Exactly 10 years have passed since Children in the Desert and the AIDE association were involved by UNICEF and IOM in an emergency intervention in the Ngouboua refugee camp located in the westernmost region of Chad. Here 576 Chadian minors between the ages of 6 and 17 had gathered, attending Koranic schools located across the border with Nigeria to find an escape from the violence unleashed by the Boko Haram militiamen. Before their escape they had witnessed scenes of unprecedented violence that certainly left an indelible mark on them.
In Ngouboua 2 reception camps were set up; Camp A is intended to host Chadian minors accompanied by marabouts (Koranic school teachers) and Camp B is reserved for families or portions of them with at least one parent present.
The actions we were in charge of included psychological support, the collection of the information necessary to identify the villages of origin, through interviews with minors and marabouts and subsequently the organization of the return of the children to their families of origin; if identified. Unfortunately, for 30% of them it was not possible to identify the village and families of origin and they were taken into care by the Social Action of N’djamena, capital of Chad.
In the rural areas of the Sahel, families in difficulty entrust their sons to Koranic schools in the hope that they will have an (Islamic) education and one or two meals a day. Too often the schools, run by teachers (marabouts), are clans in which enslaved children are forced to beg all day so as not to suffer beatings and other violence upon their return. The hours of the night are dedicated to the educational part (repetitions of suras of the Koran, without any awareness of what is being repeated by heart).
