Multifaceted Crises and Family Disintegration in the Far North of Cameroon

Abstract

This study analyzes displaced families’ disintegration amidst multifaceted crises in the Far North Region of Cameroon. The focus is on displaced families in four divisions where host communities along the border of Nigeria have fled Boko Haram, due to sociopolitical instability and environmental degradation. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses show how insecurity and precarity have resulted in disintegrating, dispersing and sometimes recomposing the traditional structure of the family institution by disrupting marriage traditions, gender roles and intergenerational relations. Such shifts in the family occurred as a result of the challenging contexts in their hometowns, during flight and after settling in the host towns. The findings demonstrate the effects of the multifaceted crises, which created intergenerational, but also inter- and intra-community rifts that are challenging to repair amidst mass distrust and continued insecurity. This study contributes especially to understanding how these crises affect family cohesion and intergenerational relations as part of dynamics of great social change.

1. Introduction

Border localities in the Far North region of Cameroon have been affected by multifaceted crises for more than a decade, mainly consisting of rising security problems coupled with dramatic consequences of climate change and environmental degradation. As such, sporadic invasions by the jihadist group Boko Haram and related extremist armed groups, as part of their terror campaign, have resulted in thousands of deaths and the abandonment of villages by survivors. Indeed, during incursions by armed groups, most people and families living in border villages tried to escape by any means, including faking their own death or hiding in places unknown to the attackers in the locality, before starting their forced displacement to host towns (Alexandrine 2022). The circumstances also induced massive displacement and increased poverty among surviving families. Fleeing individuals and families often left with no real destination in mind and without ideas on where to turn to for survival and livelihood (Goulet 2019). In this article, we explore how these multifaceted humanitarian crises impact displaced families in the region, focusing on how the experiences affected family cohesion and changed intergenerational relations.

Many analysts agree that the security crisis linked to Boko Haram and other armed groups in Lake Chad is the main factor leading to the massive displacement of people, who mainly go to the towns of Kousseri, Mora, Mokolo and Maroua (see Figure 1, below). Boko Haram is a politico-religious armed group inspired by a violent movement born in British colonial times in Nigeria, called Maitatsiné which rejected the British “civilization” project in the six states of northeastern Nigeria. Instead, they aimed to promote the Arab–Muslim culture that is said to have reigned in the ancient Kanem–Bornu Empire (Anugwom 2019). This kingdom refers to a large area between northeastern Nigeria and a good part of the Far North of present-day Cameroon. In this area, Islam is dominant, with sharia having been the mode of governance before colonial domination. Boko Haram presents itself as a continuation of this movement, taking up the cause of armed contestation allegedly for the benefit of Nigeria’s northern states. To integrate communities and recruit families, Boko Haram used a politico-religious discourse, compelling communities to believe it was a religious cause for which families must encourage their children to contribute to their objective: reconstruction of the former empire of Kanem–Bornu. In addition, the political narrative was built on a protest movement and the struggle for economic justice in the northeastern states of Nigeria, which had been neglected by the federal government. For all these reasons, families were invited to support the cause.

Since 2014, when Boko Haram’s first attacks took place in the Far North of Cameroon, the conflict has induced many displacements. While it is difficult to determine the exact number of people displaced and which displacements have been caused by the Boko Haram conflict unfolding in the Far North Region, official figures document 427,833 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Far North Region by February 2023 (Nanda et al. 2021). For a more accurate sense of the number of uprooted individuals, a related category of 203,166 IOM-registered returnees must be added in. The latter are Cameroonians living in Chad and Nigeria who have had to return to their country of origin because of social, political, economic, or environmental crises in Chad and Nigeria.

The prominent security issues related to Boko Haram tend to overshadow other instabilities such as volatile politics and unstable economic development, which have combined to plague the Far North Region since the end of the 2000s. From a socioeconomic and political perspective, the crisis can be attributed to cause-and-effect relationships wherein local governance structures cause inequalities in families’ access to subsistence resources (Chauvin et al. 2020). In fact, in the cross-border localities of Logone-et-Chari, Mayo–Sava and Mayo–Tsanaga, the sociopolitical crises reflect the prevailing logic of confiscating political power. A limited number of corrupted elites captured the rents to consolidate the system of political clientelism (Issa et al. 2020) that characterized social relations in the communities even before the appearance of Boko Haram. This state of affairs has considerably reduced the economic opportunities for many of the young people in the region. Often, they have been forced to leave their places of origin or were recruited by the armed groups as fighters, logisticians or aids in the communities, locally referred to as “lieutenants”. The precarity was exacerbated through the allegiances between armed groups and traditional local authorities. In addition, the security crisis linked to Boko Haram has changed the economic patterns of the cross-border divisions (Mayo–Sava, Mayo–Tsanaga and Logone-et-Chari), which are considered economically vulnerable. Transactions between the states bordering Lake Chad have been curbed, if not short-circuited, by the atrocities and taxation systems introduced (estimated at 10%) by non-state armed groups (Chauvin et al. 2020).

What’s more, for several decades, the Lake Chad region has been experiencing an environmental crisis that has dismantled the ecosystem and increased the vulnerability of populations in crisis zones. Repeated flooding, dotted rainfall, increasing drought and the invasion of insects into crops are undermining the socioeconomic stability of the populations, now more vulnerable to food insecurity than in the past (Gaye 2024). It is also jeopardizing the variety of biodiversity in the region and affecting the productive capacity of the soil. The forced migration of people in Lake Chad today is thus also the result of this series of ecological events, which reflect the suffering of the fauna that many communities are experiencing (Lulu 2022).

The environmental crisis certainly has anthropogenic origins (Magrin and Pérouse de Montclos 2018) due to actions that are endogenous and exogenous to the communities affected by the crises. From an environmental point of view, while human impact on the environment through deforestation and poaching of wildlife can be blamed for worsening the problem, natural factors, such as reduced rainfall, recurrent droughts and demographic explosion, are driving up demand for natural resources. In addition, non-conventional farming practices centered on the abusive use of synthetic chemical inputs that pollute the soil and damage the health of animal species exacerbate environmental crises in the communities from which they originate. These factors are not negligible, yet the incursions of armed gangs into cross-border localities or communities has been the major cause of the massive displacement of families in recent years. Defense and security forces deployed in these areas, moreover, were already struggling to ensure the defense and safety of the population.

Inevitably, these intertwined crises profoundly affect individuals, families and communities. And while there has been a fair amount of work seeking to understand the complex set of crises from security and humanitarian assistance perspectives in the greater Lake Chad region, which includes northern Cameroon (e.g., Nanda et al. 2021), the effects of the multifaceted crises on the family—specifically, family cohesion and intergenerational relations and family embedment in communities—merits more attention. Understanding the context of the family and affected communities has been proven to assist services and humanitarian assistance (Hietanen 2023). In this article, we therefore ask the following three questions: (1) How are the multifaceted crises pressuring and restructuring family units and social relations? (2) How and why has family disintegration taken place? (3) What are the effects on intergenerational relations?

Focusing on these issues concerning families and generations, we highlight the impact of crises on the very foundations of communities and society.

2. Methodology

To carry out this empirical study, the first author (Gaye) conducted fieldwork in the Far Northern Region of Cameroon, using a mixed methods approach. Quantitative and qualitative methods were deployed consecutively. The quantitative data allowed us to identify the scope of displaced families experiencing stress. Specifically, the survey sought to identify the proportion of displaced families to non-displaced families, their reasons for flight and the characteristics of the living circumstances of displaced families in the host towns. For sampling, we took several steps. First, we selected clusters of neighborhoods in which the families of displaced people had settled. Only adults were interviewed for the quantitative survey. Quantitative data collection in households was conducted using Open Data Kit (ODK) and Kobo Collect, an application linked to a questionnaire hosted online. The advantage of this collection tool is that the data collected can be viewed in real time by the researcher. These findings revealed the significant experience of family disintegration and separation.

The follow-up qualitative interviews and focus group discussions (FGDs) enabled us to delve into the day-to-day experiences within each family. We focused on families that had been under pressure due to security-related crises, using inclusion criteria such as arriving from localities in which Boko Haram has made incursions, having experienced separation from other family members for at least six months, being in a family experienced as disintegrated, intending to settle in the host town for the long term and going through difficulties surviving in the host town due to climate change. In other words, we excluded from our follow-up interviews families of displaced people who had not experienced separation or disintegration or were living together in the host towns. Interview guides were designed according to gender and age. The male/female specification was important within the research setting and families since gender-based experiences and needs of individuals were expected to be linked to their sex and age. Accordingly, we conducted three FGDs: one with men, one with women and one with male and female young people. The group of young people was mixed because its members tend to be more uninhibited and inclined to speak out no matter the composition. The FGDs focused on collective experiences, such as suffering endured in places of departure, difficulties encountered during the influx to the host towns and precariousness of life in the host towns.

Of the total sample of 25 participants, 40% were men and 60% women. All, except for those in the group of young people, were heads of families. In addition, we collected 16 life stories of women who became heads of households following incursions by armed groups that over time separated families in several cases. To do this, the snowball method let us reach women who were experiencing family recomposition or breakdown, identifying them as point-of-entry beneficiaries of humanitarian aid programs. All interviews and FGDs were recorded and transcribed verbatim.

The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and graphs for the quantitative data. For qualitative data, we employed systematic content analysis, focusing on the questions of family composition and social relations, including intergenerational relations. The theoretical saturation threshold was set on the basis of the recurrence of the informants’ experiences. Saturation was reached after 16 interviews, and the FDGs.

Ethical and deontological considerations were observed to comply with the social science research standards. To this end, we obtained authorization from Cameroon’s Governor of the Extreme North region to carry out this study in the concerned localities. The permission was also necessary to comply with security measures at defense and security posts in cross-border zones, given the risks associated with spontaneous incursions by Boko Haram. We asked for informed consent from the subjects in this study prior to participation. When participants were under 18, we also obtained verbal consent from their parents, who were unwilling to sign consent forms for fear of unforeseen negative repercussions. To avoid exposing the interview participants, we use pseudonyms to refer to our research participants.

The next section organizes our findings according to the three main themes identified: the reasons and experiences of displacement, the effects on community relations and family cohesion and intergenerational relations.

3. Results

3.1. Displacement Experiences

Since the end of the 2000s, spatial mobility has increased in the Far North Region (Magrin and Pérouse de Montclos 2018). This has been a direct consequence of the booming access to and use of mobile phones as well as the effects of technological and digital globalization. These combined circumstances makes it easier for young people in rural areas to leave their families at a young age to move to the city (UNCTAD 2021). Yet in the Far North, the acute security and environmental crises were the main factors behind the exodus to the cities in the 2000s (UNFPA 2012). These have been exacerbated by conflicts resulting from socio-political issues and the depletion of natural resources in the main production basins, as

Table 1. Population movements in the Far North.

Divisions	Conflicts Linked to NSAGs 4 (Boko Haram and ISWAP) 5	Seasonal Flooding or Heavy Rainfall	Natural Disasters (Drought, Landslides, Dyke Breaches)	Inter-Community Conflict	Other Reasons	Total
Diamaré	6871	140	0	6263	31	13,305
Logone-et-Chari	189,575	24,231	1232	38,452	2394	255,884
Mayo–Danay	172	103,225	0	5096	180	108,673
Mayo–Kani	3629	398	0	1633	101	5761
Mayo–Sava	165,466	0	0	0	46	165,512
Mayo–Tsanaga	130,180	0	0	3	1194	131,377
	495,893	127,994	1232	51,447	3946	680,512
	73%	19%	0%	8%	1%	100.0%

Source: Displacement Data in Far North, (IOM 2023). ⁴ (NSAG’s) stands for Non-State Armed Groups; ⁵ (ISWAP) Islamic State West Africa Province.

shows. The table shows that while non-state armed groups (NSAGs) are the main cause of massive internal displacement, environmental crises such as floods and droughts, and inter-community conflicts prompted by dwindling resources were also significant pushes for families and communities to move to towns. In our research, the main reason for the departure mentioned by families was the terror that the Boko Haram insurgents inflicted on members of the communities during their incursions. Some of the parents we spoke to reported that the effects of climate change have been affecting their livelihoods for several years while causing smaller-scale internal displacements to the towns, but the majority of farmers have always adapted to climatic hazards, such as floods, droughts and attacks by migratory birds devastating the produce still left in the farms. However, the security threat posed by armed groups led to a tenfold increase in the number of families who have chosen to leave, they said. The period from 2014 to 2019 was characterized by numerous deadly incursions, affecting communities and families regardless of their ideology and support for the armed groups. The incursions aimed to create widespread fear (“terror”) and to enable Boko Haram and other extremist armed groups to gain notoriety and make governmental authorities submit to their own authority. Violence that Boko Haram inflicted on the communities, moreover, was part of a strategy of coercion to recruit families and rally villages to their side. Such fates befell villages including Djibrilli, Gouzda Vreket and Kerawa Mafa.

Where life in their home areas had allowed the families to live a “normal” life—meaning to live according to their social values and observe rituals and traditions—the multifaceted crises caused by the security and environmental calamities forced families in the Far North to flock to host towns (Magrin and Pérouse de Montclos 2018), including Kousseri, Mora, Mokolo and Maroua. The flight from border villages in Nigeria, including Kerawa, Amchidé, Djibrili and Nguétséwé, often took an average of four to five days to reach the host towns.1 Many families we spoke to recounted the horrors they experienced during these incursions, which left their collective marks on self-defense groups within the communities2 and the community as a whole. When she had to flee to save her life following a Boko Haram incursion in 2016, Madafaï, a 38-year-old mother, lost all her possessions, including her national identity card and savings.

My family was attacked... It was after this incursion, which caused at least 50 deaths in the community, that we left our village as a family. My husband, who had fled with the three older boys, was able to save his life because they [left earlier because] the situation was getting worse by the day. The whole village was traumatized [after the incursion]. We had no hope, and the worst thing was for us to leave everything behind and go and live somewhere else. At Kerawa Mafa [home village] we lived like a big family, with my brothers-in-law, his nieces and nephews, his cousins... everyone was there. How could we leave without all these people? That was our big dilemma, but when we heard about the attack on Gouzda–Vreket five days later, we decided to leave [only] with food and non-food items.

Notably, we found that in most cases people displaced by Boko Haram left their hometowns with their whole family. While many cases of separation have been recorded, the International Committee of the Red Cross has been able to help reunite almost all the families who experienced separation during displacement.

For many interviewees, the decision to flee did not come easy, and many had tried to stay in place despite the potential of threats to their safety. For instance, Oumaté from Mora, a 47-year-old father of six, explained that in Ashigashia, he escaped with his family only after repetitive attacks of Boko Haram. Leaving for him “meant almost dying” because it was not just a question of losing what his family had accumulated and built up over many years, but the problem above all was that “our souls” had to stay back. “How can we live while we abandon a part of ourselves to our enemies?” Oumaté continued: “If it hadn’t been for fear of exposing the children to violence, I would have stayed to face what was going to happen to me.” Kangatlam, an IOM Program Officer in the Maroua sub-office, confirmed that “the survival of children is the greatest motivation for parents to leave border areas”.

The direction people fled depended on three influential factors. First, the location of settlement was often influenced by where acquaintances, friends and brothers were already settled. However, the trajectories toward these towns revealed that only very few (wealthy) families were able to make a direct journey. More than 90% of the families stayed for longer periods of time in several villages before arriving at their desired destination. Second—apart from those who decided on a place to settle because of an acquaintance or family member—around 20% of the people we surveyed were motivated by livelihood opportunities and the prospects of carrying out a trade that could facilitate their integration into the town. For example, many displaced families moved to Maroua because of the great economic advantages in terms of informal jobs the city offered. The third influential factor was the possibility of receiving humanitarian aid from humanitarian organizations and United Nations (UN) agencies. Zamay was particularly attractive, with the established infrastructure of aid from the State of Cameroon and UN agencies, which have been operating since the arrival of the first displaced families in 2015. The same scenario applied to migrants who followed the support provided to IDPs by the diocesan Caritas organizations of Maroua–Mokolo and Kousseri. Caritas Maroua–Mokolo had made Zeleved its base before the locality became regularly attacked by jihadists who had just come from the mountain of Djibrili right across, and less than 10 km from the Catholic Health Center of Zeleved, where the displaced families were then accommodated.

Nonetheless, our interviews revealed that many of the forcibly displaced suffered due to their enduring hope of returning to their communities of origin. Gonondo, a 42-year-old father of four from Zeleved, described it as follows: “We want to go back to our villages to live a normal life. There we have what we need as capital and we can live with dignity.” In these families, people held out hope that the pre-conflict situation would soon be restored and the communities could return home. But the situation has persisted for 10 years now, the family’s cash reserves are exhausted and the situation keeps deteriorating by the day. The situation is becoming increasingly difficult, as Moussa, a 52-year-old father displaced to Mora, explained.

The news from the displaced families’ villages of origin is not good. The villages are deserted, production and commercial activities are no longer possible because no one comes to or passes through these villages anymore, apart from the occasional patrol by the military doing a sweep to track down members of the armed groups or their deserters who refuse to go to the demobilization, disarmament and reintegration (DDR) camp at Meri. The few villagers who have remained generally sleep in the mountains to avoid being surprised by Boko Haram militants. As far as farming is concerned, it is almost impossible to cultivate the farms because of the soldiers of the Joint Multinational Force (JMF) considering farming in those areas as feeding the Boko Haram; and for the armed groups, it is an act of defiance or resistance to their presence in the area. In addition, the only border markets where people can buy and sell are those that have been rehabilitated by the states, such as in Banki or Amchidé, but they remain uninviting because of the high risk for both traders and buyers. Clearly, for the displaced families, the idea of returning to their homeland and benefiting from the efforts they made before the conflict remains utopian for the time being. That’s why, they say, “We prefer security for our families, even if it is precarious in the host towns”.

In light of the experienced atrocities and displacement, unstable and impaired mental and physical well-being had become noticeable among some of the displaced community members in Mokolo, Mora, Kousseri and Maroua. This was seen, for instance, in their subversive behavior. In recognition of the psychosocial distress displaced people were experiencing, many organizations started providing psychosocial support, including workshops, recreative activities, group counseling and sensitization about mental health.

3.2. Livelihood Struggles in Host Communities

Meeting the basic essential needs (Sen 1988) of displaced families in an environment where stigma reigns limits the ability of people and families to become self-sufficient. Indeed, even before the influx of displaced families, access to water was very complicated for the host communities because of the land’s aridity and lack of public policies to provide the service in the two administrative divisions that hosted more than 70% of the displaced families. The presence of displaced families added to the problem in all the administrative divisions, particularly those bordering Nigeria as well as Maroua and Kousseri cities. Climate change and the advancing deserts from both the north and the south within the Far North Region are causing concern of even greater water scarcity in the near future. What’s more, demographic growth, although relatively stable in the towns, has been considerably disrupted by the influx of large numbers of displaced people, including, to some extent, returnees.

The forms of discrimination impacting access to community resources or basic social services are underlined by the words of a 35-year-old woman living in Koza since 2016.

The natives don’t pay to get water, but the displaced people are refused water if they delay a bit. We pay 1500 francs a year (which is about 3 USD). Often when we do pay, they come and say that you displaced people have to wait, this isn’t your village. When we were in the other district, you would come and directly put your jerrican to draw water only to see someone come to throw your jerrican and say, “Is this your village?” even if you’re in front of him. Often there are fights. You either want it or you don’t, you just have to put up with it. There are people who can’t stand it, and they’ve left.

Aside from water issues, housing revealed itself to be a central issue; out of the 300 displaced family households surveyed, the majority were hosted by family members (36%) or in spontaneous shelters (23%) built from straw or tarpaulins. Significantly fewer were able to have their own dwelling (12%), reside in an initial dwelling to which they belong before moving to the bordering localities (15%), rent (9%), be hosted in exchange for labor (3%) or live in a shared shelter (1%) or open-air housing (1%). The 36% of families housed by their acquaintances or close relatives benefitted from kinship links with the families who agreed to house them. The sharing of existing resources—housing, water, land for cultivation, firewood or fruit trees—gradually evolved into competition for their access. Indeed, the compassion that used to animate the host communities transformed into hatred by the growing demand for all resources. Moreover, the sporadic aid provided to displaced families by humanitarian organizations was perceived by the host communities as an injustice to them, thus fueling hostile sentiments toward the families of the internally displaced (

Table 2. Type of shelter occupied by families.

Divisions	Spontaneous Shelter	Renting	Shared Shelter	Open-Air Housing	Hosting by a Family	Host Family in Exchange of Housework/Farming	Initial Dwelling	Personal Dwelling	Total
Logone-et-Chari	9811	5609	50	52	18,255	605	6368	4845	45,595
Mayo–Danay	2930	126	0	483	2409	136	5021	3129	14,234
Mayo–Kani	271	35	0	0	115	77	8	97	603
Mayo–Sava	9846	1435	0	0	9000	490	2667	2857	26,295
Mayo–Tsanaga	2672	2338	915	48	9775	1566	1961	2486	21,761
	25,719	10,306	1501	583	40,004	74	16,070	13,424	110,481
	23%	9%	1%	1%	36%	3%	15%	12%	100%

Source: (IOM 2023). In Cameroon, land is sub-divided into Divisions, Regions, Subdivisions, Villages and Neighborhoods.

).

By analyzing access to housing, the availability of food for displaced families and access to water, it became obvious that displaced families are left to fend for themselves in these very complicated and essential situations.

3.3. Consequences for Community Cohesion

Another challenge is the social mix of the displaced communities. Logone-et-Chari, Mayo–Tsanaga and Mayo–Sava, almost all the ethnic groups, including those uprooted, speak and understand each other linguistically. There are also religious similarities between the groups, with the majority being Muslims, Christians and Animists. In the city of Maroua and surrounding area, hosts displaced families alongside former members of armed groups who, with assistance, were being reintegrated into their diverse communities. Furthermore, whether families supported or were against Boko Haram and rebel groups caused social rifts. Some families dogmatically rejected the Boko Haram narrative, being wary of their speeches and attempts at engagement because of their use of indiscriminate violence. For this reason, many families took the stance that Boko Haram’s penetration must be avoided and denounced, while others, despite their displaced status, supported the cause.

Mistrust invaded social relations. To illustrate the mistrust, people explained that it was impossible to trust people you did not know because kidnappers had infiltrated every environment to provide information to the “high command” of the armed gangs scattered along both sides of the border between Cameroon and Nigeria, affecting both relationships between displaced communities and between displaced and host communities. The perceptions and representations shared by the various ethnic groups had much to do with the support that respective community or opinion leaders gave to Boko Haram or Islamic State - West Africa Province (ISWAP). “Support” may in fact be an overstatement, but the massive presence of one ethnic group among the commanders of non-state armed group militants nonetheless led to other social groups believing that the majority’s ethnic group was actually endorsing the armed insurrection. Consequently, displaced Kanuri, Mafa and Glavd ethnic groups—who have also dominated the command structure of armed groups in border areas (Issa et al. 2020)—have often experienced stigma, affecting their opportunity to integrate into host towns. A form of social anomie took hold, and led to stigmatization of displaced families as a whole as they were seen as affiliating with Boko Haram and whose children tended to commit urban banditry in the host towns. Social anomie is understood here as instability in social relations, leading to a degradation of respect for social norms and tradition, as social institutions no longer function in the terroir. This, for example, has led to the self-stigmatization of the Kanuri in Maroua.

3.4. Families Under Pressure

During the mass exodus, and especially following murderous attacks, families experienced many hardships, including separation. Young people and the fathers of families were the main targets of jihadist attacks. This forced young and adult men to spend their nights in the bush or mountains to avoid being found with their families during attacks, and men tended to flee in different directions from the rest of their families. The differing flight trajectories of fathers and sons from the rest of their family caused much stress for families and, at times, long periods of separation. While some men were able to reunite with their families after a few weeks, a few months or after even more than a year, others were waiting since 2014 or 2015 to reunite. For families unable to reunite after several months or years, the consequences for the other family members could be fatal. For example, we were told that women who found themselves alone with their children and had not learned to fend for themselves, given their earlier life in the patriarchal communities, died from difficult conditions in the host communities. Ostensibly, this has been the case for hundreds of the families we met in the displaced persons camps in Zamay and Ouro–Tada as well as in neighborhoods in Mora and Kousseri that received large numbers of displaced people. Reuniting was also met with many challenges during flight and once settled. Without husbands and sons, women, children and the elderly passed through several transit towns before settling in what would come to be their host town. On the way, women and their children experienced numerous difficulties linked to a lack of amenities and bad weather, depending on the season. As a result, many children contracted diseases, notably pneumonia. This was notably mentioned by those who had to spend a week getting to Mozogo or Koza in Mayo-Tsanaga and those who had set off from Fotokol to reach Kousseri (in total, 100 km) via intermediate localities.

In a context where poverty is also widespread in host communities, displaced families generally relied on their pre-crisis social capital to support their integration on arrival. Families who chose a host town where they had no acquaintances or network of social relations could only have their needs taken care of by humanitarian aid workers, who generally offered no more than a fifth of what was needed for them to live in dignity. “This precarious situation pushes able-bodied members of migrant families to break away from the family and move to wherever there are opportunities”, said Blama. In other words, men of displaced families, including fathers and boys over age 16, often chose to leave for other horizons, such as to fight and to send subsidies to their families. Many of those who have left have never been heard from again. This has weakened and continues to disintegrate the families who are still living with the trauma of flight and loss of family and social cohesion.

A mixture of distrust—between the internally displaced as well as between the displaced and the residents of the host town—has undermined family cohesion and structure; through mistrust, stigmatization and discrimination (Çam and Irmak 2014). All these factors affect the most sensitive and fragile members of society, such as single mothers whose husbands have passed away or have abandoned their families for prosperity elsewhere. In Mokolo, for example, Mbellé a displaced 35-year-old mother from Kerawa Mafa continued to suffer after her husband left her.

Matakon, my husband, told me he was going to explore the possibility of resettling around Garoua and he would come back to get us. For three years and four months he has never come back to see me or his children. The boys have started taking Tramadol [drugs] with their friends they met here in Mokolo and sometimes go five months without coming back to see us. We live off the help of individuals and sometimes aid workers. Everything I’ve been through has affected my cognitive abilities. We had a normal life before Boko Haram.

Many families have followed the same trajectory as Mbellé. These victims live with effects that they psychologically drag throughout their and their children’s lives. As for the children left in the care of Mbellé for almost ten years, they have all grown up. Gandaï, the eldest, was 19 and working as an apprentice mechanic to support his mother, who also started a small business with the help of her cousins in Mokolo. Although the family initially heard from unreliable sources that he was on his way to Nigerian towns, Mbellé wanted to know what had become of him or if she should mourn him if he had died in the meantime. For the whole family, the pain of separation lessened with time, but the loss of Matakon and not hearing from him for the last eight years was a persistent trauma for the children.

The very difficult conditions described above affected the family not only from the outside but above all from the inside. The inability of men to assume their institutionalized responsibilities within the family weakened their position and led women to adopt new habits, sometimes contrary to their traditions. After fleeing with her two children, 25-year-old Yagana found herself bereft of all resources. She had learned to look after herself and her children before her husband, 30-year-old Boukar, reunited with them four years after forced separation during an incursion. After the reunion, Boukar, who was a transporter, could no longer work in the host town. As a result, Yagana, who had gone into the restaurant business with the help of humanitarian agencies, became the new head of the family because she was the only one who could meet the family’s needs. This weakening of the man’s position—and in this case his authority as head of the family—contributed to the disintegration of the traditional family structure. In a context where men could no longer bear their loss of authority, it was observed that the abandonment of their families forced women who had not previously learned a trade to seek support from men who would subject them to remarriage. Indeed, the culture of these communities authorizes a woman to marry another man as long as the previous husband has not been in the home for at least six months. This was the choice of some women, while others opted instead for a non-formal union with men who supported them in ensuring their family’s subsistence—an option was consciously chosen to not let marriage affect their children. As such, the families got broken down, recomposed and readjusted with a view to adapting to the new realities they had to adopt in their survival strategies.

While this is not a crisis of the family model, as is the case in some civilizations (Makiwane et al. 2017), family composition has experienced a major shock in communities affected by the multifaceted crises discussed so far. Although the question does not arise with the same acuteness in situations of adaptation or resilience for families affected by environmental crises, in many families displaced by conflict and Boko Haram, family breakdown has been commonplace. We understand family breakdown as a scenario in which the family unit is weakened by the absence of full parental authority. This vacancy of parental authority may be caused by the disappearance of one of the parents or simply by a resignation in this parental function due to the incapacity to apply legitimate authority according to traditional rules or the precarity that the family faces. Some sociologists, for example (Tosi 2013), see family breakdown in times of crisis as short-term fragmentation caused by the family’s inability to maintain its unity due to the extreme fragility to which families are subjected. In the Kanuri and Mafa neighborhoods of the Zamay transit center for displaced persons, for example, many young boys could not bear the precarity in which their families were forced to live and finally decided to leave their families to fight in the towns.

Similarly, some heads of polygamous families were no longer able to provide the minimum subsistence to the family and were forced to abandon their wives and children, moving to an unknown whereabouts. Some families have had no news of their sons or fathers for up to six years since they arrived in the IDP communities. In all these sites where IDPs have been living for many years, many families have experienced family breakdown, particularly as women and girls have been left to fend for themselves. This has been especially problematic because some cultures expect women to only do household chores, providing no experience of ensuring their own subsistence. As a result, these women and girls had to agree to pair with other men—some of whom were merely neighbors—to ensure the survival of the family members who remained together. For example, marriage has become an adaptation and integration strategy for Arab–Choa girls, who seek men who are wealthy or can take care of them and all their nuclear families in precarious situations in the towns of Maroua, Kousseri and Mokolo. At the same time, the families of internally displaced persons are exposed to community promiscuity. To get by, this has become a way of life since access to housing is almost impossible for displaced families who have lost everything but their lives in the face of extreme violence or environmental crisis (e.g., drought and flood) in the areas of departure.

The other aspect of family breakdown is based on changes in social roles within the household, sometimes linked to traditions of origin. In several cases, families have broken up because the assistance provided to women by humanitarian organizations has enabled some displaced women to get by with income-generating activities. Indeed, many of the beneficiaries of the empowerment programs for displaced women have been able to become their family’s providers. As a result, some women could no longer stand the fact that their husbands were no more than “extras” since their own social roles came to include ensuring the family’s subsistence. In this context, many women left their husbands on the pretext that they became violent toward them or that the men decided to leave because they completely lost their authority within their families. At the same time, as women have become more autonomous, the marital bond has become more fragile since, based mainly on emotional ties. In this respect, more than the figures, it is the meaning of divorce that interests sociologists such as Tosi (2013) and Freundel (2021). Divorce was long forbidden, exceptional, marginal and taken as a sign of family instability or a crisis in the individual or society; now it has become a commonplace act in the communities of internally displaced persons in the Far North. It is no longer a form of sociological and cultural deviance. Indeed, the post-separation process, notably analyzed by Théry (1993), highlights a paradox: parenthood, or even the family, survives ”unconjugalisation” and even “uncohabitation”, especially in communities of crisis victims; the break-up is no longer perceived as the end of the family but as a means of improving the extremely fragile conditions to which the families of displaced persons are subjected.

In the communities participating in this study, practices have not fundamentally changed in terms of the conception of marriage, whether among young people or the very elderly. What has changed is the fact that marriage is seen as a survival strategy in the context of the precariousness and poverty of displaced families. These families no longer have the resources to look after themselves in cities where the effects of climate change make household food security difficult. In this context, intergenerational and intragenerational marriages continue to be common practice. Each person does so according to their own interests and needs. Mamma, an 18-year-old girl, was given in marriage to Elhadj Moussa, who is over 60 and owns several shops in Maroua’s central market. Unlike this couple, 27-year-old Ibrahim and 23-year-old Fanné met in Louguéo, a neighborhood for displaced families, and married six months later. Intergenerational relations have remained static, as these practices existed even before the crisis. On the other hand, exogamy and inter-denominational marriages are increasingly noticeable in towns hosting displaced families.

4. Discussion and Conclusions

The security crisis raging in the Lake Chad basin has led to the mobility of many people who find themselves without shelter or resources in an unknown place. In this context, forced migration, according to Likibi (2018), is a traumatic experience of dependence and survival and people are deprived of their fundamental rights. In their social journey, they are abandoned by both the host communities and the state institutions responsible for their protection, as specified in national and international conventions.

This article postulates that the sociopolitical and environmental crises are leading to a precariousness of families living in difficult conditions in the towns where they have chosen to settle. The situation has forced them to make concessions on their identity frames of reference to ensure their survival through exogamous marriages, leading to the recomposition of families. It has compelled families to find new livelihood strategies that affect norms, values and power relations as well as the social cohesion of families. As such, while their frames of reference were well established in their places of departure, the multifaceted crises have brought about a major change in the concept of family and in kinship ties. Before the crises, marriages were essentially endogamous and not mixed. Initially, this endogamy was limited to ethnic and clan ties and linkages, but religion took on the role of a sociological group entity, which then opened up the possibility of reconsidering religious brotherhood. The latest changes can be seen as part of a strategic approach to the survival of displaced persons affected by the crisis, just as they can be explained in terms of social change, whereby ethnic and religious ties fade away in favor of civilizational considerations that are deeply rooted in the perception of current generations. Thus, exogamous and mixed marriages are recorded between adults as well as young people with substantial differences—in terms of origin, beliefs and even tradition. In the past, these differences might have prevented any union between these profiles. As shown in the example of Maroua, Arab-Shoa girls have had to enter into marriages with people whose real identities have never been revealed to the girl’s parents, so as not to cause psychological suffering to the family members or to avoid the social ostracization of the community of faith or belonging for the family concerned. In Mokolo and Zamay, families have been recomposing themselves since the beginning of the crisis, with families who have experienced the separation of members while escaping from terrorist attacks or after having experienced very difficult situations in centers or towns hosting displaced persons. To have emotional stability and commence a new life, any Muslim women who have been separated from their husbands for several years have also started to accept non-Muslim men.

Two key issues shape these familial and kinship changes, namely the fact that families are often displaced from rural to urban settings, and two, that the crises often pull the various family members who lived together before flight, into different directions and locations. In the host towns, mainly urban contexts, the social codes that imposed family social relations in their communities of origin are no longer applicable. Gender roles change within the family because the traditional social order no longer makes sense in the city. Women must leave home to contribute to productive activity and support the family. Young girls meet people with lifestyles deemed indecent by the traditional frames of reference that have always guided their way of being and doing things. The social mix takes hold and micro-cultures meet. Men abandon their marital and family responsibilities, and women take on new freedoms they had never known before. Families break up, and parents enter new marriages of fortune in a difficult context. Children are forced into non-standard marriages (inter-religious marriages, exogamous marriages, long-term cohabitation, inter alia).

While in times of peace intergenerational family relations are codified around responsibilities between the generations, in times of crisis this social link built around generational responsibilities is largely destroyed and deconstructed. The structure of the intergenerational family in the Far North of Cameroon can be seen in the role played by grandparents, parents and children, who form the three generations within an extended family. When all three levels co-exist, the grandparents play the role of gatekeepers of the tradition to be passed on to the grandchildren. The parents are responsible for providing for their children as well their own parents if the latter are no longer able to produce their own food. Finally, the children are responsible for contributing to household production activities and livelihoods, especially once they are old enough to farm or look after livestock. As argued above, this social organization breaks down in times of ecological crisis and, especially, security crisis. For almost all the participating families, when the crisis strikes, only contingencies are managed until the family is resettled and they no longer live all together. Because of grandparents’ age and inability to move at the same pace as the rest of the family, their displacement trajectory rarely follows that of the parents and their children. When a security crisis triggers the displacement of the family, young people of an age sought by armed groups also take trajectories different than family members who are not the target of the incursions.

These findings highlight the weight of the host towns on deeply rooted realities such as beliefs, norms and values. All these changes are induced by the precarity that families encounter due to flight and life in the host towns. All in all, the traditional family structure remains intact in ideal, but there have been changes as a result of new realities and perceptions, rendered acceptable by the effects of the crises on communities in the Far North of Cameroon. Our findings come at a time when a great deal of scientific work is being conducted on these intertwined crises in the Lake Chad region. In this study, we contribute notably to insights on how these crises affect family cohesion and intergenerational relations as part of dynamics of great social change.