By Emmanuel Nduka
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Monday disclosed that Cameroonian refugees living in Nigeria are now over 70,000.
The UN Refugee Agency also appealed to international community for urgent additional support for refugees in Nigeria, adding that nearly 80 percent of them are women and children.
Disclosing this in a statement, UNHCR’s Country Representative, Chansa Kapaya, said: “This is not just a number, these are people behind these numbers, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, people just like you and I, that have been forced to flee their homes to seek safety and save their lives. 70,000 refugees are 70,000 daughters and sons”.
Kapaya lamented that the dreams and aspirations of these people have now been disrupted by violence in the North-west and South-west regions of Cameroon, where a conflict between secessionist non-state armed groups and the army are displacing people from their homes since 2017.
She said over 8,000 Cameroonian women, men and children have arrived in Nigeria’s Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Benue, Enugu, Cross River and Taraba States within the past 12 months.
While disclosing that the UNHCR, together with the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and IDPs, registered them, with 59 per cent refugees found in local communities, she said the rest live in four settlements which UNHCR helped built on land generously provided by the government.
“UNHCR commends Nigeria because it is on its way to become a champion in implementing the Global Compact on Refugees, but Nigeria needs support,” she added.
According to Kapaya, the most pressing needs of Cameroonian refugees are food, shelter, improved health care and education as well as livelihood opportunities.
She said with rising food prices, the economic impact of Covid-19 and the refugee influx, needs are on the rise with serious risks of gender-based violence and negative copying mechanisms such as begging and survival sex.
