UN allocates $15m emergency fund to fight food insecurity in north-east

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) has allocated $15 million as emergency fund to address food insecurity in the north-east.

Citing the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mark Lowcock, under-secretary-general of UNOCHA, in a statement issued on Wednesday, said the funding is to address hunger in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe states.

According to Lowcock, the latest official food security assessment and projections showed that during the next lean season period of June to August 2021, up to 5.1 million people risk food insecurity in the conflict-affected states.

Also speaking on the funding, Edward Kallon, UN resident coordinator and UNOCHA humanitarian coordinator in Nigeria, said the organisation is “extremely worried by the rising food insecurity in north-east Nigeria”.

“We are now recording levels of food insecurity similar to 2016-2017, at the peak of the humanitarian crisis, when the risk of famine was looming over the north-east,” Kallon was quoted to have said in the statement.

“We are not at famine levels of food insecurity in Nigeria, but we must spare no efforts to scale up our actions and ensure that the situation does not deteriorate.

“This funding from the central emergency response fund (CERF) comes right on time to start scaling up these efforts and I appeal to member states to provide the resources we urgently need.”

According to Kallon, in September, aid workers provided “multisectoral assistance” to over 3.6 million people.

He, however, noted that the joint humanitarian response proposed by the UN and its humanitarian partners is critically underfunded.

The $15 million emergency funding for Nigeria is part of the $100 million allocated to seven countries to fight hunger.

Other beneficiaries of the UN funding are Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, South Sudan and Yemen.