Madagascar Appeal
Humanitarian Action for Children
UNICEF’s Humanitarian Action for Children appeal helps support the agency’s work as it provides conflict- and disaster-affected children with access to water, sanitation, nutrition, education, health and protection services. Return to main appeal page.
Madagascar snapshot
Appeal highlights
- Prolonged drought, recurrent floods, cyclones and epidemics impact the already vulnerable population living in Madagascar's south and southeast regions. Climate change has increased the frequency of disasters, and the coming El Niño weather pattern will intensify their impacts. A projected 2.3 million people will require humanitarian assistance in 2024.
- UNICEF will provide a multisectoral, integrated and multilevel response to meet people's needs. The organization will promote a humanitarian–development nexus approach, strengthening its liaison with local authorities and communities through a stronger field presence; and enhance links with resilience programmes and development actors, especially in the south.
- UNICEF requires $41.4 million to provide humanitarian support to 1.1 million people (51 per cent women and girls), including 950,000 children and 119,000 people with disabilities.
Key planned targets
114,000 children with severe wasting admitted for treatment
400,000 women and children accessing gender-based violence mitigation, prevention, response
370,000 children accessing formal or non-formal education, including early learning
46,500 households reached with UNICEF-funded humanitarian cash transfers
Funding requirements for 2024
Country needs and strategy
Humanitarian needs
Approximately 2.3 million people, a third of the population of the south and southeast regions of Madagascar, will need humanitarian assistance in 2024, due to devastating cyclones in 2022 and 2023 and intense drought in the south from 2019 to 2022. Seventeen districts in these regions are classified as crisis level (integrated food security phase classification Phase 3 and above) for the 2024 lean season, starting in January. Potential social unrest due to the electoral process taking place from November to January 2024 could further disturb access to basic social services.
In the drought-prone southern regions, the situation has slightly improved but remains fragile. Access to water is slightly better compared with 2022. However, the number of people classified as being in emergency levels of water scarcity is above the pre-crisis average. Economic and social structures have been impacted by years of crisis, causing internal migration and use of negative coping mechanisms; this has exacerbated social protection needs and increased school dropout. Wasting levels remain high: 9.2 per cent of children under age 5 wasted.
The southeastern regions continue to experience the consequences of two consecutive years of cyclones. Communities dealing with the lasting effects of tropical cyclones in 2022 were then hit by Tropical Cyclone Freddy in the first part of 2023, impacting their recovery. Nutrition needs are increasing: it is estimated that two landlocked districts will be in phase 4 (emergency levels) for acute malnutrition beginning in January 2024. Twenty basic health centres destroyed by the cyclones of 2022 and 2023 still need rehabilitation. Additionally, 40 per cent of WASH infrastructure was destroyed or contaminated by these cyclones, while open defecation persists in some areas of these hard-to-reach districts.
Madagascar continues to experience polio and malaria epidemics, which has increased the burden on already weak health services. More than 1 million malaria cases were reported in these six regions between January and July 2023, 60 per cent of the country’s cases, aggravating wasting levels.
As a result, about 550,000 children will experience wasting in 2024, of whom 114,000 will be severely wasted. And 1.4 million people will require WASH interventions. Rapid protection assessments have shown that the various crises have increased the risks of violence against children and their exploitation in regions already home to high rates of child marriage and child labour. Additionally, 440,000 people require gender-based violence and protection services.
The El Niño weather pattern will intensify droughts and floods in the south and southeast. El Niño may also impact other parts of the country, potentially causing drought in the northwest along with higher risks of cyclones.
UNICEF’s strategy
In line with the national response of the Government of Madagascar, and complementing its partners' work, UNICEF will provide an ambitious, child-focused and rights-based humanitarian response. UNICEF supports the focus on anticipatory actions agreed to by the humanitarian community and continues to strengthen early warning systems and engage with communities in the area of social and behaviour change to ensure preparedness.
UNICEF leads the Nutrition and WASH Clusters in Madagascar, as well as the cash working group; UNICEF co-leads the Education Cluster and the Child Protection Area of Responsibility. In these forums, UNICEF focuses on coordination and scaling up interventions using a 'no-regrets' approach. UNICEF intends to support the country's humanitarian strategy by promoting coordinated, multi-risk analyses, and intersectoral, resilience-focused and locally led responses. In accordance with the new country programme document for Madagascar, UNICEF will reinforce its field presence in humanitarian areas and strengthen it's accountability to affected populations.
Liaising with development actors allows a more efficient humanitarian response. For example, WASH infrastructure and better availability of water has already reduced the costs of WASH interventions.
UNICEF will use the available social protection system to administer humanitarian cash transfers to cover up to 50 per cent of the population in need, as identified by the cash working group.
Access to free primary health care for 228,000 people will be improved by strengthening community and primary health care, including through outreach and a mobile strategy to facilitate access.
Madagascar is one of the first countries to implement the new World Health Organization recommendations for prevention and treatment of wasting. This means a better continuum of care for 385,000 malnourished children. UNICEF also intends to expand its coverage to meet the nutritional needs of women and adolescent girls, with 31,500 women receiving multiple micronutrients supplementation, and to strengthen the links with social protection.
With more than 182,000 children deprived of school in 2023 due to cyclones, the priority for education will be to prepare schools in the drought- and cyclone-affected areas to build back better, and facilitate children's retention in school, by providing materials, temporary classrooms and psychosocial support services.
Child protection efforts will centre on strengthening protection monitoring systems, with a focus on gender-based violence identification and case management and on support to other sectors to integrate psychosocial supports and positive parenting.
UNICEF remains committed to zero tolerance of sexual exploitation and abuse. The organization will strengthen its internal capacity in this regard in 2024, and also contribute to inter-agency efforts on protection from sexual exploitation and abuse, through refresher trainings and through collaborations among sectors to better integrate protection from sexual exploitation and abuse into UNICEF programmes.
Programme targets
Find out more about UNICEF's work
Highlights
Humanitarian Action is at the core of UNICEF’s mandate to realize the rights of every child. This edition of Humanitarian Action for Children – UNICEF’s annual humanitarian fundraising appeal – describes the ongoing crises affecting children in Madagascar; the strategies that we are using to respond to these situations; and the donor support that is essential in this response.