible" assistance.

Suzanne Ngo-Mandong, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Representative in Burundi, also call on the international community to support the HRP plan.

"At least 3 million people are in need of assistance, but among them, 1 million people are in an urgent humanitarian situation. This means that a quarter of Burundian people need food assistance," Ngo-Mandong said.

According to her, children, women especially breastfeeding ones, ageing people, internally displaced persons (IDPs), returnees and refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) living in camps in Burundi are the "worst affected" by the food crisis.

The 2017 humanitarian response plan for Burundi requires at least 73.7 million U.S. dollars for its implementation. Endit