While the protracted crisis in Northeastern Nigeria seems to be making a turn toward improvement, a wave of militant attacks in 2017 paired with ongoing constraints around limited access to rural areas and slow returns to agriculture and economic activities have impeded humanitarian response and slowed the region’s road to recovery.

Varied strikes on food aid and soft targets, such as open-air markets and mosques, along with incidents of a criminal nature continue to cripple the region.

Attacks by radical armed group Boko Haram have followed a trend that humanitarian responders have grown to understand, Ghilda Chrabieh, director of humanitarian programs for Northeast Nigeria at Mercy Corps, told Devex.

Years of insurgency and counterinsurgency operations have resulted in the displacement of an estimated 1.9 million people and sparked a food crisis in Nigeria’s northeast. At the peak of the crisis — and even as recently as last year — worst-affected areas, such as Borno State, were facing famine while other areas faced emergency-level food security conditions and acute malnutrition.

Suicide bombings have destroyed vital infrastructure, limited the mobility of goods and humanitarian responders, and kept agricultural production at an all-time low. Large population movements have also hampered food security for returning refugees and IDPs, and strained the limited food supplies at both IDP camps and within host communities.

Read the full article on Northeastern Nigeria by Christin Roby at Devex International Development