This research paper stems from a deep and personal experience of a violent conflict that left its undeletable footprint in my life and that of my family. In the northeast region of Nigeria specifically Kano State, in 1992, our lives, as well as the lives of many citizens in the northeast, were torn apart by the religious conflict between Muslims and Christians. This bloody communal conflict has persisted till today though the face of the conflict has changed to pit Boko Haram against the Nigerian government. How women manage to survive amidst such violent conflict, how they cope and what they have to do to rebuild their lives, is knowledge relevant to understanding the impact of violent conflicts and addressing their aftermath. In struggles to build more inclusive social transformation in the developing nation of Nigeria, I draw on the struggles of women like my own mother. She survived the throes of the 1991 violence with her children, hiding in the bush for weeks without succour or aid. Somehow, she escaped with all six children and fled to the southern region, where we started a new life from scratch. This research paper thus aims to contribute to the current academic discourse on the relevance of understanding women's coping strategies during violent con-flict and its applicability in conflict analysis and transformation. The pivotal point of this study is anchored on the life experiences of women in the IDP camp in Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria, which accounts will buttress an understanding of how these women cope psychologically, socially and economically within the context of their experiences of the vio-lent conflict. However, these coping strategies recorded herein does not represent a general-ized perception in the ways women cope during the violent conflict as no one individual experience is the same and conflict remains fluid, time, and place-specific. This research, however, offers a more comprehensive perspective to grasp the impact violent conflict has on women, how they cope and what actions or inactions influence their ways of coping within the context of the BH violent conflict. I want the women's accounts to be heard as such accounts are all too often left out in the public record of conflicts.

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Hilhorst, Thea
hdl.handle.net/2105/56072
Social Justice Perspectives (SJP)
International Institute of Social Studies

James, Evelyn Anietie. (2020, December 18). Coping strategies of women during violent conflict: the case of the Boko Haram conflict in Nigeria. Social Justice Perspectives (SJP). Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2105/56072