The United Kingdom says the support will ensure people in crisis-ridden areas will have access to food, clean water and sanitation and that children have access to lifesaving malnutrition treatment.

The amount given to Nigeria’s Northeast was part of a global £5 billion aid to 42 countries that were one step from famine or catastrophe.

The G7 agreed to give £1 billion to three countries at greatest risk, namely: Yemen (£578m), South Sudan (£246m) and Nigeria (£276m).

The Nigeria Policy and Communications Manager, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, British High Commission, Abuja, Elva Lynch-Bathgate, disclosed the development in a statement issued in Abuja on Monday, May 10.

Lynch-Bathgate added that the G7 was also looking at helping out other war and famine tore zones like Tigray, Afghanistan, Burkina Faso the Central Sahel, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Sudan and Syria.

Reacting to the move by the G7 to help the Northeast, the British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Catriona Laing, said “I welcome the G7’s commitment of £276 million for North-East Nigeria. It is vital we act now to avert further deterioration in the food security situation of millions of people affected by the conflict. Just as the UK is working with Nigerian partners to find solutions to the crisis in the North East, the G7 are working together to find global solutions to global problems and protect those hardest hit by these challenges. Together we can shape a better future”

Lynch-Bathgate further recalled that the UK Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, had announced last week at the end of the G7 Foreign and Development Ministers Meeting that the G7 countries agreed on action to protect the most vulnerable people around the world from climate-related disasters, help millions of people at imminent risk of famine, humanitarian crises and ensure equitable access to life-saving COVID-19 vaccines.

The statement read “The triple threat of conflict, COVID-19 and climate change has meant the risk of famine is now a devastating reality many countries face. Millions of people in Yemen, South Sudan and North-East Nigeria are already in crisis. The crisis in North-East Nigeria is more than a decade old. According to UN OCHA, there are 8.7 million people in need of humanitarian assistance there. 1.9 million people have been displaced from their homes and one million people are in areas outside humanitarian access. In North-East Nigeria, 4.36 million people are projected to be in crisis and emergency levels of food security this lean season (June-August). The UK is seriously concerned about the status of civilians living in inaccessible areas, over 800,000 people of whom are reaching critical levels of food insecurity and have extremely limited access to basic services such as healthcare. On Wednesday, the UK coordinated a landmark commitment by G7 countries to tackle the root causes of famine and address the sharply rising numbers of people in need of lifesaving aid. This agreement commits G7 nations to urgently provide an initial £5 billion in humanitarian assistance to 42 countries one step from catastrophe or famine, with further funding to follow over the course of this year. The initial funding includes £1 billion in aid prioritised to the three countries at greatest risk – Yemen, South Sudan and Nigeria – to be provided as soon as possible to save lives”

French President Emmanuel Macron said the summit leaders were nearing an agreement on how to support Brazil and said the agreement would involve both technical and financial mechanisms “so that we can help them in the most effective way possible.”

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel said her country and others will talk with Brazil about reforestation in the Amazon once fires there have been extinguished.

“Of course (this is) Brazilian territory, but we have a question here of the rainforests that is really a global question,” she said. “The lung of our whole Earth is affected, and so we must find common solutions.”

Pope Francis also added his voice to the chorus of concern over the fires in Brazil, which borders his homeland of Argentina, and urged people to pray so that “they are controlled as quickly as possible.”

He told the public in St. Peter’s Square that “we’re all worried” about the vast Amazon fires. He warned that that green “lung of forest is vital for our planet.”

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Friday sent 44,000 soldiers to help battle the fires that are scattered across his nation’s share of the vast Amazon, an overall region ten times the size of Texas that is seen as a global bulwark against climate change.