ATJLF

  • A group of people in colorful attire seated at an outdoor community meeting under a shelter.
    Al'amin Umar

    ATJLF Commits $2.68 Million Fund To Strengthen Transitional Justice Initiatives In West Africa

    The Africa Transitional Justice Legacy Fund (ATJLF), a public charity, has announced a substantial commitment of $2.68 million in grants and legacy projects to support transitional justice efforts across six West African countries. According to ATJLF, $1,555,000 will be allocated to 15 civil society organisations in Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Mali, Northeast Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and […]

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  • Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu

    The Buni Yadi Tragedy: When The Boys Came

    “It will take a cinematographer’s eyes. Mine will not do, I admit. And she will need a button that makes and unmakes memories.” — How Memory Unmakes Us, Gbenga Adesina. When Malam Umar crept out of hiding the next morning, his head dirtied and bloody after grazing it against the culvert he had hid under […]

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  • Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu

    What Does ‘Going Home’ Mean To The Displaced?

    “Hauwa, we have been violated [by the insurgency]. We have been dishonoured and dehumanised: Us, our husbands, our children. It’s been eight years of this. No child of ours has ever been to a school since, or gotten an Islamic education. No mother has been able to sufficiently train her children because from the moment […]

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  • Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu

    One Woman’s Journey From Displacement To Resettlement In Northeast Nigeria

    Years ago, when Yakura Kumshe first arrived in Maiduguri, Northeast Nigeria, as a woman displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency in the region, it was in a truck full of other people like her, with bags of foodstuff — both cooked and raw, apprehension, and hope. She knew from seven months of being displaced what […]

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  • Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu

    Abortion Amongst Displaced Women Reflects Deeper Societal Problems

    One day at around 3 a.m., a camp for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Maiduguri, Northeast Nigeria, was roused awake by cries from a woman in pain. Some of the women leaders were stirred from sleep. One of them was Aisha Kumshe*. By the time Aisha got to the wailing woman’s tent, she says, she […]

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  • Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu

    Life In The Boko Haram Caliphate For An Abducted Woman

    Amina was 17 when a Boko Haram terror member pointed a gun at her mother, hoisted her atop his bike, and made away with her. It would be another eight years before she would see her mother again. She would be 25, with three kids of her own. She would have been married off to […]

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  • Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu

    A Military Officer Locked Up Her Husband, Then Proposed To Marry Her

    He usually didn’t come with a convoy. That day, he did. He arrived in his car blaring the siren, several other cars behind him. Some of his men came down from the cars that trailed him, after parking inside the Bama Hospital Camp in Borno, northeastern Nigeria, where Falmata Abubakar* lived at the time. It […]

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  • Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu

    More Knifar Women’s Husbands Regain Freedom

    A total of 540 men, including husbands of the Knifar women, have been released from the Mallam Sidi camp in Gombe State, northeastern Nigeria, where they have been held for the past nine months, after years spent in detention at the Borno Maximum-Security prison. They were released in batches of 180 on April 19, May […]

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  • Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu

    The Drug And Sex Lives Of Boko Haram Terrorists

    One hot night in the deep forests of Sambisa, in northeastern Nigeria, shortly after a military airstrike targeted the settlement of the Abubakar Shekau-led Boko Haram where they lived, Amina Mohammed and her husband — alongside many members of the terror group who had fled the location during the bombing — are hurdled up in […]

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  • Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu

    Kellu Haruna, Through The Eyes Of The People She Loved And Fought For

    On the day that Kellu Haruna received video evidence that her husband was alive and being held at the Borno Maximum-Security Prison, she resolved to gather all the women in the Knifar Movement to attack the detention facility the next day. She had no weapons nor any intentions of violence. Only rage. “She said to […]

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