The International Rescue Committee, IRC, has ranked Nigeria as the 4th most at-risk country for humanitarian catastrophe in 2020 after Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Syria.
Nigeria was ranked 8th in the previous analysis for 2019. The latest ranking by the IRC emergency response experts showed that other countries on the top 10 list are Venezuela (5th), Afghanistan (6th), South Sudan (7th), Burkina Faso (8th), Somalia (9th) and the Central African Republic, CAR (10th).
In a statement released on Tuesday, the IRC observed that Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria and Venezuela are Watchlist 2020’s top five crises, all five of which ranked highly in the 2019 list, demonstrating collective failure of the international community to resolve the root causes of these humanitarian disasters.
According to the statement, nine of the 10 countries in the top 10 are experiencing major conflict. “Nearly all countries in the Sahel region, from Mali to Sudan, are on Watchlist 2020.