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Humanitarian Action for Children 2018 - Nigeria (Revised August 2018)

Countries
Nigeria
Sources
UNICEF
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Violence and conflict-related displacement have increased dramatically in Nigeria over the past decade. In the three most directly affected states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe, 7.7 million people require humanitarian assistance, including 4.3 million children and 1.6 million internally displaced persons, more than half of whom are children. Ninety-two per cent of the internally displaced are located in the three north-eastern states. An estimated 400,000 children in 14 local government areas in Borno State will be severely malnourished in 2018, and five local government areas in Yobe State are experiencing global acute malnutrition rates of 10-20 per cent. An estimated 1.5 million people lack access to safe water (940,000 in Borno, 480,000 in Adamawa and 80,000 in Yobe). As a result, vulnerable children are becoming acutely malnourished after repeated bouts of diarrheal disease. Only half of the 755 health facilities in Borno State remain functional and nearly 1,400 schools have been damaged or destroyed. Many of these schools are unable to reopen for safety reasons.
More than 1 million children in Nigeria are currently out of school. The protracted crisis has also compromised the physical safety and psychosocial well-being of 2.5 million children in north-east Nigeria, who require immediate assistance.

Humanitarian strategy

In close collaboration with the Government, UNICEF co-leads the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), nutrition and education sectors, and the child protection sub-sector. In 2018, UNICEF continues to deliver an integrated intervention package to affected populations, in coordination with the Government, United Nations agencies, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). To effectively scale up interventions, UNICEF has diversified and strengthened these partnerships with the aim of employing additional local partners in the response. In 2017, 19 out of 39 partnership agreements were with national NGOs. To improve the quality of its response, UNICEF is increasingly taking an integrated approach, especially among the health, nutrition and WASH sectors. UNICEF works with community-based WASH committees to increase community mobilization for hygiene promotion, including regular cleaning of latrines and maintenance of water points, as well as the dissemination of hygiene messages. A key aspect of this approach is the integration of WASH facilities into schools, child-friendly spaces and health/nutrition centres, as well as teacher training on the provision of psychosocial support in classrooms. The Rapid Response Mechanism is being strengthened to deliver immediate life-saving assistance to highly vulnerable families, followed by a sectoral response.

Results from 2018

As of 31 May 2018, UNICEF had US$ 73.6 million available against the planned US$142.5 million revised appeal (52 per cent funded) for 2018. So far, 161,756 children with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) accessed treatment in UNICEF-supported treatment facilities. UNICEF's WASH response has focused on quality, sustainability and expansion to address the needs of new caseload and supported over 1 million people to access safe water and 508,156 people have accessed improved and sustained sanitation facilities in the northeast. UNICEF health targets have been reduced to align with overall health sector targets in the Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) 2018. over 2.3 million consultations have been done through UNICEF supported emergency primary health care services.
Under the education response, 109,488 boys and girls have received education supplies and learning materials. over 235,000 children benefitted from psychosocial and life skills services. UNICEF supported activities are underway to support new enrollments focus on children from the new arrivals during the enrollment period from September to October. These include procurement of teaching and learning materials. UNICEF's health, child protection and WASH programmes are funded at 20, 29 and 31 per cent respectively.