UN donates $20m to address ‘food security, nutrition crisis in North-East’

Worried by the food security and nutrition challenges in the North-East, the United Nations has donated $20 million to boost the humanitarian response to the issues.

This was disclosed in a statement by the head of public information United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Ann Weru, which was obtained on Thursday.

According to her, the fund support was from the Central Response Fund (CERF) and the Nigeria Humanitarian Fund (NHF). She stated that the CERF fund would be allocated to food security intervention and voucher support for 95,000 people who are extremely impacted by food insecurity in three Borno towns.

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

“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.”

Noting that about half a million of people battling severe acute malnutrition in the north-east region will experience levels of food insecurity from June to August, which is the peak of “lean season,” Weru stressed the need to improve humanitarian response, adding that cases of diarrhoea and other outbreaks are usually recorded during the rainy season.

“Extremely high rates of acute malnutrition and deaths are predicted unless there is a rapid and significant scale-up of humanitarian assistance.

“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,” she added.