Multifaceted Crises and Family Disintegration in the Far North of Cameroon
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authorsplease see the attachment.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
English needs major improvement, for instance "I" mixed with "we"
Author Response
Reviewer 2
Dear Reviewer,
Many thanks for the thorough reading of the text. Since your review of the previous version, the paper has undergone major revisions, and entire sections have been rewritten. Your comments were valuable, and below we have addressed only those which are still relevant in this amended version. We hope the revisions provide more clarity, flow and structure to the arguments.
- "clique" is tendentious and has not place in scholarly publication. Who belongs to this group? What rent did they capture? How did they capture them? Why? Was there political clientelism before? Has it always been the basic pattern of political relations?Please be specific. Readers do not have the time and the patience to read pages of generalities.
Thank you for making us aware of the wording and vagueness. This has been rewritten in the following way:
The prominent security issues related to Boko Haram tend to overshadow other instabilities such as volatile politics and instable economic development, which have combined to plague the Far North region since the end of the 2000s. As far as the socio-economic and political aspects are concerned, cause and effect relationships can be demonstrated when local governance and inequalities in families' access to the means of subsistence are the real causes of the crisis (Chauvin & Alii, 2020). In fact, in the cross-border localities of Logone and Chari, Mayo-Sava and Mayo-Tsanaga, the socio-political crises are part of the prevailing logic of confiscating political power. A limited number of corrupted elites capture the rents to consolidate their system of political clientelism (Saïbou & Alii, 2020) that characterised social relations in the communities already 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.
2. Please explain the types of ecological crises
In the introduction we have added the following:
In addition, for several decades, the Lake Chad regions have 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 socio-economic stability of the populations, now more prey to food insecurity than in the past (Gaye, 2024). It is also jeopardizing the variety of biodiversity present 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 of communities are experiencing these days (Lula, 2022).
The environmental crisis certainly has anthropogenic origins (Magrin, 2018), due to actions that are endogenous and exogenous to the communities affected by the crises. From an environmental point of view, while mankind's impact on the environment through deforestation and poaching of wildlife resources can be blamed for worsening the environmental problem, it is important to bear in mind that natural factors such as reduced rainfall, recurrent droughts and the demographic explosion are driving up demand for natural resources like these. 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, are also factors that exacerbate environmental crises in the communities from which they originate. These causes are not negligible, yet the direct factor in the massive displacement of families in recent years has been the incursions of armed gangs into cross-border localities or into communities. In these areas the defense and security forces deployed were already struggling to ensure the defense and safety of the population.
3. Statistics about the effects of such “massive displacements” are needed. Please be specific.
We have revised and added to the following text:
Since Boko Haram has been operating in Northern Cameroon since 2014, 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 suggest that by February 2023 there were 427,833 Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) (Nanda et al, 2021). A related category of 203,166 IOM registered returnees must be added to gain a sense of the number of uprooted individuals. 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.
4. What are poor farming practices? Are these chemical based?
In the introduction (as already stated in comment 1) we have added the following:
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, are also factors that exacerbate environmental crises in the communities from which they originate.
5. You rightfully inquired about distances and the amount of people traveling/ fleeing. We have therefore become more specific, such as in this example:
Allegedly, 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 town 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 elderly passed through several transit towns before settling in what would come to be their host towns. On the way, women and their children experienced numerous difficulties linked to lack of amenities and bad weather, depending on the season. As a result, many children contracted diseases (pneumonia in particular). This was especially mentioned by those who had to spend a week getting to Mozogo or Koza in Mayo-Tsanaga, or those who had set off from Fotokol to get to Kousseri (in total, 100km) via intermediate localities.
6. Section 3.1.2. Rally villages to their side: are there villages that rally to the side of Boko Haram? If so, which ones? What are the consequences of their rallying?
We have added the following:
The incursions aimed to create widespread fear (‘terror’) and to enable the Boko Haram and other extremist armed groups to gain notoriety and make the governmental authorities submit to their own authority. In addition, the violence that Boko Haram inflicted on the communities is part of a strategy of coercion aimed at recruiting families and rallying villages to their side, fates befallen to villages like Djibrilli, Gouzda Vreket or Kerawa Mafa. CONSEQUENCES OF RALLYING!
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis article offers a novel contribution to understandings of this subject matter but it requires some structural re-arrangements and tidying up of presentation which is incomplete in some areas.
The opening section of the article ties together an introduction and a contextual review and would benefit from a separation of a modern detailed introduction (highlighting what the article will cover) and a separate section which review the subject context and relevant literature. At the moment, the absence of a literature review to contextualise the originality of the submission is a critical omission.
A rationale needs to be provided for the choice of methodology before starting the data collection. The rationale is critical as there is novel research here and the author should explain how their research has developed new knowledge ahead of the findings section. The finds are the strongest part of the paper and will be strengthened by changes in other areas of the article. This will enable the author to be more analytical in their approach to the data and to conclude with further insights to the value of the research and the changes to social structures that have been observed.
Author Response
Reviewer 1
- This article offers a novel contribution to understandings of this subject matter but it requires some structural re-arrangements and tidying up of presentation which is incomplete in some areas.
Dear Reviewer. Thank you for this important note. As part of the major revisions, we have restructured and largely re written the paper to streamline and complete the arguments. The revisions are so extensive that it is best to see the revised paper, rather than paste it here in its entirety here. We hope the restructuring, cleaning up and strengthening of arguments is to your liking.
2. The opening section of the article ties together an introduction and a contextual review and would benefit from a separation of a modern detailed introduction (highlighting what the article will cover) and a separate section which review the subject context and relevant literature. At the moment, the absence of a literature review to contextualise the originality of the submission is a critical omission.
We agree that the introduction and the literature review needed to be reworked and brought to a greater depth. Please see the introduction of the article.
3. A rationale needs to be provided for the choice of methodology before starting the data collection. The rationale is critical as there is novel research here and the author should explain how their research has developed new knowledge ahead of the findings section. The finds are the strongest part of the paper and will be strengthened by changes in other areas of the article. This will enable the author to be more analytical in their approach to the data and to conclude with further insights to the value of the research and the changes to social structures that have been observed.
We have revised the introductory paragraph of the methods section and we hope this addresses your points sufficiently.
To carry out this empirical study, the first author (Gaye) conducted fieldwork in the northern 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 proportions of displaced families compared 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 used 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 based on the Open Data Kit (ODK) and specifically Kobo Collect, an application in which a questionnaire was housed online, so as to meet the need for the types of data to be collected. 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.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThank you for the revisions
