UN Allocates $20m to Scale up Emergency Response to Northeast Food Security, Nutrition

Michael Olugbode in Abuja

The United Nations has allocated $20 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) and the Nigeria Humanitarian Fund (NHF) to urgently ramp up the humanitarian response to the worsening food security and nutrition crisis in north-east Nigeria.

According to a statement, the latest allocation was in support of government’s efforts, noting that some $9 million in CERF funding and a complementary $11 million NHF allocation would go towards a coordinated multi-sectoral response aimed at preventing a deterioration to famine or famine-like conditions.

The statement noted that almost 700,000 children under five were likely to suffer from life-threatening severe acute malnutrition (SAM) in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe (BAY) states in 2023, more than double the number of SAM cases in 2022 and four times the number of cases in 2021.

It added that more than half a million people in the BAY states were also projected to face emergency levels of food insecurity – one step away from famine, from June to August which is the peak of the lean season, according to the March 2023 Cadre Harmonise analysis.

It further added that the lean season also coincided with the rainy season, when the incidence of acute watery diarrhoea, cholera, malaria and other diseases increases, aggravating the precarious situation of malnourished children.

 “Extremely high rates of acute malnutrition and deaths are predicted unless there is a rapid and significant scale up of humanitarian assistance,” the Humanitarian Coordinator for Nigeria, Mr. Matthias Schmale, warned, adding that, “government, donors and the international community must make urgent funding available to protect the lives and future of vulnerable children in north-east Nigeria.”

 The statement revealed that the bulk of the CERF allocation, $6 million, would go to the World Food Programme for food security interventions (including food and voucher assistance) for 95,000 extremely food-insecure people in three garrison towns of Borno State. Some $2 million will go to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) for the prevention and treatment of acute malnutrition (including providing ready-to-eat therapeutic food and Tom Brown solutions (a nutrient-rich locally produced supplementary food). And $1million will go to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) for seeds, tools and other agricultural livelihood support to boost local production of nutritious foods to build resilience.

Most of the NHF funding ($11 million) would go towards improving access to clean water and sanitation hygiene, and nutrition (including reactivating, sustaining and scaling up the bed capacity at stabilisation centres and scaling up outpatient therapeutic feeding programmes).

The rest of the funding would go to healthcare (including the integrated management of childhood illnesses and complicated SAM cases), and to protection services with a focus on gender-based violence, child protection and mine action. The NHF aims to allocate 50 per cent of funding to eligible national partners on the frontlines.

 The statement stated that the alarming food security and nutrition crisis was primarily the result of years of protracted conflict and insecurity which continue to prevent many people from growing the food they need or earning an income to procure food.

 On 18 May, humanitarian organisations had appealed for a prioritised $396 million of this year’s Human Response Plan (HRP) appeal for a multisectoral response to the lean season food security and nutrition crisis.

While the CERF and NHF funds will help jumpstart this response, combined they represent less than five per cent of the required funding.