Outside of Syria, the situation in Northeastern Nigeria and in the Lake Chad basin is arguably the most urgent humanitarian crisis in the world. This video from MSF profiles one woman and her family who were displaced by Boko Haram and offers something of a first person account that puts in perspective some staggering new data released by UNICEF just yesterday,
A new report from UNICEF offers some broader context to the suffering of people in the Lake Chad Basin area.
The report finds that some 475,000 children in this region will suffer from severe acute malnutrition this year. What’s worse, of those nearly half a million children at risk, 49,000 are estimated to die from hunger, starvation, and related causes if nothing more is done. UNICEF needs 308 million to fund its humanitarian response here. So far, it’s only received 41 million of that.
Boko Haram is on the retreat. Since the start of last year, the group has been losing territory. Now that the Nigerian government and various humanitarian relief agencies are accessing towns formerly controlled by Boko Haram, it is becoming increasingly clear that the humanitarian disaster left in their wake is exceeding the capacity of relief agencies to respond to.