African Arguments: “We lose entire communities in the blink of an eye and people do not seem to look.”

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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The Atlantic: Why Was Chad Included in the New Travel Ban?

Chad’s inclusion on the list of countries deemed security risks to the U.S. is additionally difficult to explain given its role over the past 15 years as a key counterterrorism ally. In April, U.S. forces participated in annual counterterrorism exercises with their counterparts from around the world in Chad. Chad’s inclusion in the list was met with astonishment in the country, and not only because this close counterterrorism partnership: The country has mostly managed to avoid the kinds of terrorist attacks that have afflicted its immediate neighbors like Nigeria and Mali.

“Chad sits in a very tough neighborhood,” Lauren P. Blanchard, a specialist in African affairs at the Congressional Research Service, told me. The country is a relative oasis of stability. It hosts French and U.S. forces, is engaged in fighting al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Mali, was critical in pushing back Boko Haram in Nigeria, and plays host to the Multinational Joint Task Force, the regional military effort to fight Boko Haram. [...]

The U.S. State Department, in its most recent country terrorism report from 2016, acknowledged Chad’s financial challenges in providing “external counterterrorism assistance in Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria,” but noted that Chad “engaged in major external military operations in … neighboring countries,” as part of the Lake Chad Basin Multinational Joint Task Force, which includes Benin, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria. Chad, the State Department reported added, was also contributing to the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali. Additionally, the report pointed out that terrorist incidents in the country had fallen due both to “proactive security force presence” and a split within Boko Haram. [...]

Terrorism aside, Chad certainly has its problems. These include an authoritarian government under President Idris Déby, politicization of the armed forces, and widespread poverty despite the country’s oil wealth. But the country—and the wider region—remains a key focus of Western counterterrorism efforts. Brigadier General Donald Bolduc, who until recently was commander of American Special Operations Forces in Africa, called the Lake Chad Basin, which encompasses Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria, “ground zero” of the war on extremism in Africa. Blanchard told me “Chad is very important in figuring out movement between ISIS elements in Libya and Nigeria—they have to go through Chad or Niger.”

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Business Insider: Mesmerizing maps show the global flow of refugees over the last 15 years

Earth TimeLapse, an interactive platform created by Carnegie Mellon University and Robert Muggah, global security expert and research director at the Igarapé Institute, details over a 16-year span from 2000 to 2015 where migrants are leaving and arriving.

Data comes from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Each red dot represents 17 refugees arriving in a country, while yellow dots represent refugees leaving their home country behind.

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Business Insider: You may be surprised by the 10 countries that hold over half the world's refugees

Ten countries, accounting for just 2.5 per cent of global GDP, are sheltering 56 per cent of the world’s 21 million refugees, according to a report published on Tuesday.

The rights group criticised the wealthiest countries for showing “a near absence of leadership and responsibility” while the refugee crisis escalates. [...]

The report highlights the contrast in the number of refugees from Syria taken by its neighbours and by other countries with similar populations.

The UK has taken fewer than 8,000 Syrian refugees since the country’s civil war began in 2011, while Jordan, which has a population almost 10 times smaller than the UK and just 1.2 per cent of its GDP, hosts more than 655,000 Syrian refugees. [...]

“It’s disgraceful that the UK hosts less than one per cent of the world’s refugees when our size and prosperity mean we should do so much more. Desperate families are forced into the hands of traffickers precisely because countries like ours have pulled up the drawbridge. Smaller, poorer neighbouring countries are left to try and cope, and when they can’t, more people are forced to try to move on, seeking a basic level of safety

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Al Jazeera: Boko Haram refugees in Niger find safety, but lack aid

As Nigerian forces have progressed against Boko Haram, the cornered terror group has been carrying out more attacks in neighbouring countries. In Niger's Diffa region on the northeastern border of Nigeria, more than 280,000 people have been displaced.

Most of the displaced, do not live in refugee camps, but in ramshackle settlements next to a national highway. The situation continues to deteriorate and new families arrive on a daily basis, fleeing violence and hunger in the Lake Chad Basin. Humanitarian aid organisations struggle to reach everyone in need of assistance. [...]

According to the United Nations, the people of Diffa are arguably the poorest on earth, living in the least developed region in the least developed country of the world. Meanwhile, one refugee for every four residents has arrived in their communities as a result of the conflict. [...]

Some of the displaced received basic tents from humanitarian actors, but the vast majority built improvised shacks with whatever materials they could find: straw, tarpaulins or wooden twigs. Some of the recent arrivals still live in the open. [...]

Of the 20 million people living in the Lake Chad Basin, a region stretched over Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroun, at least 9.2 million are in urgent need of life-saving assistance and more than five million people are severely food insecure [PDF]. At least four million people have no access to aid, say humanitarian organizations.

According to UNICEF, an estimated 475,000 children across Lake Chad will suffer from severe acute malnutrition this year. In the northeast of Nigeria, where Boko Haram has been seeking to carve out a hardline Islamist state since 2009, the military confirmed that three to four people a day are dying due to malnutrition. However, humanitarian organisations say this figure is probably much higher as many areas remain unreachable.

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