The continuation of conflict in Northeast Nigeria has created a complex humanitarian crisis, rendering Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states inaccessible.[1] To address information gaps facing the humanitarian response in Northeast Nigeria, especially in terms of people’s access to basic services and their movement intentions and inform humanitarian actors on the demographics of the population in inaccessible areas of Northeast Nigeria, and identify their needs, access to services and movement intentions, efforts have been made by various stakeholders. A government-led joint fact-finding mission to the H2R (hard-to-reach) area, participated by NPFS, NIMET, WFP, FAO and FEWSNET, conducted a case study on Bama in January 2019. REACH has been conducting a monthly assessment of inaccessible areas in Northeast Nigeria since November 2018 (H2R), whereby teams are leading an ongoing data collection process in urban centres in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states to interview key informants newly arrived (within the one month prior) from inaccessible areas to inform on the humanitarian situation in those areas. WFP has been leveraging satellite imagery analysis to give insights into the cultivation and livelihood patterns in inaccessible areas. Also, UNICEF conducts an ongoing MUAC measurement of newly arrived children aged 6– 59 months (including those from inaccessible areas) to serve as a proxy measure of the level of malnutrition in inaccessible areas, findings of which is reported through IOM’s Emergency Tracking Tool (ETT).

However, except for UNICEF’s MUAC screening, these assessments do not collect the required food, livelihood, mortality, and other anthropometric outcome indicators required for the CH analysis. The updated guideline of the CH Analysis version 2.0 requires a minimum of two outcome indicators to conduct a separate analysis of the population in inaccessible areas. To fulfil these guidelines for the CH analysis, partners, through the FSS and NiEWG, came together and established an Inaccessible Area Taskforce to enforce a systematic, synchronized and focused collection of outcome level food security and nutrition data in inaccessible areas for the CH round in March 2020. The taskforce is composed of FSS, NiEWG, REACH, WFP, UNICEF, FAO, FEWSNET, government representatives and other key CH cell colleagues. The data collected by the taskforce in the pilot initiative allowed 12 fully or partially inaccessible LGAs to be classified for the first time in March 2020.

In coordination with the various partners mentioned above, the Inaccessible Area Task Force plans to implement a real-time monitoring system, including monthly data collection, for tracking the evolution of emergency needs during CH projection periods. A result is an evidence-based approach to improving the capacity for analysis of emergency needs through identifying areas to scale up data collection prior to CH workshops and using real-time analysis for flagging areas with increased risk of severe food security and nutrition outcomes during the CH projection period.  As a result, the Humanitarian Situation Monitoring (HSM), aims to provide data needed to support analysis of the risk of catastrophic or famine-like conditions in hard-to-reach locations, either increasing the amount of data provided to the CH analysis process or improving the frequency of reliable data to support real-time analysis of proxy outcomes when unexpected events development outside the CH analysis cycle. The Humanitarian Situation Monitoring (HSM) was previously referred to as the famine monitoring system which was initiated to monitor the evolution of a highly anticipated famine risk across the inaccessible areas of Borno during the peak of the 2021 lean season as per the March 2021 CH analysis results.

Areas designated in North-east Nigeria as all areas where humanitarian cannot access to provide assistance to affected populations, and where populations cannot access humanitarian to receive assistance either. The Nigeria Access Working Group has also defined 9 more formal criteria to designate inaccessible areas (internal document)