President Buhari Monday assured the international community
that his administration was already implementing several people-oriented
programmes to meet the humanitarian needs of the over two million
internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Nigeria.
The President, who disclosed this at the High-Level Summit on “Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants” on the margins of the 71st Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA71) in New York, United States, said such intervention programmes include: the Presidential Intervention Committee on Rehabilitation of the North-East; the Victims Support Fund; the Safe Schools Initiative and the proposed North-East Development Commission currently undergoing legislative process.
President Buhari added that, “we are making concerted efforts to meet
our citizens’ immediate humanitarian needs by reducing their risk and
vulnerability and increasing their resilience through vocational
training and skills acquisition programmes, particularly for IDPs in
camps.”
The President said any discourse on refugees and migrants
in the case of Nigeria, “will be incomplete without reference to our
internally displaced persons, victims of Boko Haram’s terrible
atrocities,” which also rendered 600,000 persons homeless in Nigeria’s
neighbouring countries.
He noted that in order to find a lasting
solution to this regional challenge, Nigeria in collaboration with the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, recently hosted a
regional conference on displacement of persons within the framework of
Regional Protection Dialogue on the Lake Chad Basin.
At the
global level, President Buhari said Nigeria has equally shown
appreciable concern on issues of global human mobility using such
control instruments as the National Migration Policy; Labour Migration
Policy; Trafficking in Persons Prohibition Laws, and Nigeria Immigration
and National Drug Law Enforcement Acts.
The Nigerian leader
condemned all new forms of racism, xenophobia and hate ideology targeted
at “undermining the considerable benefits that migration can deliver to
global efficiency.”
He said such divisive tendencies only lead
to violence and avoidable loss of lives in a world that requires
cooperation, adding that “globalization should mean free movement of
goods, services and people.”
Nigeria, he said, “believes that
without deliberate and collective commitment and action, the issue of
large movement of refugees and migrants may impede our aspirations
toward achieving the Programme of Action of the Cairo Agenda +20 and
global determination to leave no one behind in the implementation of the
2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”
Special Adviser to the President
(Media & Publicity)
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