The UN Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Joyce Msuya, has called for humanitarian, development, peace and stabilisation efforts as the Lake Chad Basin conference opens.

The UN spokesman Stephanie Dujarric, at a news conference on Monday in New York, said that Msuya made the call at the conference’s opening ceremony in Niamey, Niger.

The two-day event brings together Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon, as well as international donors and partners, multilateral and international organisations.

“She stressed that stakeholders’ commitment must be measured in decades and not years to build lasting resilience to the shocks we know are coming and the dramatic changes that are already causing so much hardship,’’ the official said.

Speaking on the first day of the conference, he said Msuya reminded delegates that Lake Chad was once a flourishing region where goods moved freely across borders in a collaborative environment.

That spirit of cooperation, she said, broke down under a “Gordian knot of problems,” from extreme poverty and poor access to essential public services to a lack of trust, rising inequality, corruption, sectarian mistrust, and rapid depletion of natural resources and climate change.

The third Lake Chad Basin high-level conference would address a range of long-standing issues and the needs of the population, including some 11 million people, in need of assistance.

The UN describes the conference as a critical international forum for effectively dealing with the challenges faced by the region. These include increased insecurity, development deficits, humanitarian needs, and barriers to access to basic social services, production systems and humanitarian support.

After nearly 13 years of conflict, armed groups continue to spread violence in the four countries that border the lake (Chad, Niger, Nigeria, and Cameroon).

Some 5.6 million people are believed to be at risk of severe food insecurity, and around 2.9 million are internally displaced, including 2 million in Nigeria alone. These figures have grown since the last conference, held in Berlin in 2018, due to increasing instability, the COVID-19 pandemic’s long-term effects, the impact of climate change, and economic shocks, all of which have exacerbated the humanitarian situation.

The amount of funding required for the emergency response in the Basin has also risen, from $259 million in 2018 to an estimated $1.8 billion. The conference is co-hosted by Niger, Germany, and Norway, together with the UN.

(NAN)