Stability for Nigeria: peace begins with the youngest
Social tensions trigger uncertainty and violence in Nigeria. GIZ is helping to prevent conflicts before they emerge.
The best way to learn how to live together in peace and resolve conflicts is to do so from a very young age. This is why the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH is promoting psychosocial services for children in northern Nigeria. Many children are traumatised by violent conflicts between the various population groups. One of them is Mary Bulus, who lost her father. For a long time she was afraid of being alone, and of playing with other children. Then, with the help of trained psychologists, she learned through play how to deal with what she had been through. As psychologist Jerusha Chaimang explains: ‘After just a few sessions the children play with each other much more freely, have fewer nightmares and can participate actively in family life once again.’ An opportunity for the next generation to live together more peacefully.
Preventing conflicts before they emerge
Providing support post-conflict is one thing, but preventing conflicts from happening in the future is just as important. Since 2010, more than 15,000 people have lost their lives in violent clashes between semi-nomadic herders and farmers in Nigeria. These conflicts destroy infrastructure, disrupt agriculture and displace thousands of people. Consequently, one of GIZ’s priorities is preventive peacebuilding. With this end in mind, it creates formats where the various social groups come together and jointly reach agreements on peaceful coexistence. So far it has proved possible to resolve more than 80 local conflicts in this way, before they escalated into violence. As well as this, GIZ trains mediators who intercede between the groups, and offers peacebuilding training schemes for young people. In order to defuse conflicts over the long term, GIZ is also improving access to vital resources such as food and water, which are becoming ever scarcer as global climate change progresses.
GIZ, on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation (BMZ), is thus not only providing acute assistance for those affected but also backing strategic conflict prevention as a means of stabilising the Sahel region. This is also important for security in Europe. It is only when people live in security and have prospects in their own homeland that the risk of radicalisation is reduced and the pressure to leave the country diminishes.
