The six year insurgency across the North-Eastern part of the country has triggered serious security instability and escalated the food security situation in the Northeast. With the return of relative peace in many communities in Borno state, the returnee IDPS are confronted by challenge of livelihood considering the fact that they are predominantly peasant farmers and their farming activities have been truncated by the insurgency. Secondly the little they reserved in their granaries has been stolen by the insurgents Food insecurity remains a major concern with 5.2 million people in need of life-saving food assistance. Emerging data in August 2016 has revealed that the severity of the food and nutritional crisis is well beyond emergency thresholds in Borno state. The Federal Government has declared a food and nutritional crisis in Borno, where over 2,219,000 people are severely in crisis phase, 886,200 are in emergency phase and 58,500 are in famine phase. A growing number of people are in urgent need of food assistance.
BOWDI has been rendering interventions in accessible LGA’s in Borno including Konduga and Mafa, and through these conducting rapid needs assessments in these areas and beyond. BOWDI has worked in southern Borno and has also conducted some needs assessment. BOWDI has a good working relationship with relevant government ministries, and has been participating in coordination meetings and bilateral meetings with UN Agencies, INGOs, state government ministries and local partners. The assessments revealed a significant number of IDP population in host communities and informal settlements has received some assistance but there is still need since most of farming activities could not take place during the period. There are still records of IDP population arriving from hard to reach communities or escaped captivity. The need for food is still a priority amongst all those interviewed during site visits. Livelihood support has also been a crucial component of concern to the resettled IDPs and members of host communities who have lost to insurgency.
Furthermore, in order to sustain and improve livelihood of hosts and returnees upon resettlement, this program will be integrated to target beneficiaries who are selected for the food support intervention (GFD and CBT); this is designed to ensure that families are supported to sustain their lives after the project. The program will be integrated in a form of conditional cash support, this strategy is basically to encourage productivity and reduce dependency on external support. This component will prioritize women headed households with consideration of young people. The program will target Konduga town of Konduga LGA, reaching about (1,550) households that is about 7,750 individuals, from the 20,000 CBT beneficiaries. Different livelihood support activities are to be implemented, targeting appropriate beneficiaries. Through this program, a continuous assessment will be done to capture areas of interest of beneficiaries themselves but the goal of the project is to deliver coordinated and integrated life-saving assistance to people affected by emergencies as it will implement the following activities;
