As an activist in Maiduguri explains, the situation here is not like that in Syria or Afghanistan in its scope or international awareness. “It’s not been ten years with foreign fighters and a big war with just 50,000 dead,” he sighs. “Here, we lose entire communities in the blink of an eye and people do not seem to look.” [...]
The sheer statistics of the crisis are shocking. At the time of writing, more than 2.3 million people have been displaced. 7.2 million are “food insecure” and are at risk of starvation and malnutrition. And over half a million children are considered to be “severely acutely malnourished”, meaning they are weeks away from death if they don’t receive urgent assistance. [...]
An array of factors limits the extent of the humanitarian intervention in the Lake Chad Basin, such as safety concerns, an overstretched budget, and the politics of intervention. However, Gubio gives undue credit to the will and capacity of the international humanitarian community in the first place. Among other things, its lack of engagement is also undeniably an exercise in privilege. The host communities absorbing those displaced by Boko Haram have no choice but to engage with this crisis. They do not have the option of turning a blind eye.
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