Protracted conflicts and natural disasters in Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Ukraine, Nigeria and many other countries across the world have disposed of over 141 million people to need of emergency assistance.
Of the number, the North East of Nigeria alone is home to about 8.3 million following 13 years of attacks by Boko Haram insurgents particularly in the region’s BAY states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe.
These figures were given at a humanitarian and development ‘Peace Nexus Partners Engagement Forum’, an interactive session organised in the Adamawa State capital, Yola, by Actionaid Nigeria and attended by leaders of nongovernmental and civil society groups.
“Currently, 141.2 million people require humanitarian assistance – most of them affected by violent conflicts,” said the lead resource person of the forum, Mubarak Yusuf.
Mubarak, who is a consultant with the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs which drives the process of national humanitarian development and peace planning, added that displacements forced by conflicts and natural disasters globally have reached the highest level after World War II at 68.5 million.
He recalled further statistics establishing that an estimated three million people have been displaced by the insurgency in Nigeria’s North East, forcing some 3.9 million members of host communities to endure overstretched resources, leaving both categories of people in emergency needs; just as about 1.5 million returnees are in lack and need support to start life all over again.
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Explaining the concept of the workshop on Humanitarian Development Peace (HDP) Nexus in Yola, the Humanitarian Resilience Manager of ActionAid, David Habba, said it was ActionAid’s way of getting humanitarian and development actors to deliberate on the operationalization of the Humanitarian Development Peace (HDP) Nexus, being the new way of working (NWOW) by which people doing work on humanitarian, development and peacebuilding can collaborate for maximum effects.
Lead resource person of ActionAid workshop on Humanitarian Development Peace (HDP) Nexus in Yola, Mubarak Yusuf, fielding questions from newsmen: