HRP Youth Lens Compliance Report Card 2025
The 2025 HRP Youth Lens Compliance Report Card by ActionAid Nigeria’s Humanitarian Unit examines how effectively the humanitarian response in Northeast Nigeria is addressing the needs, priorities and participation of young people affected by crisis across Borno, Adamawa and Yobe (BAY) States.
Covering 195 Local Government Areas and the period January–December 2025, the assessment focuses on young people aged 15–30 and applies a five-lens Youth Analysis Framework to assess the extent to which the 2025 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) reflects youth realities, participation, assets, advocacy and insights in monitoring and evaluation.
The report highlights a significant “youth paradox.” While young people account for approximately 4.2 million people, or 51% of the population in need, they remain underrepresented in humanitarian planning, decision-making and resource allocation. Only 16% of humanitarian programming explicitly targets youth, while youth-specific programming receives approximately 8% of the total humanitarian appeal, creating an estimated 84% funding shortfall.
The assessment records an overall compliance score of 1.8 out of 5, with significant gaps across all five lenses: explicit youth situation analysis, meaningful youth participation, an assets-based approach, communication and advocacy for youth funding, and the integration of youth insights into evaluations. Youth participation is particularly limited at strategic levels, falling to 0% in inter-sector coordination, despite stronger engagement at community level, where participation reaches 68%.
The report also identifies critical challenges affecting young people, including disrupted education, limited livelihood opportunities, protection risks, sexual and reproductive health vulnerabilities, displacement-related psychosocial distress and limited access to youth-friendly services. Education emerges as one of the most severe areas of concern, with 65% of youth aged 15–24 reported to be out of school and more than 1,200 schools destroyed or occupied across the BAY States.
Despite these challenges, the report identifies important opportunities. Youth are actively contributing to community-level planning, youth organizations and networks are operating across the region, and there is growing recognition of young people as change agents, community mobilizers and partners in humanitarian action. The assessment calls for a shift from viewing young people primarily through the lens of vulnerability to recognizing and investing in their leadership, capacities and solutions.
The report proposes practical actions across immediate, medium- and long-term horizons, including systematic age-disaggregated data collection, youth-specific indicators, expanded adolescent-friendly services, youth-friendly spaces, accelerated learning opportunities, the establishment of youth representation within humanitarian coordination structures, increased investment in youth-led solutions, and the institutionalization of youth participation in humanitarian governance.
Ultimately, the 2025 HRP Youth Lens Report Card calls for a more inclusive, accountable and youth-responsive humanitarian system—one where young people affected by crisis are not only beneficiaries of humanitarian assistance, but are meaningfully involved in shaping the decisions, solutions and recovery processes that affect their lives.