Violence Displaces Over 400,000 People In Niger

Niamey, June 7 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 7th Jun, 2019 ) :Worsening security has caused the number of displaced people in Niger to surge to at least 400,000, a rise of more than a third over the last six months, the UN said Friday.

In Diffa in the southeast of the impoverished Sahel state, attacks by "non-state armed groups" have caused about 25,000 people to flee their homes, the UN's Niger humanitarian coordinator, Fatouma Bintou Djibo, said in a reference mainly to the Boko Haram jihadist group.

Attacks in the southeast caused 88 deaths in March.

Elsewhere in southern Niger, some 20,000 people have fled fighting in neighbouring Nigeria since January, crossing into the Maradi region.

In the western regions of Tahoua and Tillaberi bordering Mali and Burkina Faso, more than 70,000 have become displaced since the beginning of the year, Djibo said in a statement.

At a meeting Thursday of UN agencies and non-government bodies Thursday, Djibo deplored the dwindling funds available for humanitarian work.

In the next six months, she said, $79 million (69.73 million Euros) was needed just for top-priority work.

To date, only 15 percent of the $383 million requested for humanitarian projects in Niger in 2019 has been received at a time when 2.3 million people -- about 10 percent of the country's population -- are in need of assistance, she added.

Boko Haram's decade-long insurgency has killed 27,000 people and displaced about two million in Nigeria.

Violence has spilled over into neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon, prompting the formation of a regional military coalition aimed at rolling back the jihadists.