The Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (French: Comité permanent inter-État de lutte contre la sécheresse au Sahel, abbreviated as CILSS) is an international organization consisting of countries in the Sahel region of Africa.
According to the official homepage, the organization's mandate is to invest in research for food security and the fight against the effects of drought and desertification for a new ecological balance in the Sahel.
The Sahel is a transition area between the very dry North and tropical forests on the coast. It mostly displays bushes, herbs and very small trees and does not offer regular harvests to its inhabitants. Main characteristics include:
- a very irregular and little predictable rainfall, from 200 mm to 2500 mm
- predominance of agriculture and husbandry. More than half of the inhabitants are farmers and agriculture contributes more than 40% to the PIB
- high demographic growth (around 3.1%) and high urban growth (around 7%)
The CILSS was created in 1973 during the first great drought in the region with the aim of mobilizing the population in the Sahel and the international community to facilitate urgent need and the organization of works in various domains i.e. rainfed and irrigated agriculture, environment, transport, and communication. In 1995 it centered its activities on basic food security and the use of natural resources.
The executive office is located in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
List of countries that are a member:
- Burkina Faso
- Cape Verde
- Gambia
- Guinea-Bissau
- Mali
- Mauritania
- Niger
- Senegal
- Chad
Famous quotes containing the words permanent, interstate, committee, drought and/or control:
““More!” is as effective a revolutionary slogan as was ever invented by doctrinaires of discontent. The American, who cannot learn to want what he has, is a permanent revolutionary.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“At bottom, I mean profoundly at bottom, the FBI has nothing to do with Communism, it has nothing to do with catching criminals, it has nothing to do with the Mafia, the syndicate, it has nothing to do with trust-busting, it has nothing to do with interstate commerce, it has nothing to do with anything but serving as a church for the mediocre. A high church for the true mediocre.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A worm is as good a traveler as a grasshopper or a cricket, and a much wiser settler. With all their activity these do not hop away from drought nor forward to summer. We do not avoid evil by fleeing before it, but by rising above or diving below its plane; as the worm escapes drought and frost by boring a few inches deeper.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Teenage boys, goaded by their surging hormones ... run in packs like the primal horde. They have only a brief season of exhilarating liberty between control by their mothers and control by their wives.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)