FAITH-BASED RESOURCES AND DURABLE SOLUTIONS: ISLAMIC SOCIAL FINANCE AND THE PROTECTION OF INTERNALLY DISPLACED WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN BORNO STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The Boko Haram insurgency has generated one of sub-Saharan Africa's most protracted internal displacement crises, with approximately 2.2 million persons remaining displaced across the Lake Chad Basin as of late 2024. Women and children constitute over seventy percent of registered internally displaced person (IDP) households in Borno State, Nigeria, yet the potential of Islamic social finance, principally zakat, waqf, and sadaqah, to complement formal humanitarian durable solutions frameworks for this population remains empirically undocumented and theoretically underexplored. This study examines: (1) the primary protection and service needs of displaced women and children in Borno State; (2) the current coverage, governance, and gendered reach of Islamic social finance instruments; and (3) the conditions under which faith-based resources can be effectively integrated into gender-sensitive durable solutions programming. A mixed-methods convergent parallel design was employed, combining a structured survey of 233 internally displaced women and primary caregivers across camp, camp-like, and host-community settings in Maiduguri Metropolitan Council and two adjacent local government areas, with 18 key informant interviews and 6 focus group discussions. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics, chi-square tests with Cramér's V, and binary logistic regression. Qualitative data underwent thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke's six-phase protocol, with inter-coder reliability verified at Cohen's Kappa = 0.78. Shelter inadequacy (70.0%), limited healthcare access (61.4%), and near-absent psychosocial support (80.7% unserved) characterised the sample. Islamic charitable assistance reached 51.5% of respondents, but receipt was significantly associated with displacement setting (χ² = 14.37, p = .001; Cramér's V = 0.249), with camp residents substantially more likely to benefit than host-community women. Over 72% of the sample remained displaced; dissatisfaction with resettlement services was highest (88.0%) among those who experienced forced relocation. Qualitative findings identified religious legitimacy, social selectivity, structural relief-rehabilitation gaps, and women's informal adaptive strategies as four principal themes. Islamic social finance constitutes a meaningful, culturally legitimate, and measurably impactful, though structurally insufficient and inequitably distributed, resource for displaced women in Borno State. Durable solutions programming requires formal coordination between Islamic charitable actors and humanitarian clusters, transparent gender-responsive targeting criteria, waqf-funded livelihood infrastructure, and shared monitoring systems. These reforms are feasible and are supported by policy precedents from Somalia, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.