Community Participation Key To Successful Humanitarian Interventions, Says UNICEF

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said that active community participation is critical to the success of humanitarian interventions.

It stressed that emergency responses are more effective when affected communities are involved in decision-making.

UNICEF’s chief of field office in Kano, Shafeeq Ur-Rehman, stated this at the opening of a three-day capacity-building workshop on “Community Engagement in Humanitarian Action Toolkit” organised by UNICEF in partnership with the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) in Kano.

The training brought together emergency management stakeholders from Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Jigawa, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara States to strengthen community engagement, infodemic management and emergency response coordination across the North-West.

Ur-Rehman said Nigeria continued to face humanitarian and public health emergencies, including floods, disease outbreaks, insecurity, displacement and other sudden-onset crises, making community-centred emergency response more imperative.

He said, “Experience has shown that humanitarian interventions are more effective when communities are informed, listened to, engaged and actively involved in decisions affecting their lives.”

According to him, strengthening the capacity of state institutions would improve preparedness, reinforce early warning systems, and ensure faster, better-coordinated responses to future emergencies.

He reaffirmed UNICEF’s commitment to supporting government efforts to build resilient emergency preparedness and response systems that protect children, women and other vulnerable groups before, during and after emergencies.

Also speaking, NEMA’s Director of Planning, Research and Forecasting, Dr Godwin Tepikor, represented by the agency’s North-West Head of Operations, Dr Nurudeen Abdullahi, described community engagement as a vital component of effective emergency management.

He said timely dissemination of information through Social and Behaviour Change approaches would enable communities to take life-saving actions, strengthen early warning systems, address emerging threats and build resilience.

The Executive Secretary of the Kano State Emergency Management Agency, Isyaku Abdullahi Kubarachi, described the workshop as timely, noting that communities across the region were increasingly vulnerable to flooding and other environmental hazards, and that, as such, effective community engagement would enhance public trust, improve early warning systems and boost the quality of emergency response.