The Guinean Human Rights League (LGDH) warned on Monday that there are cases of hunger and malnutrition in various regions of the country and asked the authorities and international partners to adopt a joint contingency plan.
“LGDH launches a vibrant appeal to national authorities and international partners to converge synergies with a view to the urgent adoption of a contingency plan against hunger in Guinea-Bissau and its consequent and immediate financing”, asks the organization, in a press release.
The League notes that its local alert units registered 650 families in “a situation of severe food insecurity in various regions of the country”.
“The regions of Oio, Quinará, Tombali and Bafatá and some peripheral neighborhoods in Bissau, with cases of whole families spending several days without eating”, points out the League.
According to the organization, the main causes of food insecurity are related to the “right impact of measures to prevent covid-19 in the world and in Guinea-Bissau, in particular, greatly affecting the cashew campaign, the basis of the national economy”.
Guinea-Bissau has 1.8 million inhabitants. About 80% of the country’s population depends directly or indirectly on the marketing and export of cashew nuts, which are stalled due to a lack of buyers on the ground.
“This sad reality that the Guinean population is facing, especially in rural areas, tends to worsen in the near future, if measures to mitigate the effects of the covid-19 on the economy, such as urgency, were not adopted, as such. as providing support to the most vulnerable families in the country “, he stresses.
Guinea-Bissau has registered 50 covid-19 infections to date, three of which have already been cured.
Political crisis
Covid-19 reached Guinea-Bissau at a time when the country is going through yet another period of political crisis, after General Umaro Sissoco Embaló, named as the winner of the elections by the National Elections Commission, declared himself President of the country, while an electoral litigation appeal filed by Domingos Simões Pereira is taking place in the Supreme Court of Justice.
Umaro Sissoco Embaló took office at a ceremony led by the vice-president of the country’s parliament Nuno Nabian, who ended up leaving those functions, to assume the leadership of the Government appointed by the self-proclaimed President.
The government dismissed by Umaro Sissoco Embaló, that of Prime Minister Aristides Gomes, maintains the support of the majority in the parliament of Guinea-Bissau.
The government led by Nuno Nabian occupied the ministries with the support of the military, but Sissoco Embaló refuses that a coup d’état is underway in the country and says that it awaits the Supreme Court’s decision on the electoral dispute.
Following the inauguration of Umaro Sissoco Embaló and his government, Guinea-Bissau’s main international partners called for a resolution of the crisis based on the country’s law and constitution, underlining the importance of a decision by the Supreme Court being known. of Justice on the appeal of electoral litigation.
The Supreme Court of Justice has forwarded a position on electoral litigation when the circumstances that determined the state of emergency in the country are overcome.
Globally, the covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 164,000 deaths and infected more than 2.3 million people in 193 countries and territories. More than 525,000 patients were considered cured.
