United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) and partners say U.S. 1billion is needed to help 6.4 million vulnerable people in Nigeria this year.
The UN agency made this known in its 2021 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) for Nigeria.
The HRP aims to improve internally displaced persons (IDPs) camp conditions and services; alleviate acute food insecurity and related severe vulnerabilities; strengthen self-reliant livelihoods control and prevent communicable disease outbreak; and achieve alternative and durable solutions.
Most of the aid, according to OCHA, will be used to address humanitarian crisis in the northeastern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe.
Due to the Boko Haram insurgency, over two million people, including around 150,000 elderlies, are displaced, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
In addition, more than five million people in northeast Nigeria risk acute hunger in the upcoming lean season because of escalating conflict and livelihood disruptions due to Covid-19 restrictions.
Furthermore, UNICEF, in a 2018 report on the state of nutrition in northeast Nigeria, revealed that one in every five children faced the problem of severe malnutrition.
Meanwhile, local and international humanitarian partners are working together with the government of Nigeria to reduce protection risks and provide shelter, health, water and sanitation, education, food and livelihood opportunities.
‘Last year, just over half of the funding needed for the 2020 Humanitarian Response Plan was received. Despite the low funding, humanitarian partners helped over five million people’, OCHA said in a statement.
‘They [humanitarian partners] averted malnutrition for more than two million children and reached two million people with protection services, including sexual and gender-based violence prevention and response, enhanced mine awareness, and support in addressing housing, land and property concerns’.
Nigeria’s Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, said she was encouraged by the emphasis the plan puts on promoting longer-term solutions.
‘We must always look forward, beyond the immediate crisis, to ensure that we help people reestablish their lives and strengthen communities, so that we can reduce dependence on aid and promote resilience and self-reliance’, she noted in the document.
‘I would like to pledge my commitment, continued support, and cooperation with the humanitarian community to address the sufferings of the people in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states’, she added.
Boko Haram was established in 2002 as a religious movement with a vision of reforming society based on its interpretation of Islam.
The Boko Haram insurgency began in 2009, when the Nigerian security forces arrested several members of the group, also known as Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad (JAS), and extrajudicially executed its leader, Mohammed Yusuf.
Source: UN-OCHA
Photo source: IRIN Photos
