“More than 130,000 people have amassed along this desert highway outside Diffa, Niger — National Route 1. They now call its barren, sandy shoulders home.All of them have been chased from their villages by Boko Haram, the Islamist militant group that kidnaps and kills indiscriminately in a campaign of violence that has lasted eight years. The New York Times spent weeks documenting the stories of people living along this road, interviewing more than 100 residents — including 15 in the following image — clinging to its edges to survive.”
” “We can sleep now,” said Fati Fougou, a 40-year-old mother of seven who was chased from three different villages by fighters before settling along the road with her children, “because no one is shooting.”
A handful of aid groups help. Unicef trucks in water. The International Rescue Committee hands out bags of rice, sardine tins and powdered milk. Doctors Without Borders runs small clinics. But formal camps don’t exist. All of the displaced here are squatters.”
Thank you DIONNE SEARCEY and ADAM FERGUSON and the NYT. Also, the three organizations mentioned above:
Unicef
International Rescue Committee
Doctors Without Borders, Medecins Sans Frontiers
I plan to support all three.
InconvenientNews.Net 