Children displaced by climate change face abuse, lost education

[LAGOS] Early last year, 13-year-old Annie was forced to take a bold move for her safety. She had to relocate from her hometown in Taraba, northern Nigeria, to Jos in the country’s central Plateau State.

Her parents did not want her to fall victim to herders frustrated by climate change laying siege to farms, maiming residents and molesting minors.

For weeks, Annie (not her real name) lived under the care of a humanitarian volunteer who later enrolled her in a secondary school.

About five months into her stay in Jos, the terror Annie fled some 400 kilometres away suddenly came upon her in her new location in a horrific encounter that will likely haunt her forever.

“One afternoon, I went to buy things in the market when my landlord brought in the tiler to do some work in his apartment,” the volunteer recalled. “Before I returned, he [the tiler] had dragged the girl into my bedroom and raped her.”

A 30-year-old man is currently on trial in connection with the alleged rape and remanded in prison pending a verdict.

“We face so many challenges but the most pressing ones are food, health, education and shelter.”

Gabriel Yev

“Annie went back home in December last year and her parents didn’t allow her to come back to Jos. They said she ran into the danger she ran away from,” the volunteer told SciDev.Net.

Annie’s plight highlights the indirect effect of climate change on children.

According to a UNICEF guideline report on protecting children on the move in the face of climate change, released in July, in 2020 alone nearly 10 million children were displaced by the impacts of climate change. UNICEF says that with nearly half of the world’s 2.2 billion children in 33 countries at high risk from climate change impacts, millions more children could be forced to move in the future.

Children confronting climate-induced crisis

Experts have observed that climate-related conflicts have major implications for children’s futures.

“Their education will be truncated,” said Samuel Olajuyigbe, a senior lecturer at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, who specialises in forest ecology and biodiversity management. “They would face threats such as malnutrition, disease outbreaks and child and sexual abuse.”

Erdo Yev’s shot at formal education suddenly ground to a halt shortly after it began. At primary one, her journey into a prospective career in nursing was cut short after gunmen invaded the area where she lives in Makurdi, the capital city of Benue state, North Central Nigeria.

Four years after the then-ten-year-old Erdo was displaced with her parents and four siblings by pastoralists who took over the family’s large farm, her chance of returning to school dwindles by the day.

“To immediately save and protect lives, we must build the resilience of every child and young person to the impacts of the climate crisis.”

Phuong Nguyen, UNICEF Maiduguri, Nigeria

Nine-year-old Terkimbir Ubete faces a similar ordeal. Both children are residents at an internally displaced persons camp in Ichwa on the outskirts of Makurdi, where the reporter visited.

Erdo’s father, Gabriel Yev, is a 37-year-old humanitarian worker who heads the Ichwa camp where over 10,000 internally displaced persons currently reside. “Our children no longer have access to formal education. It is some volunteers who come to teach them occasionally,” he told SciDev.Net.

Why children are at risk

Yev said that more than half of the residents of the Ichwa camp and its two annexes are children. And since 2020, when they were relocated to the camp from different settlements, 235 births have been recorded amid worsening poverty and living conditions.

Yev is worried the toddlers may soon end up joining the growing number of out-of-school children in the camp, as parents – mostly farmers – have lost their only means of livelihood.

Children who nurse the ambition of becoming doctors, lawyers or engineers now spend the day playing football, unsure of their future.

The impact of climate change is shrinking water resources and grassland. Pastoralists are reacting by encroaching into farmlands to graze their cows and competing with communities for access to streams that serve as the only source of drinking water in some communities.

Environmental degradation and desertification have also drastically reduced available fertile land for farming. In effect, farmers and herders compete for the land, a limited resource.

Joseph Ochogwu, an associate research professor with the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution in Nigeria, says violence could be mitigated if various groups can develop an understanding on how to share scarce resources, particularly water and land.

Hunger worsening children’s plight

Aside from being unable to access schooling, the crisis has exposed children to acute hunger and malnutrition.

According to a September report by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the UN World Food Programme, Nigeria ranks third among food insecurity hotspot countries, after Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia.

The report estimates that 19.5 million people in Nigeria are in a food crisis.

Samuel Ubete, a 47-year-old farmer, told SciDev.Net that he has lost his more than five hectares of yam, rice, soya beans, corn, millet and groundnut crops.

“All my crops were destroyed and my houses burned by herdsmen. As I speak to you, my wife is pregnant and I have no means to feed her and the children,” he said. “At times, she sleeps hungry. My children have stopped school and there is not enough food for them to eat. Most times, they eat once in a day.”

Yev used to grow rice, yam and groundnut. His rice farm alone was about five hectares and he sometimes harvested 70 to 80 bags of rice, with each bag earning him about 12,000 Naira (US$33) in 2018 when he was displaced.

“It has not been easy but we thank God for life. Sometimes my wife works in a rice mill to support the family, while I go out to do menial jobs. We spend the little income we make on food. [Non-government organisations] also assist us occasionally.” Yev said. “We have had five cases of miscarriage linked to poor feeding in this camp. The women were diagnosed with acute malnutrition in a hospital. We don’t get food items from the government.”

Poor diets during pregnancy can cause anaemia, pre-eclampsia, haemorrhage and even death in mothers and can lead to stillbirth, UNICEF cautions.

“We face so many challenges but the most pressing ones are food, health, education and shelter,” Yev said, while explaining that children live in tattered makeshift tents under harsh weather conditions.

“If it rains at night, we stay awake with our children. Even for a few families who could manage to cover their tents, moisture from the ground frustrates them, but it is better than being killed,” he added.

Phuong Nguyen, chief of field office at UNICEF Maiduguri in northern Nigeria, warns that there is a brief window of time to avoid the worst of the climate crisis. Governments must protect children’s health, safety, education and opportunities by adapting the critical social services they rely on, she said, while preparing young people for life with a changed climate.

“To immediately save and protect lives, we must build the resilience of every child and young person to the impacts of the climate crisis,” she told SciDev.Net.

”Businesses and decisionmakers must prioritise children and young people in climate funding and resources”.

Olajuyigbe urges Nigeria’s government to resettle displaced children. “Empowerment schemes should be introduced for their parents to rebuild their lives,” he said.

“The children face a difficult future if nothing is done to engage them.”

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.