United Nations, June 4 : Some 24 million people across the Sahel region need humanitarian assistance, a UN spokesperson has said.

Speaking to reporters at a daily briefing on Wednesday (local time), Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN secretary-general, said this year's Humanitarian Needs and Response Overview warns that the crisis is deepening across Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger, northern Cameroon and northeast Nigeria.

Violence continues to spread across the region, with armed groups expanding their presence across the Central Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin, he said. The insecurity has displaced communities and forced the closure of schools and health facilities, reports Xinhua news agency.

Climate shocks are further worsening the situation, Dujarric said, noting that the Sahel is warming faster than the global average. In 2025 alone, floods affected about 590,000 people, while recurring droughts and advancing desertification have damaged farmland and threatened the livelihoods of millions.

In response, the United Nations and its humanitarian partners are expanding cash-assistance programs, strengthening anticipatory action and increasing support for local organisations to help communities better cope with growing needs, he said.

Additionally, UN Secretary-General spokesperson Stephane Dujarric on Wednesday announced that nearly 5 million people, or one in two people across 12 government-controlled areas in Yemen, experienced high levels of acute food insecurity between March and May this year.

Citing the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification analysis, Dujarric stated that to tackle the situation, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Programme, and the United Nations Children's Fund jointly called on the international community to urgently scale up funding for humanitarian food assistance, nutrition services, health, agriculture and resilience programming.

Between June and September this year, an estimated 5.4 million people living in the government-controlled areas, including Aden, Hadramawt, Marib and Taiz, are projected to face high levels of acute food insecurity, Dujarric said.

The agencies warned that without immediate, sustained and scaled-up action, millions of vulnerable people risk falling deeper into hunger, malnutrition and irreversible livelihood loss, the spokesperson noted.

Dujarric added that the United Nations and its humanitarian partners published the 2026 Yemen Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan in March, seeking 2.16 billion US dollars to provide life-saving humanitarian assistance to 12 million people across Yemen.

/IANS