The United Nations has released $28 million from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to support life-saving relief work for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) fleeing violence in crisis- ridden parts of Nigeria and other affected neighbouring countries. The fund will help pro- vide urgently needed humanitarian relief including food, clean water, shelter, medicine, protection and security, particularly for women and children who are exposed to or have experienced violence and brutality in the Northern part of the country.
“The insurgency in the northeast of Nigeria is having a devastating impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people,” Valerie Amos, the Emergency Relief Coordinator, was quoted to have said in a statement made available to Business- Day, stressing that the fund will be exclusively used to support people in the most vulnerable communities who have been directly affected by the violence. “Given the urgent need to scale up humanitarian operations and assist those in need across affected countries, a regionally coordinated $28 million rapid-response allocation will go to relief agencies operating in Nigeria ($10 million), Cameroon ($7 million), Niger ($7 million) and Chad ($4 million),” the statement read in part.
More than 1.2 million Nigerians have been driven from their homes as a result of Boko Haram related violence which escalated dramatically since the start of 2015. Over 150,000 people have fled to neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and Niger, putting a further strain on some of the most vulnerable communities in the world. In 2014, CERF allocated more than $8.7 million to relief agencies responding to the regional impact of ongoing crisis in Nigeria. Almost $3.6 million went to life-saving relief, including the provision of clean water, health services and protection in Nigeria, and another $5.2 million allowed humanitarian partners to provide urgent food, shelter and medical support to refugees and host communities in Niger. Meanwhile, John Ging of the UN Office for the Co- ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and Afshan Khan of UNICEF, called on the international community to support efforts un- derway to assist civilians in the Northern part of Nigeria
