Humanitarian

At 47, Magret Mcheka from Traditional Authority (TA) Sitola in Machinga District, has endured more tough times than most people would expect in a lifetime. In 2010 she lost her mother and husband, leaving her with four children to raise. Her health started deteriorating and she consequently discovered that she is HIV positive. This, however, did not deter her from striving to give the best to her children and she started brewing kachasu, a local beer.

They may be from the same household, but compared to their older brother, Musa’s twin sisters Hanifa and Hajira started their lives a world apart. Just shy of 2 years, the twin girls have spent their first 22 months in a condition that no child should have to endure. Since birth, they have not had proper diets, and today – are on the brink of being severely malnourished.

Born in March 2015, the twins came in at a difficult time for their family as well as for the nation of Malawi when the country was barely recovering from the worst floods to hit it for decades.

We have reached a stage where climate change can no longer be looked at as a fallacy – in Malawi it is evidently taking away people’s livelihoods. Today in Malawi, droughts and floods are more severe and frequent than they used to be.

A study by the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee (MVAC) has shown that the climatic phenomenon, El Niño is responsible for putting up to 6.5 million people (39% of the country’s population) at risk of being food insecure during the 2016/17 consumption period. 

Oxfam, Concern Universal, Concern Worldwide, Save the Children and GOAL today welcomed the Government of Malawi’s decision to declare an emergency in response to a further looming hunger in the country. They called on the Government, Malawi’s donors and the international community to immediately respond to this declaration by providing the necessary support to meet the scale of the food crisis.

Eluby Chabwera and her family’s normal routine of subsistence farming was temporarily halted when flooding affected their crops in early January 2015. Due to the heavy rains, almost all their crops were washed away, giving them the lowest yield they have ever encountered as a household. Eluby has two sons, Rafiki and Talandira, but she also looks after her sister’s daughter, Emily.