Herdsmen-farmers conflict has displaced 1.5 million residents of Benue State, Nigeria, according to government officials. Internally displaced persons (IDPs) have lost livelihoods, farms, personal property and community infrastructure. The paper highlights the social challenges they have experienced and the response by government and international humanitarian agencies (IHAs) to their situations. Based on interviews with 12 IDPs belonging to the displaced population from Guma Local Government Area of Benue State and interviews with seven humanitarian workers, the paper finds that the IDPs:
• Have lost family members, neighbors, farms, churches, health centers, and means of mobility.
• Cannot safely return home or access their ancestral lands.
• Cannot support themselves.
• Cannot attend public school or progress to a university.
• Lack access to quality health care.
• Live with multiple families in insecure shelters.
• Cannot reliably obtain birth registration and replace other destroyed documents.
• Can register their names, family relations, and former villages, but not their losses, which might lead to compensation and help them to rebuild their lives.
The paper makes the following recommendations.
• Registration, Effective Remedies and Access to Justice: The Benue State Emergency Management Agency (BSEMA), Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs (FMHA) and United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) should document personal and community socio-economic losses to ascertain the extent of damage to IDPs in order to facilitate effective remedies. The Ministries of Justice, the National Human Rights Commission, and UNHCR should support the IDPs by providing them with information and procedures that allow them to secure full compensation for their losses, and with safe, permanent solutions to their situations, including full integration into their host communities, safe and voluntary return home, or resettlement in a third community.
• Engage IDPs as Stakeholders: The Benue State Government should ensure that BSEMA communicates to IDPs the possibilities for voluntary and dignified safe return. If return is not immediately foreseeable, BSEMA should offer IDPs the means to relocate and resettle elsewhere.
• Provision of Sustainable Social Amenities: BSEMA, the FMHA, and international humanitarian agencies (IHAs) should provide sustainable healthcare, shelter, education in IDP camps, financial assistance and the means to access services outside of IDP camps.
• Peace through Establishment of Ranches: Benue State Government’s Peace Commission should resolve the herdsmen-farmer conflict and restore peace by promoting peaceful co-existence between the conflicting parties. Herdsmen should be educated on the procedures for legal land acquisition for ranching, and farmers should be able to seek legal redress when their farms are damaged by grazing cattle. BSEMA and the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs should also facilitate voluntary, safe and dignified return of IDPs or their resettlement in another community.
• Safeguard IDP Camps: BSEMA and the Nigeria security agencies should safeguard official and unofficial IDP camps.
• Inclusive Policy Implementation: The FMHA in collaboration with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) should develop humanitarian response plans that are beneficial to all IDPs in Nigeria irrespective of the cause of their displacement.