Niger - Nigerian refugees

2015
  • Advocacy with the government to implement the temporary protection policy;
  • Support the Government in providing proper registration documentation including refugee attestation, ID cards, and birth certificates for Nigerian refugees and Niger Nationals;
  • Promote complementary joint programming focused on creating opportunities for quality livelihoods support;
  • Pursue a settlement and shelter policy which does not rely on the setting-up of refugee camps, but rather on the extension of villages and the respect of House Land Properties principles;
  • Strengthen partnership with government, developments actors, civil society and the private sector to promote socio-economic integration and self-reliance;
  • Reinforce the coordination mechanism set in 2014 to ensure that mid and long-term solutions are found for refugees and local vulnerable populations by creating complementarities between humanitarian and developmental programmes (also referred to as Concertation pour les urgences et la resilience;)
  • Promote mechanisms to prevent and respond to cases of abuse and sexual and gender-based violence (i.e. standard operation procedures on SGBV);
  • Enhance child protection systems in close collaboration with other actors, including the host communities;
  • Promote primary education enrolment for all children through sensitization campaigns, rehabilitation and construction of school infrastructure in cooperation with UN agencies and other development actors and local authorities;
  • Provide opportunities for long-distance learning for children who have completed secondary school so that they can sit the Nigerian exams under the West African Examinations Council.

Assumptions and Constraints:

UNHCR’s protection and solution’s strategy - of reinforcing district authority’s leadership and capacity to respond to the influx of population from Nigeria through an integrated humanitarian/ developmental approach - could be jeopardized if:

  • The regional security strategy for the Sahel is not effective enough to halt the expansion of extremists’ actions;
  • The support to Niger from the international community is discontinued;
  • The political stability in Niger is compromised;