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From Timothy Olanrewaju, Maiduguri
The United Nations’ Children Fund (UNICEF) said it would continue its humanitarian interventions for millions of displaced victims of violence in the North East, despite the recent withdrawal of funding by the United States.
UNICEF’s Regional Director, West and Central Africa, Gilles Fagninou, announced in an interaction with journalists in Maiduguri, Borno State yesterday during a visit to a camp, where children victims of insurgency were being rehabilitated.
Fagninou described humanitarian assistance as extremely important, assuring that UNICEF would continue even as the developing world faces fund cuts ordered by the US president, Donald Trump.
“We are here to support the government and communities. We bring into this the UNICEF funding and the one we received from others. We will make sure we receive funding with the minimum we have on the ground,” he disclosed.
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He said governments at national, states and regional levels are already discussing ways of filling the fund gap created by the US withdrawal of finance. “Domestic resources are coming to fill in the gap.”
He, however, agreed the US fund cut would have a greater impact on humanitarian activities in the North East. “We won’t be able to support as we have been doing before but our interventions will continue,” he said.
He explained that UNICEF would adopt some measures, including downsizing its workforce in the West and Central African nations, and cutting down travels and other official engagements to save costs.
He said he was on a one-week visit to Nigeria to assess how the global body is supporting governments and communities affected by conflicts, diseases and disasters.
The Unicef chief expressed delight at the commitment of workers at the rehabilitation camp in Maiduguri, where thousands of children and women of surrendered insurgents are undergoing various stages of psycho-social support.
