Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are facing a “toxic combination” of escalating violence, displacement, hunger, poverty and climate change, which has driven the whole central Sahel region to the “cusp of disaster”. That’s according to World Food Programme (WFP) spokesperson, Marwa Awad, who was in Burkina Faso just a few days ago, where already this year, civilian deaths are four times the level they were for the whole of 2018, and close to half a million have been displaced.