The United Nations and European Union have told governments, development partners, and humanitarian organizations that the 3.5 million internally displaced persons in Northern Nigeria had waited long enough for relief packages to give way to genuine development solutions, calling for an urgent shift from emergency assistance toward programs offering displaced families real pathways to stability, economic inclusion, and self-reliance.
UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Mohammed Fall, speaking at the inaugural Project Steering Committee meeting of two EU-funded displacement response programs in Abuja, said displacement had long since ceased to be solely a humanitarian problem and had become a development, peacebuilding, and human rights challenge that required the full engagement of government institutions rather than crisis management by international agencies alone.
He said the UN Common Program had in 2025 reached nearly 200,000 children through education and skills training, supported approximately 150,000 people with sustainable livelihood opportunities, and helped 40,000 individuals regain access to legal documentation, but maintained that these achievements, however significant, fell short of the durable solutions that would actually end displacement rather than manage it.
EU Ambassador Gautier Mignot challenged stakeholders to rethink existing intervention frameworks, calling for a scale-up in ambition and a review of all livelihood and development projects to assess their contribution to lasting displacement solutions. He said donor-funded programs needed to move beyond the incremental toward investments capable of creating structural change at the scale the crisis demanded.
The federal government’s representative described the crisis as a product of overlapping pressures including insecurity, climate shocks, and socio-economic vulnerability, and said durable solutions required integrated approaches linking humanitarian action, development investment, and peacebuilding rather than keeping those streams separate.
