UNHCR pledges continuous support to Nigeria’s North East

The United Nations Refugees Agency has pledged continuous support to Nigeria’s North East by strengthening the protection of refugees and Internally Displaced Persons to ensure they enjoyed full human rights.
Volker Türk, the Director of International Protection, who led a delegation from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, made the pledge in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, on Saturday.
Türk explained that protection provides essential stability for vulnerable persons whom UNHCR must help and this requires the need for constant action, data updating and creativity.
He said: “UNHCR’s protection plan is in line with its founding ideas of equality and justice.
“It is the international agency responsible for protecting refugees and a key partner for protecting IDPs who remain in their own countries.”
The Assistant High Commissioner said while it was important to help people in long-term refugee situations to become more self-sufficient, the ultimate goal of the refugee agency was to proffer solutions.
He added that one of the objectives of its protection and assistance toward the refugees and IDPs was to find a solution to their plight.
Turk said alleviating their plights includes returning refugees to their homes when it is safe which was what they wanted the most.
He said the protection plans would also include other ways to ending their refugee status such as local integration in the host communities and resettlements.
According to him, Nigerians in the North East have been commended for their good neighbourliness by accommodating displaced victims of the insurgency in their own homes and communities.
Earlier, the Secretary to the Borno State Government, Alhaji Usman Jidda, who received the UN delegates on behalf of the state Governor, noted that the state was the worst hit by the insurgency in the northeast.
Jidda said: “Borno in the past six years has spent all its resources on security before the Buhari administration came to its aid.
“Our gallant soldiers should be commended for recovering 22 local government areas in the state and in two, three months, the Army would have recovered the remaining.
“The state has suffered great losses such as documents, properties, hospitals and schools.”
Jidda said the state had over 17 IDPs camps with 13 IDPs camps outside the state and that the state government alongside the National Emergencies Management Agency are doing their bit to accommodate the IDPs.
He said the Federal Government was also committed to many of the initiatives put in place to address the situation of the North East.
The SSG said: “The Buhari-led administration is determined to restore the infrastructure, de-mine farmlands and make the affected communities safe and habitable again.”
He commended the UN agency for its assistance so far in providing shelters and relief materials to the IDPs, adding that the state was looking forward to more assistance from the UNHCR.
According to him, the state government is deeply committed to the recovery and rehabilitation of the north-east most especially Borno state and will require the continued support of the United Nations in the effort.
He disclosed that the situation with the IDPs in the North-East presented an enormous ongoing challenge adding that there was still a lot of work to be done by UNHCR.
The News Agency of Nigeria recalls that the Federal Government had initiated the Safe Schools, Victims Support Fund and Presidential Initiative on North East, among others.
Those initiatives are now structured under the Presidential Committee on the North East Initiatives, with retired General Theophilus Danjuma as Chairman.
NAN.