Improving affected victims and community reintegration of former Boko Haram terrorist defectors in Nigeria: a community-informed participatory action research

Abstract

Reintegrating defectors of terrorist groups into society is challenging due to community resistance and affected victims’ trauma. This article is the first to detail affected victims and community involvement in designing a trauma-informed cognitive behaviour therapy intervention to aid the reintegration of former Boko Haram members and defectors in Nigeria. Participants were recruited from Borno state, Nigeria. Informed by a participatory action research design and a social constructionist theoretical lens, we found that agonizing experiences, resentment towards incentives provided to former defectors limit successful reintegration, whilst using Trauma-informed intervention to address community needs could improve reintegration. It concludes that affected victims and community involvement in the design of reintegration programmes is crucial to its success.