Displaced people receive food aid outside Goma in the eastern DR Congo. Credit: WFP/Jerry Ally Kahashi

By Jan Egeland
OSLO, Norway, Apr 3 2025 (IPS)

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) warns that 100,000s of people in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been pushed into desperate conditions by the escalation of violent conflict in 2025.

The escalation of violent conflict in recent months has pushed hundreds of thousands of people in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) into desperate conditions.

Displaced families sheltering at temporary sites have once again been forced to flee, as fighting and abuse plunge people into life-threatening situations. The explosion of humanitarian needs requires immediate attention from an international community that has turned its back on people in crisis. Parties to the conflict must end the violence facing civilians.

I am truly shocked by the conditions I have seen in and around the city of Goma. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people here in eastern DRC are hanging by a thread. Right across North and South Kivu, people have been repeatedly compelled to flee camps, where essential facilities were often already inadequate. Now, most find themselves in locations that lack shelter, basic sanitation, or drinking water, with diseases such as cholera rapidly increasing as a result.

People continue to flee fighting in the eastern DR Congo where Rwanda-backed M23 rebels have made major gains. Credit: MONUSCO/Aubin Mukoni

Our courageous staff remained in Goma during the height of the conflict, and were supporting the community once again within just a few days. But many displaced people I’ve listened to last week have lost everything after years of violence. It is unacceptable that a small number of humanitarian organisations are faced with a vast mountain of needs.

It is high time that assistance here matches the vast scale of human suffering. Long term solutions must be enabled, with children quickly allowed to return to school, banks to re-open, and an immediate end to violence and threats of violence against civilians.

Since the M23 offensive across the region earlier this year, an estimated 1.2 million people have been displaced across North and South Kivu provinces. 1.8 million people have been compelled to return to their places of origin, often to locations which bear deep scars from years of conflict between multiple armed groups.

Civilians face threats, gender-based violence, and extreme deprivation. Unexploded munitions continue to prevent many communities from fully cultivating their land.

Fighting and conflict are still continuing, with thousands of families caught in limbo, without the means to rebuild or cultivate food. The situation facing civilians in eastern DRC has for years been a stain on the international community: now it has become even worse.

NRC teams are providing displaced people with emergency aid, but there is too little funding available. The United States has for long been the largest donor to emergency relief and development aid in the country, but many US-funded projects have been interrupted or paused due to changes at USAID, just as humanitarian needs in DRC exploded.

DRC has for eight consecutive years been ranked as one of the world’s most neglected displacement crises, due to repeated cycles of conflict, lack of funding for aid and media attention, or effective humanitarian and peace diplomacy.

Millions of people have been repeatedly driven from first their homes and then, again, from camps, often multiple times. Families have been pushed into impossible choices just to survive, such as going to dangerous areas to find firewood to sell, exchanging sex for food, or sending young children to beg for money.

The level of global neglect experienced by civilians in eastern DRC should shame world leaders. Now, at a point of deep insecurity and with many families having returned to their areas of origin, there must be concerted action to finally support the population properly. Humanitarian and development assistance must now take priority: the people of DRC must not be faced with simply more of the same.

Notes to editors:

• In North Kivu and South Kivu provinces, 1,157,090 people have been displaced since the start of 2025, and 1,787,298 have returned to their areas of origin (IOM).

• Between January and February 2025, over 660,000 people were displaced out of temporary collective sites in Goma and on the outskirts of Nyiragongo territory (IOM).

• Across DRC, almost seven million people are internally displaced, with almost 90 per cent displaced due to conflict (IOM).

• In villages around Shasha, west of Goma, over 90 per cent of people lack proper latrines or washing facilities, and drinking water connections have been destroyed (NRC survey, conducted February 14-17 and covering 138 households).

• Every year NRC published a report of the ten most neglected displacement crises in the world. DRC has featured every year since the inception of the report, including in thrice as the most neglected crisis and four times as the second (NRC).

• The Humanitarian Response Plan for DRC regularly receives less than half of what is required to meet basic humanitarian needs. In 2023 it was 41 per cent funded; in 2024 it was 44 per cent funded (2023 UNHCR; 2024 UNHRC). In 2025, the humanitarian community in the DRC calls for $2.54 billion to provide lifesaving assistance to 11 million people affected by crises (2025 HRP).

• In 2024 the United States provided over two-thirds of the supplied funding for the DRC humanitarian response plan (UN OCHA).

• Access to sanitation and drinking water has become a major challenge. In areas where NRC is responding around Shasha, west of Goma, entire communities have returned to locations which lack functioning latrines, drinking water, or washing facilities.

• Cholera cases have spiked, with families forced to drink untreated water from Lake Kivu or from the river. NRC has established stations where water can be chlorinated and made safer, and is working to repair and rebuild damaged clean water infrastructure.

• In North and South Kivu provinces, 5,927 schools remain closed resulting in almost 2,000,000 children with no access to education (DRC Education Cluster).

• Food security remains a major concern across DRC, which is currently the largest hunger crisis in the world, with 27.7m people experiencing high acute food insecurity. This level means that many people do not have enough to eat, that many are experiencing malnutrition, and are being forced to sell anything they have to afford food (IPC).

• Agricultural land in many areas of North and South Kivu have lain untended for years owing to people fleeing violence. Elsewhere, those returning to their land struggle to evidence their ownership, thus increasing possibilities for disputes. NRC provides support to people to access and claim their land and continues to push for wider land rights reform (NRC Information, Counselling, and Legal Assistance).

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A family collecting hygiene kits from Maliha, in Eastern Ghouta, Rural Damascus, Syria. The distribution provided essential items to mostly Syrian and Lebanese families who had fled from the south of Lebanon. Credit: Norwegian Refugee Council

By Jan Egeland
OSLO, Norway, Nov 13 2024 (IPS)

“The shockwaves from Israel’s ongoing and indiscriminate warfare on Gaza and Lebanon are reverberating across this entire region. Neither the horrific assault on Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023, nor the indiscriminate missiles launched by militant groups from Lebanon, can justify the degree of destruction on civilian lives and infrastructure in the region that I have witnessed in recent days.

We cannot wait another day for an end to this senseless violence. For the sake of children across the entire region, diplomacy must result in a sustainable ceasefire.

The people I have met in recent days–from those in Gaza City, to the displaced in eastern Lebanon, to those crossing into Syria–longed for peace so they could return home. Children spoke of how much they missed school and their friends, and parents wished for an end to the precarity and suffering that displacement has brought. The suffering of millions cannot begin to end until those in power push for peace and take action to end the violence.

What I witnessed in Gaza was a society shattered by advanced weaponry, with ongoing military strikes relentlessly impacting the civilian population. War has rules, and it is clear that the Israeli campaign has been conducted with utter disregard for international humanitarian law.

As Gaza has been reduced to rubble, Western leaders have largely stood by unwilling to apply the necessary pressure on the stronger party, Israel, to stop starving the population that they are besieging and bombarding.

In Lebanon, I met people who in just a couple of weeks have lost their homes, jobs and everything in between. They are now staying in almost bare shelters that offer neither protection nor privacy, in fear that the worst is yet to come. The temperature has dropped substantially. People are ill-prepared for what promises to be the coldest winter season for the hundreds of thousands displaced.

Travelling into Syria from Lebanon via the Masnaa border crossing, I saw the huge challenges facing those fleeing violence in Lebanon, exacerbated by vast craters in the road caused by Israeli strikes. Displaced people must be provided with safe passage, shelter, and services.

Those fleeing into Syria arrive in a country with deep, pre-existing economic and humanitarian crises. NRC is providing support to those arriving in Syria, people who took the impossible decision to leave their homes while facing bombardment, and left with only what they could carry.

The aid we and others are currently able to provide is totally insufficient for the needs our staff are seeing. We must be given the right to independently monitor how those who flee from Lebanon to Syria are treated. There must be robust international support to meet people forced to flee, and there must be a genuine, re-energised diplomatic effort from all sides, to halt violence against civilians.

My visit started in Gaza, continued in Lebanon, and finished in Syria, tracing the fallout of this now regional conflict. At each point, the people I met said they wished for only one thing: peace.

Jan Egeland is Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). This article follows his visit to Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria.

NRC teams are operating across Gaza, Lebanon and Syria providing essential services to displaced people. This includes items such as mattresses, blankets and hygiene kits as well as cash. We are also providing clean water and sanitation facilities as well as education to children.

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Credit: UNICEF/UNI463720/El Baba

By Jan Egeland
OSLO, Norway, Dec 6 2023 (IPS)

The pulverising of Gaza now ranks amongst the worst assaults on any civilian population in our time and age. Each day we see more dead children and new depths of suffering for innocent people enduring this hell.

Across the Gaza Strip, almost the entire population – 1.9 million people – have been displaced. Nearly two in three homes are now damaged or destroyed. Amid relentless air, land and sea attacks, thousands of families are forced to relocate from one perilous zone to another.

Today, more than 750,000 people are crowded into just 133 shelters. Tens of thousands live on the streets of southern Gaza, where, under bombardment, they are forced to improvise basic shelters from whatever they can get hold of.

The winter rains have arrived and so have infectious diseases, just as public health services have been utterly paralysed. Many of my own NRC staff members now live on the streets. One of them does so with her two-month-old baby.

Credit: NRC – Norwegian Refugee Council

Our colleagues in Gaza ask themselves a simple question: how is it that these atrocities are beamed across the world for all to witness, and yet so little is done to stop them?

Countries supporting Israel with arms must understand that these civilian deaths will be a permanent stain on their reputation. They must demand an immediate ceasefire in Israel and Gaza. Only a cessation of hostilities will allow us to ensure effective relief to the two million who now require it.

Severe restrictions on aid access have aggravated the situation, leading to starvation among Gaza’s population, intensifying an already dire humanitarian crisis. We have been forced to halt nearly all of our aid operations due to the bombardment, the chaos, and the panic.

There must be accountability for those responsible for the killings, the torture, and the atrocities committed in Israel on October 7th.

The killing of thousands of innocent children and women, the siege on an entire civilian population, and the trapping of bombarded civilians behind closed borders in Gaza are also crimes under international law.

There must also be accountability for this, from political and military leaders as well as those who provided arms and support. This military campaign can in no way be described as ‘self-defense.’

We again demand that all hostages are immediately and unconditionally released. Neither the lives of innocent children, women or men, nor the ability of aid workers to access the vulnerable, should be used as bargaining chips.

The situation in Gaza is a total failure of our shared humanity. The killing must stop.

Jan Egeland is a Norwegian diplomat political scientist, humanitarian leader and former Labour Party politician who has been Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council since 2013. He served as State Secretary in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1990 to 1997 and as United Nations Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator from 2003 to 2006.

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The first caravan of Central American migrants reached the town of Matías Romero in Oaxaca state on November 1, 2018. The Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs estimates that 4,000 people spent the night there. Credit: IOM / Rafael Rodríguez

By Jan Egeland
OSLO, Norway, Jan 16 2019 (IPS)

A new caravan heading towards Mexico and the United States was reportedly set to leave San Pedro Sula in Honduras on 15 January. The large number of people expected to leave Central America is a true testimony to the desperate situation for children, women and men in this poor and violence affected region.

Instead of talking about a crisis at the US-Mexican border, North Americans must wake up and address the real humanitarian crisis in Central America. The long walk north will be extremely dangerous and exhausting for the thousands of families from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala that will join the caravans planned in 2019.

Obstacles on the way are likely to increase, as there is fatigue and frustration from communities who supported migrants during last year’s exodus. There is rising xenophobia in both the United States (US) and Mexico and increasingly tough border regulations in every country on the way.

Border controls, guards or walls will never stop people who are hunted by gang violence and flee for fear for their lives. Youth who have lost all hope for a better future in Central America will try repeatedly to reach a better life in the US, Canada or Mexico.

To tackle the current crisis, the more affluent American nations need to understand their own neighborhood and invest much more in bringing hope, security and good governance for people who currently see no other option than to flee.

Having spoken to many desperate Honduran families who have been or will be on the caravans, I am convinced that the current policies from the US through Mexico and Central America will only deepen the crisis, the desperation and the exodus. Investment in education, livelihoods and violence prevention are better alternatives to detention and deportation back to places where there is only misery and violence.

Hondurans who have managed to reach Mexico during previous journeys have told NRC staff that they were held in shelters, forced to sign deportation papers and deported without a fair hearing of their asylum claims. In spite of the hardships and the dangers many are still planning on leaving again even though they know of the slim chances of reaching the US.

“Dying here or dying there, it doesn’t make much difference. At least there I have a small chance to see that my life improves,” said one person who is planning to leave again for the north with the caravan.

If a gang is extorting you, if you are a witness to a crime or if your neighborhood is taken over by organized crime you may have no other option than to flee. People will only stay if they are protected from violence, lawlessness and crime and provided with education and livelihood opportunities.

Thousands of people remain stranded and blocked on the border between Mexico and the US where processing is extremely slow. The US and Mexico recently signed the agreement ‘Remain in Mexico’ in which the US will be able to send people back to Mexico while they go through the refugee status determination process.

This process can take years due to a backlog in the system. The agreement comes on top of President Trump’s attempts to build a wall, migrant children dying in US custody and last summer’s family separations crisis. 75,279 people were deported from Mexico and the US in 2018, according to a Honduran centre for migration: Observatorio Consular y Migratorio de Honduras (CONMIGHO).

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By Jan Egeland
OSLO, Norway, Sep 14 2018 (IPS)

Twenty-five years ago, on 13 September 1993, I sat on the White House lawn to witness the landmark signing of the Oslo agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Diplomats around me gasped as Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shook hands with former foe, Chairman Yasser Arafat. But for some of us present, the handshake came as no surprise.

Jan Egeland, former UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs

Previous peace diplomacy efforts had failed. A triad of occupation, violence and terror had reigned for many years. The Oslo Accords led to a rare epoch of optimism in Israeli-Palestinian relations.

When our back-channel began, neither Israeli nor American officials were allowed to meet with the Palestine Liberation Organization. The signing momentarily changed everything. The two sides exchanged letters of official recognition, thousands of Palestinians secured jobs in Israel, joint industrial parks were planned, the Israeli stock exchange soared, and the country’s Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Gaza could become a “Singapore of the Middle East.”

Our optimism may seem naïve today. Hindsight can raise many worthwhile critiques about what that handshake missed. Importantly, the Oslo “Declaration of Principles” was no peace agreement, but rather a five-year time plan for how to negotiate peace through increased reconciliation and cooperation.

Peace antagonists took little time to tear down our efforts to facilitate agreements on Jerusalem, settlements, refugees, and the status and borders of a future Palestine. Israeli terrorists killed Prime Minister Rabin and Muslims at prayer in Hebron, while a terror campaign from Hamas and other armed groups targeted buses and marketplaces in multiple Israeli cities.

Before final status issues could be fleshed out, the tide of optimism gave way to more terror, violence and brutal crackdowns. The following years brought a second intifada, record expansion of illegal settlements, an increasingly entrenched military occupation, division among Palestinian factions, and the closure of Gaza. Instead of recognition and a commitment to sit at the same table, the political context devolved into extreme polarization and mutual provocation.

Twenty-five years later, it is time to learn from the past.

Too few concrete steps were made during the initial months when mutual trust existed. Political elites on both sides did too little to enable reconciliation, justice and security in their own backyards. We also made mistakes as international facilitators in underestimating the counterforces against peace. As in so many places where peace diplomacy fails, humanitarians had to step in to provide a lifeline. In the absence of a long-term solution, urgent needs only increased.

Today, I lead a large international aid organization assisting millions of people displaced across the world, including Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria. I have rarely seen, felt or heard as much despair as among Palestinian youth locked into hopelessness in camps and behind closed borders. Unemployment for Gaza’s youth sits at 58 percent, according to the World Bank.

In a time when peace efforts are at a standstill, it has been more difficult than ever to deliver humanitarian assistance to Palestinians. Relief funding is diminishing, while humanitarian needs are on the rise. Partisan lobby groups and politicians hostilely question aid agencies focused on protecting human rights, more than any time in recent years.

Young men and women I met recently in Gaza told me they feel betrayed: “You told us to study hard, stay out of trouble and believe in better days. Now we are further away than ever from finishing our studies, let alone getting a job, a home or an escape from this cage.”

As Palestinians increasingly struggle to meet basic needs, economic opportunity is stifled by endless occupation. This is bad news for Israelis and Palestinians. It is not in Israel’s interests to oppress future generations of Palestinians, contributing to increasing bitterness in its own neighborhood.

Despite the grim trends, there is still a way out of the vicious cycle of conflict. Perhaps precisely therefore, in this bleak hour, we may have the foundation for a genuine peace effort. It can only be a matter of time before Israeli leadership realizes its long-term security is squarely dependent on equal rights and dignity for millions of disillusioned Palestinian youth.

Bridging humanitarian funding gaps and allowing aid delivery would raise real GDP in the Gaza Strip by some 40 percent by 2025, according to the World Bank. Such short-term gains can be bolstered by long-term investments in employment and increasing connectivity between the West Bank and Gaza.

Financial aid and other forms of investment in the Palestinian economy are urgently needed, but they are stop-gap measures, not the solution itself. Without a final political agreement, there can be no end to the human suffering.

Only a “just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement” will lead to “peaceful coexistence and mutual dignity and security.” These principles remain as true now as they were 25 years ago. But they must be rooted in reverence for international law. Palestinians are as entitled to basic human rights as are Israelis or Americans. Any future positive gains are only sustainable when fortified by a commitment to a political solution that upholds the rights and security of all people in the region.

No external actor has more potential for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than the United States. Only Americans have real leverage on the parties and the ability to provide the security guarantees needed.

A new U.S.-effort is sorely needed as tensions build once again, humanitarian work becomes more difficult, and tens of thousands of youth take stock of their lack of options.

However, unless America’s “ultimate deal” delivers equal rights, justice and security, grounded in respect for international law, it will only serve to strengthen political extremism among Israelis and Palestinians, further destabilize a volatile region, and ensure that too many Palestinians will continue to live under seemingly endless military occupation.

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Rohingya refugees now cramped in hilly terrains of Ukhiya in southeastern regions of Cox’s Bazar along Bangladesh border with Myanmar. Credit: ASM Suza Uddin/IPS

By Jan Egeland
OSLO, Aug 22 2018 (IPS)

Aid funding for refugee relief is running out while conditions are still not in place for the safe return of over 700,000 people forced to flee Myanmar to neighbouring Bangladesh after violence broke out one year ago.

The mass human exodus of refugees from Myanmar to Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, which started on 25 August 2017, was one of the fastest growing refugee crises last year. It then attracted huge international attention, but one year on only 34 percent of the United Nations aid appeal to help the refugees and the host community has been funded.

The Rohingya refugees are living in limbo. The safety of families returning to Myanmar cannot be guaranteed, yet they’re receiving scant international support in Bangladeshi camps.

We urgently need to scale up the support. The international community must shoulder more of the enormous responsibility that the Bangladeshi authorities and local communities have taken on, as well as show persecuted Rohingya refugees they are not forgotten.

“I have not cooked any food for my children today. I do not feel safe enough to go out and collect firewood, so I exchanged some food items for fuel, but now I do not have enough to eat,” Janoara, a single mother of two sons, told the Norwegian Refugee Council.

The humanitarian emergency was further compounded by the onset of the monsoon season in June, with heavy rain, flooding, landslides and high winds damaging or destroying refugees’ shelters. Despite ongoing relocations to safer land, the camps are still dangerously overcrowded, with the average usable space reported to be a mere 10.7 square meters per person.

Far more appropriate land is needed – a major challenge in one of the already most densely populated countries in the world. In Cox’s Bazar, rumours abound and people are worried about being expected to return to their villages before their own preconditions for repatriation are met.

“I will not return before Rohingyas get citizenship, equal rights, free movement and compensation for the houses they burned down and my land. I will not return with my family before we feel completely safe,” Nurul Amin (35) told the Norwegian Refugee Council. He fled Rakhine about one year ago and his demands are echoed by many others in the camps.

The Rohingya people have the right to return. One year after the start of this crisis, we urgently need to speed up efforts to ensure conditions for voluntary, safe and dignified return, in line with international standards.

Access for humanitarian agencies to people requiring assistance in northern Rakhine State is currently restricted and it is not possible to independently verify information about conditions in the locations of return. There are also no guarantees in place that returnees will be allowed to return to their original homes and land, or to a place of their choice.

Humanitarian agencies need full access to people in need in northern Rakhine State to make independent assessments, provide assistance and protect communities who want to return.

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Refugees on the move. Credit: UNHCR/Ivor Pricket

By Jan Egeland
OSLO, Norway, Jun 20 2018 (IPS)

Turkey, Bangladesh and Uganda alone received over half of all new refugees last year. Never before has the world registered a larger number of people displaced by war and persecution.

International responsibility-sharing for displaced people has utterly collapsed. Rich countries are building walls against families fleeing war, at the same time as less money is available for aid to people in conflict areas.

The number of people forced to flee reached 68.5 million at the start of 2018, according to figures from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and NRC’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. This is as many people as there are living in the United Kingdom.

International cooperation and peace diplomacy are in deep crisis. The number of people displaced worldwide is increasing for the sixth year in a row, and fewer people are safely returning home.

Forty million people are displaced within their own countries, and another 28.5 million have crossed a border and become refugees.

Turkey was the country that received most new refugees last year – 700,000 people. It now houses over 3.8 million refugees, most of them from Syria. In comparison, the rest of Europe as a whole received about half a million refugees last year, and the US received about 60.000.

When so few asylum seekers are arriving in Europe and the US, we have the responsibility to increase our support to less rich countries that are currently hosting a large number of refugees, like Bangladesh, Lebanon and Uganda, and increase the number of people we receive for resettlement.

The safety net we put in place after Second World War and which has provided millions of refugees with protection, is now being upheld by an increasingly small number of countries.

If these countries do not receive sufficient support, the whole protection system will unravel. If so, this will have dramatic consequences not only for the people affected, but also for the stability and security in many parts of the world.

By May this year, Uganda had only received 7.0 percent of the money needed for UN and other organisations to be able to provide necessary support to the large number of refugees from South Sudan and DR Congo. In Bangladesh the equivalent figure was 20 percent.

In addition to economic support to countries receiving a large number of refugees, 1.2 million refugees need to be resettled in a new country, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). These are people that are not safe where they currently are. Last year the UN member countries only received about 103.000 resettlement refugees.

The consequences of the lack of responsibility sharing were evident this month when the rescue vessel Aquarius with 629 refugees and migrants was denied entry to Italian ports.

When people in need at sea become pieces in a political game, it is a grotesque symbol of the current lack of a proper system for international responsibility sharing.

NRC is concerned to see new border barriers raise in front of people fleeing war and persecution, and the refugees’ rights being under threat.

In many of the countries NRC work, people in power are referring to how European countries are closing their borders, when they want to defend their decision to close their own borders.

We have to end this race to the bottom, and rather let us inspire by generous recipient countries like Uganda, where vulnerable refugees are being protected.

Facts:

• 68.5 million people were displaced at the entry of 2018.
• 40 million people are displaced within their own country, according to NRC’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC)
• 28.5 million people have fled their country and are refugees or asylum seekers, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).
• In 2017, 3.6 million sought protection in another country, either by themselves or through resettlement programs. Turkey received close to 20 percent of all new refugees in 2017, Bangladesh 18 percent, Uganda 15 percent and Sudan 14 percent.
• 667,000 refugees returned to their home country last year. Most returned to Nigeria (283,000)

Sources: UNHCR, NRC’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

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“Boko Haram came in the dark of night,” recalls Haja (17). “They killed my husband.” She fled with their young baby, Mommodu. Credit: Norwegian Refugee Council / Michelle Delaney

By Jan Egeland
Maiduguri City, Nigeria, Oct 13 2017 (IPS)

Haja grabbed her eight children and fled as Boko Haram set her home ablaze two years ago. Today we sit in her hut in a displacement camp, and she wonders how she is going to keep her children fed. I’ve spoken to many families in Nigeria’s north-eastern Monguno town. Their stories paint a horrifically detailed picture of the brutal violence these communities have endured over the past eight years.

The Nigerian Armed Forces have been at war with the Islamic extremists Boko Haram since 2009, fighting a battle that has seen well over 20,000 people killed. Recent military gains have pushed the jihadists back. In response, Boko Haram has stepped up attacks on softer targets like marketplaces and camps sheltering displaced people. Civilians have become the preferred pawns in this senseless conflict.

Borno State – the crisis’s epicentre – saw the highest number of attacks this year since 2013. Also on the rise is the appalling use of children as human bombs. We have seen four times as many so far this year, compared to the whole of last year. Here in northeast Nigeria, no place is sacred, no person is safe.

Despite these dangers, many government officials are keen to see communities move back home. This is usually a cause we should all champion. But the unfortunate truth is that pushing people back now will have harmful consequences.

Too scared to return

In the largest report of its kind to date, the Norwegian Refugee Council surveyed over 3,400 households – representing 27,000 displaced people – in Borno State, to find out whether communities were ready to return home. The results were undisputable.

Eighty-six per cent of people interviewed say they are too scared to return in the immediate future. Over 80 per cent of those cite insecurity as the main factor preventing them returning. An overwhelming majority tell us they feel safer in camps than where they were before. A startling statistic, considering camps are increasingly the target of suicide attacks.

Even if the security situation improves, our Not Ready to Return report found that half of the displaced people interviewed say their homes were destroyed in the conflict. There’s nothing left waiting for them.

Let them decide

Communities who decide to return home must do so of their own free will. Reports of coercion to expedite people moving home are most concerning. Returns must be safe, voluntary and informed.

Before displaced Nigerians return home, two key things must be done. Firstly, the overall security situation must improve. Communities must be, and feel, safe. This is the primary responsibility of the government and its armed forces.

Secondly, resources must be channelled into rebuilding homes and re-establishing livelihoods. Families need a roof over their head and the prospect of making a living if they are to have any chance of starting anew. This is where the international community can support.

We can provide them with the tools to do so – construction material, farming equipment, start-up capital and livestock. My organisation also counsels returnees on housing, property and legal rights. This is just a first step.

A toxic mix

Forced returns and new bouts of violence are just two ingredients adding to the danger that is stewing in the northeast. We managed to avert a famine striking Nigeria, for now. But let’s not forget that the food crisis persists. More than 5.2 million Nigerians do not have enough to eat.

The violence, coupled with food insecurity and a push to move people home prematurely, will certainly create a toxic mix ideal for exasperating the humanitarian crisis in the northeast.

Now is the time for long-term strategies, not short-term thinking – for Hajja’s sake and the 1.8 million other Nigerians anxiously waiting to return home.

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