Nigeria’s Borno State government’s efforts to shut down government camps hosting thousands of displaced people by December 31, 2021 is creating risks and hardships, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should suspend the camp closures, which fail to guarantee displaced people’s rights.
In August 2020, the Borno State government announced and began plans to resettle over 1.8 million displaced people from camps in Maiduguri, the Borno state capital, to other communities across the state where the government said houses and other amenities had been constructed or renovated to accommodate them. This was followed by another announcement in October 2021 that all displacement camps in Maiduguri will be shut down by December 31. But the resettlement and camp closures so far have taken place without adequate notice or information and left many people worse off.
“It is unconscionable to uproot people who have already lost everything to the conflict without dignified and sustainable alternatives,” said Anietie Ewang, Nigeria researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The rights and well-being of displaced people and refugees should be the paramount consideration as the authorities navigate the northeast conflict and its impact.”
The Boko Haram conflict, now in its twelfth year, has displaced over 2.9 million people in Nigeria’s northeast and hundreds of thousands to neighboring countries. Most of the internally displaced people are in Borno State, the epicenter of the conflict, living in host communities and the camps.
Between September 2020 and December 2021, Human Rights Watch interviewed 16 people including 11 displaced people and 5 humanitarian workers involved in helping them, by phone and in person. On December 6, Human Rights Watch also interviewed by phone Bitrus Mshelai, of the Borno State government’s Ministry of Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Resettlement, which is leading the efforts to relocate people and shut down the camps.
People interviewed said that under the right conditions they want to return to their normal lives in their home communities due to the poor conditions in the displacement camps. But Human Rights Watch found that the authorities’ process for returning didn’t give them adequate time, information, or options to make informed decisions.