All Boko Haram's fault, some will say, but the Economist thinks that both the Nigerian government and UN agencies\u00a0are\u00a0culpable, the former for playing down the problems; the latter for being unassertive in the face of difficult challenges and obstructive politicians. \u00a0The article ends:<\/p>\n
Months ago, the UN ought to have declared a \u201cLevel 3\u201d emergency\u2014the highest level, reserved for the likes of Syria and Yemen\u2014to raise funds and mobilise personnel. Instead it pandered to politicians\u2019 vanity and told humanitarian agencies that \u201cthe government would not tolerate it.\u201d Many NGOs have been slow and ineffectual, too. Of the roughly 20 international non-profit organisations that together hand out 90% of the world\u2019s aid, only half are present in Nigeria\u2019s north-east, according to Toby Lanzer, the UN\u2019s humanitarian coordinator for the Sahel. Nigeria\u2019s own relief agencies are more used to dealing with floods than food crises, and are also accused of stealing supplies.<\/p>\n
Faced with an emergency which it can no longer deny, the government has at last grown more ready to accept help. Donors are also beginning to pay more attention: by the end of this year, their allocations should be roughly double what they were in 2015. But the worst is not yet over. The numbers needing aid will grow as new towns open up: there are perhaps 750,000 hungry people in the north-east who currently cannot be reached at all. Some aid agencies think that most insecure parts of Borno are now in full-blown famine, which would suggest that 30% of people there are acutely malnourished.<\/p>\n
To help humanitarians, Nigeria\u2019s army must secure major roads and push forward into smaller towns, instead of sitting on its haunches. The UN says that discussions about proclaiming a top-level crisis are \u201creally happening\u201d, although it will probably make the call internally, rather than in public. Either way, it must not dally: eight months into the year, its campaign is only a third funded. Then it will need more (and better) partners, and require the snail-paced government to speed up its response. \u201cWhat we are seeing is just the tip of the iceberg,\u201d says one aid worker in Abuja. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be one Bama after another as Borno opens up.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is a long way from sustainable development \u2013 and probably a long way from most global education.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I wonder if the forthcoming TEESNet conference, with its focus on the SDGs, will find time to consider what's going on in Nigeria where famine is looming in Borno State in the north-east of the country. \u00a0Nigeria is\u00a0Africa's second largest...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}