Boko Haram-related conflict continues to restrict humanitarian access in the Lake Chad Basin region, where an estimated 10.7 million people need assistance and 2.4 million are displaced. Approximately 4.5 million people are food insecure in the Lake Chad Basin region. However, this is a decline from a height of 7 million last year.

Expanding political and ethnic conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has increased UN estimates of those needing humanitarian assistance by 96% since January 2017. Over 13 million people will need protection assistance in 2018 while 7.7 million remain food insecure. Greater displacement, civil unrest, and reported human rights violations, all resulting from increased violence, add to the challenges faced by the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO).

Although European and African efforts to reduce irregular migration have successfully lowered overall numbers entering Europe, some migrants are transiting increasingly hazardous smuggling routes across the Sahara Desert and Mediterranean Sea, risking human rights abuses and indefinite detention. The UN’s voluntary humanitarian return program assisted over 19,000 migrants to return to their home countries from Libya in 2017, up from around 3,000 assisted migrant returns from Libya in 2016. An estimated 400,000–700,000 migrants live in detention in Libya.

Access for humanitarian operations is hindered in Yemen by insecurity, damaged infrastructure, bureaucratic impediments, and import restrictions. Access to seaports is critical to import the vast majority of basic goods into the country; Yemen is dependent on commercial imports for 80%-90% of its food, fuel, and medicine. The Red Sea port of Al Hudaydah is the main port for commercial and humanitarian deliveries, it has greater capacity and is closer to people in need.