WFP provides food for refugees fleeing violence in Nigeria

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.
It is the first time that WFP has operated in locations so
close to the border with Nigeria, where the security situation
is volatile.
Leaving behind burned homes and often running for their
lives, 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, from where
200 Nigerian school girls were kidnapped in April. Local
communities have provided food and shelter to the refugees,
but food stocks are running low and many newcomers are
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 percent, well
above the 15 percent 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.
Even before the latest influx, Cameroon was already hosting
refugees from Nigeria in the main Minawao camp and in
communities.
According to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, some 650,000
people have been displaced in Adamawa, Yobe and Borno,
where attacks by armed groups are happening most
frequently and where the greatest numbers of people 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.