Catherine West – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Catherine West on 2016-10-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to assist with humanitarian action in the Lake Chad basin; and what funds have been allocated to programmes in (a) Cameroon, (b) Chad, (c) Niger and (d) Nigeria that assist with such action.

James Wharton

We are deeply concerned about the scale of the humanitarian crisis across the Lake Chad Basin. This will require a sustained, multi-year response to support communities devastated by the conflict. The UK is scaling up our support.

In addition to the £90 million of humanitarian assistance we are already delivering in the region, the UK has now pledged a further £80 million of humanitarian funding. £50 million will go towards meeting the needs of the worst affected communities in Nigeria with food assistance and access to essential household items and services, and £30 million to support those who have been affected by the spread of Boko Haram into Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

HMG is using a range of opportunities to push our partners and governments across the region on scaling up and improving the quality of the response. This includes calling for a Security Council briefing on the humanitarian situation which took place in July 2016; a joint demarche to the UN with the French and USA on the need to improve humanitarian capacity and performance in mid-August; chairing a Lake Chad Basin meeting in the margins of UN General assembly in September 2016, and ongoing high level bilateral meetings with UN officials.