UN allocates $20m to tackle problem of food security in N’East

The United Nations (UN) has allocated $20 million to ramp up humanitarian response to the problem of food security and nutrition crisis in Nigeria’s North-East.

A statement yesterday by the Head of Public Information United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Nigeria, Ann Weru, said the fund was from the Central Response Fund (CERF) and the Nigeria Humanitarian Fund (NHF).

“In support of government efforts, some $9 million in CERF funding and a complementary $11 million NHF allocation will go towards a coordinated multisectoral response aimed at preventing deterioration to famine or famine-like conditions.

“Almost 700,000 children under five are likely to suffer from life-threatening severe acute malnutrition (SAM) in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe (BAY) states in 2023.

“This is more than double the number of SAM cases in 2022 and four times the number of cases in 2021.”

The statement added that about half a million people in the affected states were expected to face emergency levels of food insecurity from June to August, which is the peak of “lean season”.

It further said that the lean season coincided with the rainy season known for incidence of diarrhea and other outbreaks that could aggravate 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.

“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 quoted Mr Matthias Schmale, the Humanitarian Coordinator for Nigeria, as saying.

It explained that bulk of the CERF allocation would go to the World Food Programme (WFP) for the provision of 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 UN Children’s Fund 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 $1 million 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, will go towards improving access to clean water and sanitation hygiene, and nutrition, including reactivating, sustaining and scaling up the bed capacity at stabilization centres and scaling up outpatient therapeutic feeding programmes.

“The rest of the funding will go to healthcare, including the integrated management of childhood illnesses and complicated SAM cases, and to protection services with 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 added.

According to him, hate speech is a threat to national cohesion, peace, security and the attainment of sustainable development and the achievement of human rights.

He, therefore, called on the cooperation of everyone to work together to combat hate speeches in political, social and cultural spheres.

Similarly, the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, Mathias Schmale, lamented the misuse of social media platforms and fuelling of hate speech.

The UN, according to him, is worried about the impact of hate speech on the society and it will soon come up with a Code of Conduct for Information Integrity to detail commitments by UN Member states.

He added that this will help to protect human rights, especially freedom of expression and information while also protecting people, especially vulnerable communities, from the excesses of the information ecosystem pollution.

”Unfortunately, social media and others have been the ones spreading hate speech.

”If we don’t tackle hate speech the effort would consume us.

“All the states have the obligation to make sure hate speech is tackled,” he said.