Nigeria

Summary of needs

Displaced people, returnees and local communities in the BAY states remain exposed to risks to their physical safety, as well as obstacles to accessing essential services and safely engaging in economic and social activities. While all the BAY states have developed plans to promote durable solutions for displacement, protection needs among populations persist, which, if ignored, will undermine progress towards these.

In areas exposed to insecurity, in particular outside garrison towns, communities face significant risks to their physical integrity, including killing and kidnapping, and may be subjected to extortion by non-state armed groups. In 9 of the 35 LGAs monitored by the Protection Sector, more than 30 per cent of respondents consider their area to be unsafe. Livelihood activities (including farming), wood collection or trips to urban centres to access services, mean that communities are obliged to venture outside areas protected by security forces. The lack of essential services in return or displacement areas also compounds protection concerns.

People with specific needs may be unable to access life-saving assistance and protection, including older people, people with disabilities, children separated from their families, and people suffering from psychosocial distress. IDPs, largely reliant on informal support networks, remain insufficiently informed and consulted on decisions affecting them (50 per cent of IDPs report that they have no say in local decisions), and often lack access to structured forums for discussing community issues.

New shocks, in particular floods, continue to impact communities, including displaced populations, depriving them of their assets and documents, and undermining their ability to recover and develop sustainable strategies for local integration.

Response strategy

The protection response is framed by its 2024-2025 strategy and is guided by the following three objectives:

1. Improve protection information management to ensure timely protection response to individuals who have experienced protection risk in realization of their basic human rights.
2. Enhance community-based protection mechanisms through empowering community-based structures and enhancing community-driven solutions to protection issues.
3. Support the provision of lasting protection-sensitive solutions for the affected population by working alongside national and developmental actors to ensure protection is mainstreamed and community participation is optimized.

Targeting & prioritization

The Protection Sector and its areas of responsibility (AoRs) aim to target 1.9 million people with the severest protection needs, as per the Humanitarian Needs Overview, including 1.1 million IDPs, 450,000 host community members and 437,000 returnees. The targeted population comprises 417,000 women and 629,000 girls, as well as 350,000 men and 517,000 boys.

The Protection Sector and its AoRs will direct their response to communities in LGAs with higher levels of perceived safety concerns, security incidents and psychosocial distress, and with a severe lack of documentation (LGAs in severity phases 3 and 4). A total of 35 LGAs in phase 3 and 9 LGAs in phase 4 will be targeted. The target is based on the capacity of the Protection Sector to deliver services in these LGAs, as recorded in 2024.

The protection response will target individuals and communities directly affected by insecurity, as well as natural disasters (floods) and disease outbreaks. Protection partners will provide protection support to people that have been forcibly displaced and their host communities, as well as displaced people returning to their home areas or seeking to integrate in areas of displacement or in other communities. Particular attention will be directed to people still living in informal settlements, with the aim of strengthening their capacity to find durable solutions in anticipation of their departure from these sites. Protection partners will also address seasonal challenges, and work with communities to strengthen preventative and mitigating strategies, as part of the move towards anticipatory action.

Promoting accountable, quality & inclusive programming

The Protection Sector closely monitors the awareness of information and complaint mechanisms related to humanitarian services. Through monthly interviews conducted at household level, protection monitoring identifies gaps in the access of communities to accountability mechanisms, and findings are used to inform and advise protection and other humanitarian partners accordingly.

The Protection Sector and its partners lead the provision of training and awareness-raising on the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse among its partners and beyond. The Sector ensures that the planning and monitoring of its activities are based on a robust gender analysis. Data on beneficiaries are examined through an age and gender lens to help

ensure that programmes are relevant to the particular needs of men, women, boys and girls, and to help facilitate access to services. The Protection Sector will also work with the Disability Working Group to strengthen attention on the needs of people with disabilities in the humanitarian response. The Sector will continue to develop technical guidance to promote the highest standards of service for key activities and deliver training for its partners.

Cost of response

The Protection Sector and its AORs defined its funding requirements through consultations with partners on their costs per activity. These were used to calculate average costs, which were then applied to the targets for each activity within its strategy. Protection services, such as case management, psychosocial support services and community-based protection are human resource-intensive, thereby increasing personnel costs.

The 2025 response takes into consideration the rate of inflation, which particularly affects transportation costs and the cost of purchasing commodities or other items needed for protection interventions (dignity kits for instance). Access challenges in hard-to-reach areas mean higher costs for transporting commodities and humanitarian personnel (particularly by helicopter).The costs for coordination, information management, capacity-building and support to national authorities are also factored into the Mine Action AoR costing.

The Protection Sector encourages its partners to work with national NGOs, community-based organizations and other local protection service providers to help lower the overall costs of protection assistance. This also helps to strengthen sustainable protection expertise among civil society and local authorities in north-east Nigeria.