UNHCR Niger

Since 2005, UNHCR has been recognising its workforce through the Excellence in Service Awards. These awards acknowledge individuals or teams that embody UNHCR’s mandate and mission and produce outstanding work.

The awards for 2016 have just been announced. Mr. Steinacker, former representative of the UNHCR operation in Niger, and the Niger team received the “Award for Achievements in Innovation” for the numerous initiatives developed to find alternative solutions to assist and protect refugees in Niger. Let’s continue to think outside the box!

On 12 December 2016, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, visited Diffa region in Niger. Here, the forcibly displaced population is spread across more than 100 sites in a stretch of arable land along the border with Nigeria. He used the opportunity to highlight the importance of data in protecting and assisting more than 250,000 persons (refugees, IDPs, and Niger nationals that returned from Nigeria as a result of conflict).

“Throughout my visit, our team in Diffa provided me with a wide range of information on each site we passed or visited. In Diffa town, a Data Centre on Forced Displacement was established in 2013, funded by UNHCR, and implemented by our partner REACH.

Data is at the heart of good decision-making. Only with accurate information can we make the right decisions on how to support displaced people in Niger and elsewhere. And eventually, we should enable people, including refugees, IDPs, and persons at risk of statelessness, to access their own data – so that they can make informed decisions about their lives and that of their children.

UNHCR has made data collection and analysis a priority for the organization by putting in place a multi-year strategy for the collection and use of good data, placing people - refugees and others - at the centre of these efforts.

We believe that access to information is almost as important as security, food and water when it comes to ensuring protection for the displaced and their families. With accurate information, refugees and other displaced people can be made aware of their rights, where they can receive assistance, the conditions they face, and where they can access safety. UNHCR aims to work with them and share the information we obtain through assessments and evaluations, and also to give them the means to manage their own personal information and protect their identities, and help them become part of the global information community.

We are also working with our partners – states, UN agencies and NGOs, to ensure that data is made available, that it meets the needs for decision-making, and most importantly, is shared in an transparent and responsible way. In that respect, the Diffa Data Centre is an excellent example of UNHCR’s efforts to improve data and information and bring digital empowerment to the people it serves.”

For more information:
http://www.diffa-forced-displacement.info/
http://data.unhcr.org/SahelSituation

Ibrahim and friends enjoying their first classes in the newly established primary school in Kabelawa camp (UNHCR Diffa)

There was cause for celebration in the IDP camp of Kabelawa this month, with the opening of a primary school in the camp. 477 students are now enrolled and attending school on a regular basis, including 50% girls. Sadly, education has been one of the main victims of the conflict in Northern Nigeria and in the Diffa region of Niger. The insecurity in the region has led to the closure of many schools, while those fleeing Northern Nigeria were forced to abandon their schooling. However, concerted efforts are being made to re-establish systems to provide education to those affected.

Ibrahim, like many of those living in Kabelawa camp, was amongst those evacuated from the Lake Chad islands in May 2015. He and his family were forced to abandon everything – their livestock, their homes, and move to the camp. Ibrahim was also forced to abandon his education. However, through efforts from the government, UNHCR and the NGO COOPI, the month of March saw jubilation in the camp, with the commencement of the first classes in the newly established school. Ibrahim and his friends (pictured above) are now enjoying daily classes, and are working hard to catch up on what they missed. As stated by Ibrahim, “I love my school…since we left home I have wanted to return to school. We are all very happy to be able to continue learning here, even if we are far from home”.

Due to insecurity in the region, it was not possible to open the doors of the school in October as planned, however the teachers and the students are making big efforts to catch up on the 5 months of the academic year which they missed, and are even taking classes in the evenings and at weekends to cover the material they missed. In the refugee camp in Sayam Forage, the primary school was opened in October, to coincide with the academic year. 175 refugee students are regularly attending the school. As stated by Adamou, a teacher at the school, “It is essential that the children continue their educations…even in these challenging times. It is a means for them to avoid becoming involved in insurgent activity, and will give them hope for the future”.

Outside of the camps, UNICEF is the lead organisation in the provision of education for displaced children. There are currently 135 official sites along the Route National 1 – the main road in the region. UNICEF currently supports the provision of 31 temporary schools benefitting 1,444 displaced children, including 60 temporary classrooms, and 10 newly constructed permanent classrooms. They also support the government in the provision of temporary classrooms for up to 2,100 additional children. The idea is to integrate the displaced children into the regular education system. For more information on UNICEF’s out-of-camp primary education support, see: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/niger_90717.html.

For secondary education outside of the camps, COOPI, with UNHCR support have established 4 Distance Learning Centres in the localities of Diffa, Kabelawa, Maine Soara and Bosso. Unfortunately the centre in Bosso had to be closed due to the insecurity in the area. The Distance Learning Centres are aimed at assisting Anglophone refugees living outside of the camps to continue their education in English, through the Nigerian curriculum. The programme has been approved by the Nigerian and Nigerien governments, allowing the students to complete their exams at the end of the academic year. Almost 400 students are currently benefitting from this programme in the region, which will be scaled up in 2016 with an interactive learning platform.

Djily Dramane, a migrant from Mali working as a transporter in Mauritania, poses next to his donkey-driven cart in Bassikounou, near the border with Mali, May 22, 2012. REUTERS/Joe Penney

ANKARA, Nov 11 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The growing flow of migrants into drought-prone Niger, whose own population often struggles with hunger, raises tough questions about why people are moving from one risky place to another and how to head off related tensions, experts say.

Intensifying conflict, political instability and militant groups like Boko Haram are driving people into Niger from surrounding Libya, Chad, Nigeria and Mali, according to Barbara Bendandi, an environment expert with the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

“It is not the usual push-pull factor of migration but a newer phenomenon where people are migrating into a country already extremely vulnerable which has nothing to offer the migrants,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of a U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) conference in the Turkish capital Ankara last month.

There is a need to better understand this complex phenomenon linking climate impacts, land degradation and insecurity, she added.

Migrants from sub-Saharan African states who reach Niger enter one of Africa’s poorest countries - a vast arid expanse on the edge of the desert consistently ranked at the bottom of the U.N. Human Development Index.

Its booming population depends on rain-fed agriculture, but the amount of land used for arable farming and pasture has shrunk dramatically in the past 50 years.

Meanwhile frequent droughts have impoverished many Nigeriens. In 2010, for example, a severe drought left over one-third of the West African country’s 20 million people without enough food.

Climate change is expected to make the country even more prone to drought, erosion and loss of forested land, exacerbating difficult conditions, according to the UNCCD.

Historically a gateway between north and sub-Saharan Africa, Niger shares borders with seven countries.

Bendandi said it is a transit country for some people, with more than 2,000 migrants leaving Niger each week this year to travel north to Libya or further to Europe.

European Union leaders are meeting African counterparts in Malta this week, hoping aid pledges can slow the flow of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from the world’s poorest continent to wealthy Europe.

Fatchima Noura, a Nigerien civil society leader working on refugees and food security, noted that some incoming migrants stay in Niger for a couple of years to work as domestic help or set up a small business to earn enough to proceed further north.

Others pay traffickers to get them across borders or become involved in contraband trade in weapons and drugs, although the numbers are unclear, she added.

In May, Niger adopted a law mandating fines and prison sentences of up to 30 years for those involved in smuggling humans without papers, in an effort to stem the flow of people northwards.

CREEPING DESERTS UPROOT MILLIONS

The IOM’s Bendandi said temporary migration inside countries has long been a way of coping with seasonal shifts in the weather. But more people are now moving further and for longer periods to escape climate extremes.

According to the UNCCD, by 2020, 60 million people could leave sub-Saharan Africa’s desertified areas for North Africa and Europe. And by 2050, 200 million could be permanently displaced environmental migrants, it says.

“Since we are unable to track where many of these new migrants are going, it is difficult to foresee conflict,” Bendandi said, highlighting tensions that can break out with host communities.

In situations like that around Lake Chad, where 300 ethnic groups depend on waters that have shrunk 90 percent in the last half century, fierce competition for scarce natural resources is relatively easy to anticipate, she said.

“It is more difficult to predict conflict when people relocate to places like Libya where weapons are easily available, or to West Africa’s coastal cities where sea levels are predicted to rise,” she said.

Many migrants settle in urban sprawls where their farm skills are useless. Some resort to crime to survive, or are even tempted to join insurgent groups, she added.

The threat to these people arises not from migration itself, but the vulnerabilities it creates due to the weakness of government policies to manage their movement, she noted.

According to an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report, violent events in the “lawless” expanse of the Sahara-Sahel region topped 8,000 in 2009-2012, up from around 3,000 in 2005-2008.

“The perpetual connection to peripheral regions and the traffic that passes through the region clearly show that it can be both a connection point between hotbeds of violence and a ‘sanctuary’,” the OECD said in an atlas issued this year.

“There may be no food in Niger but there is safety for these people fleeing violence, house-burning, kidnapping and arson,” Noura said, referring to those leaving places like Nigeria, where they are suffering at the hands of Boko Haram militants.

An alliance of civil society groups accredited to the U.N. refugee agency helped settle 20,000 Nigerians in 2014 in Niger’s official refugee camps and 13,000 Malians in 2012 when civil war erupted, she added.

NO WORK, NO MONEY, NO LAND

At the same time, Niger is losing its own people, as climate stresses make it harder to earn a living from agriculture.

“The first capital our people have is land. If they have no guarantee of income from land, what are they going to do? This is the reason they migrate, hoping to find elsewhere what they lost in their homeland,” Niger’s environment minister Adamou Chaifou told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in Ankara.

The youngest and strongest groups in society are leaving for Ghana, Benin, Togo, Libya and Algeria, he lamented.

“Youth in Niger have no work, no money and no land rights,” said civil society activist Noura. “Boko Haram gives them something to do and some money, so the youth go with these rebel groups.”

Meanwhile, shifting movements among nomadic herders, who are starting out on traditional migration routes earlier in the year, have led to violent clashes, as their cattle destroy crops on their path, she added.

They are also breaking down barricades erected by companies that have leased land previously used for grazing, she said.

The IOM’s Bendandi called for investment by U.N. agencies, governments and academic institutions in more research to explore the “when and where” of environmental migration flows, using land maps, satellite imagery and field surveys.

“To address (the problem) when crises blow up would be too expensive in terms of human lives and money,” she said.

Food insecurity in Niger is a cyclical and structural problem. Whether the rainy season is good or not, each year during the hunger gap (“période de soudure”) from May to September, period between the end of the consumption of the last harvest and the consumption of the next one, more than 3 million of persons are in urgent need of food assistance.

In the Diffa Region, with an influx of 100,000 displaced people from Nigeria, and the resulting 20% population increase in the region, the issue of food insecurity has never been so prevalent. According to the national agency for the prevention and management of food crisis, this year, 210 villages of the region, with a population of 169,877, are considered at risk of hunger.

This year the gravity of the food insecurity is exacerbated by the security situation. Rain-dependent agricultural planting (mainly millet) is behind schedule, with many households planting late in August, while up to 32 villages have been unable to plant due to security risks. A mid-term evaluation of the ongoing agricultural campaign predicts that if the rains are to stop by 15th of September a good or average production of just 40% would be expected for the whole region. Whereas if the rains were to continue until the 30th of September, an overall good or average production of up to 80% could be anticipated. This potential lack of production, combined with the low purchasing power capacity of both the host and the displaced population could lead to critical humanitarian situation.

Pastoralism is also directly feeling the effects of the security instability. Prior to the conflict, pastoralists were free to move between Niger and Nigeria and in the environs of Lake Chad in search of grazing lands and water for their livestock. However the unstable security situation has resulted in a significant reduction in their mobility, while local authorities have ordered them to leave particular areas where there is suspicion of Boko Haram activity. This lack of mobility has resulted in bigger herds of livestock on the grazing land available in Diffa, with a resulting insufficiency in the number of water points available for the animals. The concentration of the livestock around a limited number of grazing lands is also impacting the regenerative capacity of the natural resources. Two third of the Diffa Region being desertic, the consequences of the current situation for the next years could be dramatic.

The fact that many pastoralists are no longer choosing to move in search of grazing lands and water points is having a serious knock on effect on the local and household economy. The issue of the accessibility of feed for livestock is a recurrent and serious problem, with huge deficits recorded each year. With pastoralists forced to remain sedentary, the demand for feed is increasing, with a resulting increase in the price, whereas the price of livestock is reducing significantly with the increasing supply.

All of the aforementioned challenges have resulted for The Diffa Region in a situation of food insecurity without precedent.

Based on the facts and predictions mentioned above, the Conciliation Committee Donors-Government of Niger has recommended the elaboration of an Interim Plan of Support for 2015-2016 for the areas at the highest risk of food insecurity and hunger.

For more information on the effects of Boko Haram on food security in the broader region of West Africa, see: http://www.irinnews.org/report/101987/millions-going-hungry-because-of-boko-haram

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population, Refugees, and Migration Catherine Wiesner visits Intikane, an area hosting refugees in Niger’s Tahoua region, in July 2015.

In 2012, hundreds of thousands of people fled northern Mali to seek safety from an armed rebellion and insurgency that included Islamist militants associated with Al Qaeda. These displaced people, many of whom were received as refugees in neighboring countries, posed unique challenges for groups who wanted to help them. Many northern Malians are nomadic herders who move throughout the year as they seek good grazing land for their livestock. When they fled Mali, they came with not only their families, but also their animals.
In Niger, UNHCR set up refugee camps to provide shelter and emergency assistance to people fleeing the war, but soon learned there were groups of nomadic refugees living along the Mali-Niger border. They weren’t safe there, but were hesitant to move further inland to a refugee camp if they couldn’t bring their herds of cattle and camels.
So the UN and Nigerien government came up with a new plan. They decided to allow pastoral communities to bring their entire herds – thousands of animals, all told – into Niger. The government agreed to grant the refugees access to vast pasture lands, some 600 square kilometers at Intikane alone. The land was good for animals, but was sparsely inhabited because of poor access to water. In exchange, UNHCR agreed to rehabilitate a well that could provide water to the local community and the refugees, as well as to their livestock.
Today, Intikane hosts 14,500 Malian refugees – more than any refugee camp in Niger. Refugees can settle freely and move with their herds, and they and local Nigeriens benefit from the water infrastructure, clinic, and school UNHCR has opened. The Intikane school has grown to become the largest in Tahoua region, and attendance rates among refugee children are higher than they were back in Mali before the conflict.

Tuareg men and boys came on camel back to greet Deputy Assistant Secretary Wiesner’s caravan during her visit to Intikane [State Department Photo]

We arrived at Intikane just as the first rains of the season were bringing trees back to life. The refugees’ tents were scattered across the valley, not lined up close together. It looked like a typical Malian village, not a refugee camp.
Several dozen Tuareg men and boys came on camel back to greet our caravan. Together with local authorities, refugee leaders showed us the rehabilitated well, and the pumping station that provides drinking water for the refugees, a nearby village, and a watering post where cattle, camels, and donkeys were drinking from low metal troughs. The refugees told me that having water and grazing land for their livestock enabled them to provide for their families, and they described how much they preferred this to living in a camp.
The United States is the single largest donor to refugee programs in Africa, and we fully encourage UNHCR’s efforts to work with governments to establish alternatives to camps. In fact, for many years now, the United States has been working to implement a policy that seeks to develop and strengthen models of refugee assistance outside of camps. We believe there should be more places, like Intikane, that allow refugees to organize their own communities, and live with the greater dignity and independence.
About the Author: Catherine Wiesner serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration.
- See more at: http://blogs.state.gov/stories/2015/07/29/different-kind-refugee-settlement#sthash.n2GQ5e2O.dpuf

Terrorist attacks and atrocities committed by Islamist militant group Boko Haram have forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes and seek refuge elsewhere. While we often report on the dire situation in Nigeria and northern Cameroon, today we head to another country bearing the brunt of this crisis: Niger. Our reporter Ben Barnier has travelled to Diffa, one the world’s poorest regions and now tackling an influx of 130,000 refugees.
Programme prepared by Patrick Lovett and Elom Marcel Toble
France24

Alai Nanga, a 76 year old traditional leader from Lelea, Niger island of the Lake Chad in the camp of Dar es Salam (Chad). © UNHCR / Dos Santos

Nigerian refugees, Niger returnees, internally persons displaced from the Lake Chad or from villages that were attacked by the insurgents on the Niger territory, economic migrants evacuated from the Lake Chad…. The nomenclature referring to the category of the people affected by the crisis in Northeastern Nigeria, and beyond, is already rather long. Another category adds to the list: Niger refugees who fled towards Chad since the end of April when the authorities ordered the islands in Lake Chad to be evacuated. According to UNHCR Chad they number more than 2,000.
Mostly from the Boudouma ethnic group, suspected by the authorities on both sides of the border to be close to the insurgents, they decided to leave for Chad as they felt harassed by the Niger army. The majority of them come from the Lelea Island (Niger) and headed to the Chadian city of Karam. As they left in a hurry they arrived with nothing as recounted by Alai Nanga, a 76 year old traditional leader: “We had to run away and leave everything behind”. It took four days of walking to reach Karam. The group of refugees is mainly composed by elderlies, women and children. Some of them died on the road, victim of thirst or snake bits. There aren’t many men of working age among the refugees as they are said to have stayed behind in order to continue their livelihood activities.
Due to the specificity of this group, UNHCR Chad will actively engage in protection monitoring. Refugees are being transferred on a voluntary basis to the Dar es Salam refugee camp, on the eastern shores of Lake Chad. The arrival in the camp is a welcome development as explained by Alai Nanga: “We have been well received by the local population. We are safe and free to leave the Dar es Salam site to go to the market with no hassle at any time we want. We are feeling better even if we have lost everything”. At this point in time, the return to Lelea remains an undesired prospect to him and his family. Alai believes that the security situation will continue to deteriorate preventing any possibilities to settle home anytime soon.
Nigerian refugees, Congolese refugees, Sudanese refugees, Central African refugees…. The list of nationalities hosted as refugees by Chad is already long. Unfortunately we are now obliged to add Alai Nanga and other refugees from Niger to this list.

UNHCR assistance kits get distributed to newly displaced persons in Goundam in the Timbuktu region photo@ STOP SHAEL

At least 57,000 people fled their homes, fearing violence or forced recruitment by armed groups. Renewed fighting between armed groups in the Gao, Mopti and Timbuktu areas of northern Mali in the past four weeks has led to some 57,000 people fleeing their homes, according to Malian authorities. The newly-displaced join the ranks of over 43,000 internally displaced people throughout the country who have not yet returned to their homes since the conflict in 2012 between governmental forces and various rebel groups. The total number of internally displaced people (IDPs) in Mali stands now at just over 100,000, mainly in the northern part of the country. The deterioration of the security situation takes place just days after the signing of the Algier Peace Agreement between the Government and several armed groups in Bamako on May 15.
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