President Muhammadu Buhari has assured the international community that his administration has embarked on several programmes to meet the humanitarian needs of the over two million internally displaced persons,IDPs, in Nigeria.

Femi Adesina, media aide to the President, in a statement on Monday evening said Buhari disclosed this at a high level summit on “Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants” on the sidelines of the 71st Session of the United Nations General Assembly, UNGA71, in New York, United States.

According to the president, the intervention programmes include: the Presidential Intervention Committee on Rehabilitation of the North-East; the Victims Support Fund; the Safe Schools Initiative and the proposed North-East Development Commission currently undergoing legislative process.

“We are making concerted efforts to meet our citizens’ immediate humanitarian needs by reducing their risk and vulnerability and increasing their resilience through vocational training and skills acquisition programmes, particularly for IDPs in camps,” Adesina quoted president Buhari as saying.

The president informed the summit that Nigeria in collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, recently hosted a regional conference on displacement of persons within the framework of Regional Protection Dialogue on the Lake Chad Basin in order to find a lasting solution to this regional challenge.

President Buhari added that Nigeria has equally shown concern on issues of global human mobility through various government policies and agencies such as the National Migration Policy; Labour Migration Policy; Trafficking in Persons Prohibition Laws, and Nigeria Immigration and National Drug Law Enforcement Acts.

Buhari also condemned all forms of racism, xenophobia and hate ideology targeted at “undermining the considerable benefits that migration can deliver to global efficiency.”

He said such divisive tendencies only lead to violence and avoidable loss of lives in a world that requires cooperation, adding that “globalization should mean free movement of goods, services and people.”

According to President Buhari, “without deliberate and collective commitment and action, the issue of large movement of refugees and migrants may impede our aspirations toward achieving the Programme of Action of the Cairo Agenda +20 and global determination to leave no one behind in the implementation of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”