“We can not let this heartless attack divert any of us from reaching the more than two million people who are in dire need of immediate humanitarian assistance”.
Advertisement
Unknown attackers struck yesterday as the convoy returned to Borno’s capital Maiduguri after delivering aid in Bama, injuring a United Nations children’s agency (UNICEF) employee and an International Organization for Migration contractor, according to UNICEF.
“I met the United Nations officials and they told me that the attack would not deter them from doing their humanitarian work”.
Nigeria’s government has been encouraging people to return home since the recapture of swathes of territory lost to the Islamist militants in 2014 but most are still largely reliant on food handouts.
Others including staff of UNFPA are safe.
“If we do not act now, the human suffering will only get more extreme”, O’Brien said, adding that, “We have to stop this – we can with will, money, urgency and coordination”.
Warning of humanitarian catastrophe in Nigeria and the Lake Chad region, the UN’s aid chief on Wednesday called for scaling up efforts to address Africa’s fastest growing refugee crisis.
The group has carried out suicide bombings in northeast Nigeria and neighboring Cameroon, Niger and Chad.
An worldwide charity group, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), had, last month, said that the condition of the Internally Displaced Persons in Bama camp, where 24, 0000 are living, is a catastrophic humanitarian emergency. States must adopt measures to protect civilians and respect due process when dealing with persons arrested for Boko Haram-related charges.
The situation in Banki is similar to that found by the Nigerian authorities and other MSF teams and aid organizations in different parts of Borno state.
Boko Haram, which seeks to impose strict Islamic law in northern Nigeria, has been blamed for some 20,000 deaths and displacing of more than 2.6 million people since 2009.
Advertisement
“UNICEF has provided two million people with health services and treated 56,000 children for malnutrition in the three conflict-affected states of northeast Nigeria”.
