PRESS RELEASE

World Humanitarian Day 2025: ActionAid Nigeria Calls for a Feminist, Women-Led and Youth-Led Humanitarian Frontline Response, Stronger Global Solidarity and Local Leadership

On August 19, ActionAid Nigeria joins the global community in marking World Humanitarian Day under the theme “Strengthening global solidarity and empowering local communities.” This day honours the courage of humanitarian workers everywhere, including those who have lost their lives in the line of duty. They were friends and colleagues who showed bravery, and their sacrifice must never be forgotten. Today is also a moment to reflect on the urgency of strengthening solidarity with the millions of people across Nigeria whose lives are disrupted by conflict, disaster, disease, and inequality.

The year 2025 has laid bare the enormity of humanitarian challenges facing our nation. From the escalating violence in Benue, Zamfara, and Borno that has left families displaced and grieving, to the catastrophic floods in Mokwa, Rivers, Adamawa, and Lagos that have washed away homes and livelihoods, the scale of suffering is staggering. In Benue State alone, more than half a million people have been uprooted, surviving in overcrowded conditions with limited food, water, or health care. Across the northeast, the insurgency continues to threaten lives and undermine stability, while in the northwest, banditry and mass abductions have torn families apart. At the same time, Nigeria is battling a devastating hunger crisis, with nearly 31 million people facing food insecurity and thousands of children dying of malnutrition in Katsina and other states.

The humanitarian crisis has been further compounded by outbreaks of preventable disease. Cholera has resurfaced across several states, fuelled by flooding and poor sanitation. Lassa fever, meningitis, diphtheria, and dengue fever in Edo have stretched already fragile health systems to breaking point. Each of these shocks highlight how quickly a health risk can escalate into a full-blown humanitarian emergency when poverty, conflict, and climate change converge.

ActionAid Nigeria believes that responding to these multiple crises cannot be business as usual. Communities are not passive recipients of aid, they are leaders, organisers, and agents of change, and they must be recognised as such. Women and young people have always been the first responders in moments of crisis, yet their leadership remains underfunded and undervalued. We therefore urge:

• The Federal Government, state governments, and local authorities to put crisis-affected communities, especially women and youth at the centre of humanitarian planning and response. This means not only consulting communities but ensuring they have decision-making power, flexible funding, and resources to lead their own responses. Governments should create enabling policies and budget lines that sustain women-led and youth-led initiatives, recognising that these groups are often the first to act and the most trusted in times of crisis.
• The Federal and state governments, private sector, and international partners urgently address the funding gap. Governments must scale up domestic humanitarian financing. The Nigerian private sector should increase support for crisis-affected communities.
• The private sector to move beyond corporate social responsibility tokenism and play a transformative role in building resilience. This includes prioritising investments in food assistance, nutrition, health care, education, and climate resilience for crisis-affected regions. Nigerian businesses, private foundations philanthropists, and financial institutions should leverage their resources and innovation to fill critical gaps in humanitarian response, while also partnering directly with local organisations who understand community realities. By doing so, the private sector can help to strengthen social stability, protect livelihoods, and safeguard vulnerable populations from the recurring shocks of conflict, hunger, and climate disasters. International partners must prioritise flexible, long-term resources that go directly to local organisations to ensure that the withdrawal and cut of foreign aids does not deepen the suffering of millions.

ActionAid Nigeria calls for urgent investment in local humanitarian leadership, particularly, women-led and youth-led responses, that have proven to be both effective and transformative. This call also aligns with the ongoing Humanitarian Reset, a global effort to reform the aid system in the wake of reduced international funding. For ActionAid, the Reset can only be meaningful if it centres on crisis-affected communities, shifts power to women and youth, and rejects technocratic fixes that sideline local voices. Nigeria cannot afford to be left behind in this transformation: Now is the time to reimagine humanitarian action in a way that delivers equity, accountability, and lasting resilience.