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Nigeria

Northeast Nigeria: Humanitarian emergency - Situation Report No. 3 (as of 6 January 2017)

Attachments

Highlights

  • The number of people receiving food assistance grew by 350 per cent in the past five months with food insecurity remaining the greatest concern among internally displaced people (IDPs).

  • 76 per cent of IDPs don’t want to return to their homes unless their security can be guaranteed.
    Assistance is required to reconstruct and repair destroyed or damaged homes, to encourage sustainable IDP returns.

  • One third of Borno State’s 700-plus medical facilities are completely destroyed with a third of the remaining facilities dysfunctional. The Health Sector is only 22 per cent funded, under the 2016 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP).

  • 75 per cent of the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure was destroyed in the conflict. This puts pressure on the limited facilities, causing frequent breakages and downtimes.

Situation Overview

According to the 2017 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP), a projected 5.1 million people in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states in Nigeria’s north-east will be food insecure this year. High rates of malnutrition, including SAM, were found recently in places like Rann and Magumeri, both in Borno State. The Nutrition Sector estimates that 450,000 children aged under-five will suffer from severe acute malnutrition (SAM) in 2017.

The Food Security Sector (FSS) and its partners responded by scaling up food assistance dramatically. It is now delivering food to Magumeri and Gubio (both north of Maiduguri) and to Ngala on the Cameroon border, areas that were previously hard to reach largely because of conflict. Food assistance to vulnerable populations grew from reaching 0.6 million people in August 2016, to 2.1 million people by December 2016. This represents a 350 per cent increase over the last five months. Better inter-agency coordination and partnerships facilitated this growth.

Nonetheless, there is still great need in a region where farmers have been unable to tend to their fields for three years because of conflict and where about 2.1 million fled their homes in fear, leaving all they owned behind. An estimated 1.64 million internally displaced people (IDPs) still live in camps, settlements and with host communities in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states.

In December, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) published its Data Tracking Mechanism (DTM), Round XIII. The DTM noted that for 66 per cent of vulnerable IDPs food is their greatest unmet need. The DTM also identified several camps and settlements that were not getting food regularly, or at all. These are now receiving attention from the Food Security Sector.

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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
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