The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Nigeria, UNOCHA has said five million people in the Northeast have benefitted from the United Nations agencies in the last 10 years, he also called for a shift in solutions to addressing humanitarian crisis in the Northeast.
According to the Head, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Nigeria (OCHA), Mr Trond Jensen, stakeholders must go beyond humanitarian assistance and invest more in the development of the Northeast to resolve the humanitarian crisis in the region.
No fewer than five million people in the Northeast have benefitted from the United Nations agencies in the last 10 years, Jensen said during a press conference to mark this year’s UN’s 78th anniversary in Abuja.
He stressed that more work is needed to be done to resolve the crisis in the BAY States (Borno, Adamawa and Yobe).
Jensen pointed out that 300 million people were currently in need of humanitarian assistance compared to 81 million in 2014.
He said: “What we are seeing today is increasing conflict. We are seeing increasing threats from climate change.
“And the Secretary General has been saying over the last year that as humanity we are facing an existential threat. These are all enormous challenges of course. We can only solve these together.
“With multilateralism under threat, the value of the United Nations is greater than ever in terms of coming together to solve these problems. Just to illustrate. In the last ten years 81 million people were in need of humanitarian assistance.
“We estimate that today 300 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance from conflict, from changing climate conditions. And that’s a good grouping in a decade. People needing humanitarian assistance but also critically needing their protection.
“Like my colleagues, I will also be brief just to say that we are facing multiple challenges in Nigeria. We hugely appreciate the work of the government. Also civil society working together with the United Nations to resolve some of the issues that we are seeing today including the recent flooding.
“No doubt a result of climate change but also not just highlighting the issues but also celebrating some of the achievements that we have made.
“For the last ten years on average we have been able to provide five million people every single year with humanitarian assistance in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe.
“People who have been directly impacted by the conflict. That being said as many of my colleagues have articulated much better than I can do the solution is not humanitarian assistance. The solution is peace.The solution is development.
” So that we no longer focus then on keeping people alive and trying to alleviate their suffering but making sure that they have a life.
On her part, UNDP Resident Representative in Nigeria, Elsie Attafuah, said the organization was taking a different approach in addressing the issues in the Northwest.
She also said the UN is collaborating with universities in Nigeria to support innovation among the youths in the country.
Mohamed Fall, the Resident Coordinator of the UN in Nigeria, said the organization’s activities cut across the country, adding that more interest was being given to the Northwest as a result of banditry and farmers/herders crisis.
“I think our engagement is also based on what we have done in the northeast and I just want to remind you a few principles. The first one is that we are not going to engage in the northwest by dropping the northeast because we see increasing demand.
“In the northeast, we are engaging development solution, and we are engaging into medium and longer-term development.
“In the northwest, the operation will be led by the government. It will not be something that the UN will lead but UN will be behind the government,” he said.
Fall added that the UN is currently looking at localization of humanitarian assistance because of the dwindling funding.
“We have extensively used international partner, but now there is a conversation growing in the humanitarian world and in the development world, which is around localization, because that’s the way you make sure that when the operation finish, you leave something there, and you leave capacity there.
“Localization, because it’s more efficient and less costly in terms of business model, localization, so because it is the way that you make sure that you are coming in assistance, that it’s people to really have to own their own response, to have their own development process,” he said.