UNICEF doubles funding appeal for displaced kids in Northeast

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has more than double its funding appeal to provide humanitarian resources for Nigeria from $55 million to $115 million.
This is to assist an additional 750,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), especially children recently reached across conflict-affected areas in the Northeast.
“We are reaching new areas to provide critical humanitarian assistance but we need greater international support to further scale up and reach all children in dire need,” said Afshan Khan, UNICEF’s Director of Emergency Programmes.
She added that “Children’s lives are literally hanging by a thread.”
UNICEF added that as new areas open up to humanitarian assistance, the impact of the Boko Haram insurgency on children becomes more evident.
While there are more than two million internally displaced persons in Nigeria, UNICEF believes one million children are displaced and out of school. Hundreds of thousands of those children are psychologically affected from the horrors they have lived through. An estimated 400,000 children under five will suffer from severe acute malnutrition this year alone, it was learnt.
UN said more than four million people are facing severe food shortages and 65,000 people are living in famine-like conditions, mostly in Borno, the worst affected state.
About 60 per cent of health clinics have been partially or completely destroyed by the insurgency, and 75 per cent of water and sanitation facilities require rehabilitation, especially in Borno State.
|The Nation