U.N. says 75,000 Nigerian children at risk of starving to death within months

A woman in northeastern Nigeria holds her malnourished baby.
(Image credit: Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty Images)

Since 2009, the Boko Haram insurgency has displaced millions of people and disrupted farming and trade in northeastern Nigeria, and now an estimated 14 million people in the country need humanitarian aid.

The United Nations humanitarian coordinator, Peter Lundberg, said Tuesday that 400,000 children are in critical need of food, and 75,000 could starve to death "in the few months ahead of us." In September, at least 10 people a day were dying of starvation in a camp for displaced people near Maiduguri. The U.N. does not have enough money to fully combat the crisis, and said Nigerian philanthropists, international partners, and the private sector must help in any way they can. Boko Haram is still active in northeastern Nigeria, routinely conducting suicide attacks.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.