Cameroon receives 8,000 refugees fleeing Boko Haram in Nigeria

Nigerians fleeing to Cameroon

As violence in northeastern Nigeria causes massive displacement, thousands of families have fled across the border into Cameroon where the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is providing humanitarian assistance despite insecurity and logistical challenges.

So far, according to the United Nations agency, about 650,000 people have been displaced from the three volatile states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa in the North-East.

It is the first time that WFP has operated in locations so close to the border with Nigeria, where the security situation is volatile.

According to WFP,  close to 8,000 Nigerians have fled since May into the remote northernmost region of Cameroon from the northern Nigerian states of Adamawa, Yobe and Borno. Local communities were said to have been providing food and shelter to the refugees, but food stocks were said to be running low and many of the newcomers, the WFP reported were already undernourished.

“Local communities have helped as much as they can but these refugees are in dire need of food and other assistance. We have found worrying levels of malnutrition, especially among children. Addressing this is a priority for WFP and our humanitarian partners,” said Jacques Roy, WFP’s representative in Cameroon.

WFP began providing assistance to this new wave of Nigerian refugees in June, reaching nearly 7,500 in a first round of food distributions. A nutrition assessment at the end of June found alarming levels of malnutrition among newly-arrived children. In one village in the Waza district, acute malnutrition rates were as high as 25 per cent, well above the 15 per cent emergency threshold.

WFP has also provided local health clinics with new stocks of special nutritional products to help curb malnutrition and is planning to distribute these foods also to all children under five and to all pregnant and nursing mothers among the refugees to prevent malnutrition.

are fleeing their homes.

Amid fears that more families may flow into Cameroon, WFP and its humanitarian partners in Cameroon are planning for an operation to assist as many as 50,000 by the end of the year.

At the same time, humanitarian organizations in Cameroon are dealing with a significant refugee emergency in the East. Conflict in the Central African Republic has driven 107,000 people into Cameroon’s eastern regions. The number is expected to reach 180,000 by the end of the year.

source:Tribune