GENEVA, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Tuesday said that civilians are facing grave human rights violations in the protracted crisis triggered by the ongoing Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria.
A spokesperson from OCHA told a press briefing Tuesday that since the start of the conflict in 2009, more than 20,000 people have been killed, thousands of women and girls have been abducted and children continue to be used on a regular basis as so-called "suicide bombers".
Being one of the world's most severe humanitarian crises, the spokesperson said, 8.5 million people in the worst-affected states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe are in need of humanitarian assistance and the crisis shows no sign of abating.
Some 1.8 million people have been internally displaced in the north-east, 80 percent of them from Borno state alone, the spokesperson said, adding that food insecurity in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe affect 5.2 million people with tens of thousands in actual famine-like conditions.
"The UN-coordinated humanitarian response plan for Nigeria aims to reach nearly 7 million people with emergency aid this year. However, of the 1 billion U.S. dollars requested, only 46 percent has been provided by donors so far," the spokesperson said.
