More than 3.5 million people have been forcibly displaced across the Lake Chad Basin as escalating violence pushes the region towards a humanitarian catastrophe, the UN refugee agency has warned.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Friday that insecurity across Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria was driving a deepening crisis, with humanitarian needs rising despite years of efforts to stabilise the region.
Speaking at a briefing in Geneva, Andrew Wyllie, deputy director of UNHCR’s West and Central Africa bureau, said 8.2 million people across the Basin now require humanitarian assistance.
The agency said security incidents had risen by 80% between January 2024 and April 2026. Between September 2025 and May 2026 alone, nearly 1,800 security incidents and more than 5,700 deaths were recorded, including attacks on civilians, kidnappings, explosions, clashes between armed groups and raids on villages.
UNHCR identified Nigeria’s north-eastern Borno state as the epicentre of the crisis. Repeated attacks by non-state armed groups, military operations and growing insecurity along key roads and displacement routes have continued to uproot families while hampering humanitarian access.
The agency warned that the conflict was no longer confined to Nigeria’s north-east, with insecurity and displacement increasingly spreading to the north-west and parts of the Middle Belt.
More than 77,500 people have been displaced across the four countries since January, including more than 16,000 refugees who fled attacks in north-eastern Nigeria into Niger’s Diffa region, where emergency assistance is being provided.
Violence is also increasingly spilling across borders, the agency said, with attacks in one country triggering fresh waves of displacement in neighbouring states.
Persistent attacks have fuelled insecurity in Cameroon’s Far North region, while recurrent violence and military operations in Chad’s Lac province have displaced about 60,000 people and prompted authorities to declare a state of emergency in May.
Civilians continue to bear the brunt of the conflict. Recent protection monitoring found that one in five households no longer feels safe in its own community.
Women and girls face mounting risks of violence while specialised protection services remain severely overstretched. According to UNHCR, the proportion of people who know survivors of violence rose from 19% in 2025 to 27% in 2026, underlining a rapidly deteriorating protection environment that remains widely underreported.
Children have been particularly hard hit. About half of all children living in the worst-affected areas are out of school, while in Chad’s Lac province the figure exceeds 78%.
The agency also reported growing concerns over child protection, with one in four respondents saying there were separated or unaccompanied children in their communities. In Cameroon’s Far North, the figure rises to one in three.
Wyllie praised governments in the region for keeping their borders open to people fleeing violence and for continuing to support displaced communities.
“UNHCR is working with them across all four countries to assist people fleeing violence, monitor risks, support new arrivals and ensure families can access documentation, assistance and, where conditions allow, pathways to return, reintegration and recovery,” he said.
But the agency warned that humanitarian operations were struggling to keep pace with escalating needs.
UNHCR and its partners require an additional $29m by December 2026 to sustain operations, maintain critical protection services and support government-led stabilisation efforts across the region.
“Without timely and flexible support, protection gaps will widen, displacement will continue to spread across borders, and the risk of a more entrenched regional crisis will increase,” Wyllie said. “The trajectory remains deeply concerning, but it is still reversible with sustained support now.”
