ICC Note:

The the disturbing images of children starved and on the verge of a slow and painful death; famine is another way Boko Haram victims are perishing.  Stripped of their homes and land where they can plant and grow food,  they escape for survival only to be met by harsh famine. Pray for those who are pressed on both sides and dying of persecution and famine.

10/21/2016  Nigeria  ( Los Angeles Times) –  Saleh Umar feared his youngest son, Hassan, would die. The 1-year-old’s ribs protruded sharply, his shrunken arms were like twigs, his eyes dark hollows.

Since being driven from their village by the Nigerian extremist group and Islamic State affiliate Boko Haram, Umar and his family have often gone hungry. The six of them made their way to the dusty, sprawling city of Maiduguri, and Umar’s wife wandered the city for days in vain seeking help for Hassan.

Umar then made a desperate decision. On Oct. 6 he took the meager food the family had scraped together, a small bag of sorghum, and walked nine miles to his village to plant the seeds — food he knows he may not survive to harvest.

The famine killing thousands of children in northeastern Nigeria is forcing parents to take drastic measures, and aid workers fear the death toll will continue to spiral upward.

The famine is the product of Boko Haram’s scorched-earth attacks, which stopped farmers from planting, fishermen from casting their nets and traders from plying their goods. But aid from the Nigerian government and the international community only recently began to increase for a population that, already struggling with chronic malnutrition, has been tipped into starvation by the crisis.

Also, there have been allegations that food meant for desperate families has been stolen in recent months, one reason food parcels do not always arrive at aid stations and camps.

At least 65,000 people are in famine in Nigeria, according to aid experts, and 2.5 million children are malnourished.

“It doesn’t get worse. I call it the F-word,” Arjan de Wagt, UNICEF head of nutrition in Nigeria, says of  the famine. “That’s the word you don’t want to speak of. These are the pictures of children that you don’t like to see.”

The images are sadly familiar in Africa — children with distended bellies and skin that appears to be pulled tight against bony frames.

…