Nigeria - The French Embassy in Nigeria and IOM Nigeria have signed an agreement for a nine-month project aimed at providing psychosocial support to conflict-affected people in the North East of the country. The project will target the two states most affected by displacement – Adamawa and Borno.

The project is designed to strengthen existing IOM psychosocial response and assistance to people affected by the humanitarian crisis that has developed in Nigeria due to the Boko Haram insurgency, especially the North East. 

It also is aimed at preventing sexual and gender-based violence through the development of practices that promote gender equality, respect and tolerance of gender diversity in displacement camps and host communities.

IOM Nigeria Chief of Mission Enira Krdzalic thanked France for its contribution, but highlighted the huge humanitarian challenge in the North East. Appealing for more resources, she noted that in addition to psychosocial assistance, IOM also needs to provide shelter and non-food relief items. 

The psychosocial support project will target at least 25 State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) / National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) camp managers, and 10,200 internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in camps and host communities (6,000 women, 3,000 children, 1,000 men).

It will build on earlier 2015 psychosocial projects funded by OFDA, France, Germany and UN CERF.

Earlier this week at World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, the Lake Chad region was described by the UN Humanitarian Coordinator Stephen O’Brien as “The most underreported, most underfunded and least addressed of the big crises we face.” ICRC Director General Yves Daccord noted that “The gap between the humanitarian response and what (it) should be in the region– is possibly the biggest gap we have right now.”

IOM has nine offices and sub-offices in the region: Nigeria (Abuja, Maiduguri, Yola and Bauchi), Niger (Diffa and Zinder), Cameroon (Maroua), and Chad (Ndjamena, and Baga Sola), with a total of 295 staff.

It is co-lead of the Emergency Shelter, Non Food Item and Camp Coordination Camp Management Cluster/Working Groups in Nigeria, Niger, and Chad, and, in close coordination with national governments, tracks displacement through its Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) in Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad.

Funding from USAID/OFDA/PRM, ECHO, UN CERF, the European Union, Italy, France and Japan has helped IOM to assist over 460,000 people in the region since the beginning of the crisis in 2014. But IOM’s 2016 humanitarian programmes in the Lake Chad region now face a USD 25 million funding gap.

For further information, please contact IOM Abuja. Ikechukwu Hillarion Attah, Tel:+234 (0) 8140671127 (Office); +234 (0) 8036452973 Mobile. Email: iattah@iom.int  or Enira Krdzalic, Tel: + 0093794100526, Email: ekrdzalic@iom.int