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Famine Monitoring System - June 2021 Monthly Bulletin | Cadre Harmonisé Task Force on Inaccessible Areas

Countries
Nigeria
Sources
Govt. Nigeria
Publication date

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Findings from the FMS revealed concerning consumption patterns in inaccessible areas as more than half of all sampled households (56 percent) struggled to have sufficient food intake and 67 percent experienced crisis or higher levels (CH Phase 3 and above) of food deprivation and hunger, further evidenced in the pervasive use of food-based coping strategies;

  • Majority of households (84 percent) relied on either crisis (26 percent) or emergency (58 percent) coping strategies to meet their food needs which heightens economic vulnerability due to the negative impact on future productivity of the most affected households;

  • The levels of acute malnutrition among new arrivals from the inaccessible areas is Critical (Phase 4 IPC Acute Malnutrition Classification) with the overall Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) rates standing at 20.7 percent and Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) at 4.9 percent. This high level of acute malnutrition indicates an extremely stressed population including food insecurity, poor sanitation and hygiene and health conditions which are the key underlying causes of acute malnutrition;

  • Detailed analysis among newly arrived population with good quality and adequate sample size showed severe consumption deficits and concerning SAM rates (15 percent) in Bama LGA, whereas near Extremely Critical (Phase 5) GAM rates were found in Gwoza, Magumeri and Kukawa;

  • The elevated levels of consumption gaps, malnutrition and pervasive usage of emergency coping strategies, is largely underscored by limited availability of food stocks, restricted access to functional markets and water, health and sanitation services, which might heighten morbidity risk and impact households' ability to engage in labour for food or resource gathering.

INTRODUCTION

One of the fallouts of the insurgency in the North East States of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe is that some areas have been totally or partially inaccessible to humanitarian response agencies/partners. The continuation of conflict in Northeast Nigeria has created a complex humanitarian crisis, rendering parts of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe State inaccessible. To address information gaps facing the humanitarian response in Northeast Nigeria and inform humanitarian actors on the demographics of the population in inaccessible areas, and identify their needs, access to services and movement intentions, efforts have been made by various stakeholders.

Several cycles of the Cadre Harmonisé (CH) analysis mirrored into the situation of populations in some inaccessible areas. Following the outcome of March, 2021 CH analysis in which 746,846 and 881,261 persons for current (March – May) and projected (June – August) period, respectively, were classified in Phase 3 – 4 of acute food and nutrition insecurity across the inaccessible areas of the BAY states. Moreover, the findings suggest a famine-like consumption pattern in a smaller minority of the inaccessible population (≤10 percent), which was reflective in severe food consumption deficits, extremely limited diversity of diets and pervasive use of food-based ration control with wild food foraging remaining a major food source in these areas. However, higher-level indicators (acute malnutrition and mortality) were insufficient to confirm famine conditions in these areas. Therefore, it became necessary to closely monitor the food and nutrition security situation of the vulnerable population in these areas for emergency preparedness against possible further deterioration into famine, especially during the lean season (June – August). Thus, the Inaccessible Areas Task Force, working in liaison with the various partners, planned a real time monitoring system, including monthly data collection, for tracking the evolution of emergency needs during CH projection periods.

The result is an evidence-based approach improving the capacity for analysis of emergency needs through identifying areas to scale up data collection prior to CH workshops and using real time analysis for flagging areas with increased risk of severe outcomes during the CH projection period. As a result, the Famine Monitoring System aims to provide data needed to support analysis for the risk of catastrophic or famine-like conditions in hard-to-reach locations, either increasing the amount of data provided to the CH analysis process or improving the frequency of reliable data to support real time analysis of proxy outcomes when unexpected events development outside the CH analysis cycle.