Climate change fuels deadly conflict in Nigeria’s Middle Belt

At Ichwa camp for internally displaced people near Makurdi in Nigeria's central Benue State, Mimi Kiva is leading a class of young children in a song accompanied by lots of giggle-inducing jumping and clapping. Despite having no formal teaching qualifications, the 47-year-old is a natural - passionate and caring, with seemingly endless reserves of energy.

Even before this classroom was built last year and Mimi was recruited as a volunteer teaching assistant, she was gathering children in the camp together for outdoor classes. "I tell them stories about things that were happening in our lives before we came into the camp; about our culture," she says. "I enjoy it because I forget about everything."

There is much that Mimi would like to forget. Three years ago, she was not a teacher but a farmer. She, her husband and their three children had two hectares of land in Guma Local Government Area, just a 30 minute-drive from the camp. They grew yams, sesame and millet and kept pigs and chickens. Mimi was particularly proud of their yams, which grew to a large size in the area's rich soil. Occasionally, nomadic cattle herders would pass by. "They would ask our people for millet or yams, and we would give to them," recalls Mimi. "That was then, but not now."

One day, as Mimi, her husband, and their 11-year-old daughter were tending to their yam fields, they heard a gunshot. When they looked up, they saw armed men. There was no time to run. The men raped and killed Mimi's daughter. Mimi herself was raped and her husband was killed. A hunter later found her injured and unconscious and helped her into the bush. They hid there for two days before it was safe enough for him to bring her to the camp. There, she received medical treatment and reunited with her two sons, now aged 12 and 15.

"I lost everything," says Mimi. "If you go to my village, everything has been burned down; I cannot farm any longer. And it's not only me … we all went through these things. We have a lot of widows and orphans here."

Nearly all the 3,790 registered residents of Ichwa camp, and of many other camps dotted around Benue State, were smallholder farmers like Mimi, forced here by violent land grabs.

Over the past decade, conflict between communities has claimed countless lives in Nigeria's lush Middle Belt region and displaced an estimated half a million people in Benue State alone. Similar clashes are playing out across the Sahel region as climate change disrupts traditional livelihoods and intensifies competition for dwindling supplies of water and productive land.

A report released today by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, in collaboration with research partners, examines the intersection between climate change, conflict and forced displacement. It warns that more frequent extreme weather can aggravate tensions and weaken social cohesion, intensifying the root causes of conflict and instability.

Meanwhile, extreme weather events such as floods and drought are compounding the threats faced by people already displaced by conflict and violence. Currently, about 90 million forcibly displaced people live in countries with high-to-extreme exposure to climate-related hazards, and nearly half of all forcibly displaced people are bearing the burden of both conflict and the adverse effects of climate change. That figure is set to grow as climate-related hazards intensify over the coming decades.

A new challenge

The majority of Nigeria's cattle herders traditionally practice a nomadic way of life, moving with their herds in search of pastures. Previously, they roamed across the country, but changing rainfall patterns and severe desertification have driven increasing numbers of them to central and southern Nigeria, where population growth and frequent flooding have reduced the amount of land available for grazing.

"Climate change is a new challenge that we didn't experience 20 or 30 years ago; it's really impacting us," says Ibrahim Galma, Secretary of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association (MACBAN), an umbrella group representing the interests of cattle herders in Nigeria. "Our pastures have become dry and our animals can't survive. It makes our herders travel long distances and, since 2012, there has been a serious crisis."