“We maintain emergencies, we put our teams in confinement and we observe the situation”, summarizes Gregor Robak-Werth, the director of Action against Hunger (ACF) in Niger. Since the coup led on Wednesday July 26 by General Abdourahamane Tiani and his men against President Mohamed Bazoum, NGOs and humanitarian workers have been waiting.
Echoing the economic sanctions adopted by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), several States have suspended all or part of their development aid. Decisions that could have serious repercussions in one of the poorest countries in the world, where nearly 4.3 million people need humanitarian support, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) . “Almost half of children under 5, in particular, suffer from chronic malnutrition,” recalls Yawo Douvan, director of the NGO Care in Niger.
Despite significant mobilization of donors, funding to cover these needs was already lacking before the crisis. In 2023 alone, only 32% of the $583.9 million needed, according to the UN, to meet expectations was funded. The United Nations, while saying it was “concerned about the situation in Niger” in a July 28 press release, assured that it would maintain its humanitarian aid and development plan.
But while many organizations fear that some of their financial support will dry up, others worry about being associated with certain partners. “By seeing us in the field, people can see that our vehicles and our missions are financed by France. We are afraid because we could be abused,” said a Nigerien aid worker on condition of anonymity.
More than 400,000 displaced
On Sunday, a demonstration bringing together several thousand people converged on the French Embassy in Niamey to denounce Paris’ interference on the national scene. At the moment, “the unrest is concentrated in the capital; outside this region, we are not affected, ”says the director of a Nigerien NGO committed to the fight against poverty, who also wishes to remain anonymous.
Gregor Robak-Werth does not exclude that the junta further blocks access to certain regions. The security situation, plagued by the proliferation of jihadist groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS), has already deteriorated considerably. “Until 2009, we could go all over the country. But now, non-state groups make it difficult for us to access beneficiaries, underlines the national director of ACF. If we can no longer provide aid, people will move to the cities. In June, according to OCHA, the country already had more than 400,000 displaced people, concentrated in the regions of Diffa, Maradi, Tahoua and Tillabéri, in the south of the country.
After the double coup of 2020 and 2021 in Mali, a country bordering Niger, the ruling junta in Bamako announced “ban, with immediate effect, all activities carried out by NGOs operating in Mali with funding or with the material or technical support from France, including in the humanitarian field”. The announcement followed the suspension of development aid grants decided a month earlier by France, taking NGOs by surprise. If, for the moment, no such statement has been communicated by the putschists in Niger, it remains to be hoped that “the military government will respect humanitarian law”, concludes Gregor Robak-Werth.
