In Cameroon, a family dreams of the thousands of cows, sheep and goats its village used to have, inherited from their forebears. They dream of going home to the village they had to flee when Boko Haram moved in.

A refugee camp run by the run by the International Committee of the Red Cross for Cameroonian civilians who have been affected by armed violence



In Chad, cattle herders watch their animals die because they are unable to access fertile grazing on Lake Chad’s labyrinth of islands, now infiltrated by heavily armed insurgents.

In Nigeria, a woman trying to process the year of rape and abuse she escaped learns to cope without her family in a camp run by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Members of a displaced family who used to live on the lakeshore hear that a missing son has been seen in Niger. They have no way of contacting him.

Women widowed by the conflict register to receive economic support from the ICRC

The effects of the nine-year Boko Haram insurgency reach into four countries and millions of lives, and it is by no means over.



Security forces pass near a refugee camp in south-eastern Niger, where 47,000 Nigerien refugees and people forced from their homes by conflict have taken shelter

Over and over, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari and his generals have declared that they have “beaten”, “defeated”, “technically defeated”, “routed” and “broken the heart and soul” of Boko Haram, the militant group that has wreaked havoc in north-east Nigeria and caused millions of people to flee their homes.

In a video released recently by Abubakar Shekau, Boko Haram’s most notorious leader, he asks the Nigerian army: “If you have killed us, why are we still alive?”

More than half of the Chibok girls have been freed, as well as all but one of the 110 Dapchi girls kidnapped in February, but thousands of less high-profile abductees are still missing. Tens of thousands have been killed – the UN says at least 20,000, but that is widely held to be far below the true number.

Fractured families: Paulina, 42, was abducted during a Boko Haram attack

Beneath the mayhem of Boko Haram lies the real problem, which is extreme poverty Kashim Shettima

Nearly 8 million people in the Lake Chad region are in acute need of aid and protection, and this year’s humanitarian response plan is asking for more than $1bn (£714m) in donations.

“Innocent civilians continue to suffer daily from direct and indiscriminate attacks in the north-east of Nigeria,” said Yassine Gaba, the UN’s deputy humanitarian coordinator in Nigeria. “Endless numbers of explosions, brutal killings, abductions and lootings continue to uproot the lives of women, children and men daily. I call on all parties to the conflict to end this violence and to respect human life and dignity.”

Trade routes are closed, the fish trade is banned, farmers cannot access their land, and food prices are extremely high.



Hundreds of thousands of people are trapped in garrison towns throughout north-east Nigeria, with no jobs or income, waiting for the much-repeated mantra of President Buhari and his subordinates to be true.

But even if Boko Haram is routed, defeated and beaten, the displaced communities may never be allowed to go home.

“We will not allow the people to go to the countryside,” said Kashim Shettima, the governor of Borno, a Nigerian state at the epicentre of the crisis.

“We will not allow them to go back to the villages, but we’ll allow them to go back to the local government headquarters. You know, the world is changing. This issue of allowing the fractured existence of our people – 10, 20 families making up a village – is gone.

“We have to aggregate them into larger settlements so that we can provide them with services: schools, clinics, boreholes. The fractured existence makes them vulnerable to Boko Haram,” he said in an interview with the Guardian last year.

Rebuilding all the damaged homes, infrastructure and restoring public services would cost more than $9bn, according to a recent assessment. Shettima said this was essential, along with creating millions of jobs.

Men who were forced from their homes on one of the islands on Lake Chad

“A military solution can never be the only solution to this insurgency; there has to be a political solution, there has to be an economic solution. Beneath the mayhem of Boko Haram, underneath the nihilism, lies the real problem, which is extreme poverty. Once you engage the youth, once you create jobs, this madness will evaporate.

A market outside an IDP camp near Maiduguri, Nigeria

“We are breeding a new generation of Boko Haram fighters,” he added, pointing out that there are thousands of orphaned children in Borno. “If we fail to provide for them, they will take care of us.”