In the arid crossroads where Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad, and Niger meet—the Lake Chad Basin—the guns have largely fallen silent. The Boko Haram insurgency began in northeastern Nigeria in 2009 and soon spread into neighbouring states, entangling the entire region in cycles of violence. At its peak in the mid-2010s, the conflict displaced millions, claimed tens of thousands of lives, and hollowed out the social and economic fabric of countless villages. Today, the group is weakened and fragmented, but its legacy endures. What remains is not simply the silence after war, but the long, uneven struggle to mend communities and restore trust.

Boko Haram’s violent campaign has lost momentum, yet the promise of peace remains fragile, elusive, and incomplete. Former fighters are not returning through formal demobilization programs; instead, they come back into their communities informally, without oversight or official support.

Meanwhile, communities that endured years of violence are left to absorb this return. Their dignity, sense of justice, and trust are fraying. The harm doesn’t end when the fighting stops—it simply changes form.

Canada is a significant donor in the region, funding programs aimed at disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR), alongside broader stabilization and peacebuilding initiatives. These efforts matter. Yet donor frameworks often emphasize support for returnees—food packages, vocational kits, short-term training—because such outputs are easy to count and report. On the ground, however, these choices can deepen social divides. When former fighters receive assistance while widows, orphans, and civilian defenders are left behind, communities experience peacebuilding not as inclusion, but as exclusion. In the villages of northern Cameroon, where I’ve spent years conducting field research, peacebuilding is not a tidy policy goal; it is an exhausting daily negotiation.

Many returnees avoid state-led reintegration entirely. Accounts from them and their families point to arbitrary arrests, prolonged detention without due process, neglect, and frequent harassment by security forces.

“He tried to surrender. They locked him up for weeks. Now the others come back silently,” a man in Moskota told me of his brother, a former Boko Haram fighter. These stories are not rare. The risk of state mistreatment makes official DDR programs feel more threatening than reassuring.

As a result, ex-combatants often return through informal channels, welcomed not by officials, but by exhausted relatives. Shielded by silence, they are reabsorbed into village life with no public process, accountability, or acknowledgment of harm. Traditional leaders attempt to fill the gap with improvised rituals—symbolic cleansings, whispered prayers—but ritual cannot erase memory.

In many villages, former fighters return to homes where neighbours buried loved ones because of them. There is no shared truth, only what one man described to me as “coexistence under suspicion.”

Aid programs, too, are often unequal, deepening social fractures left by the conflict. Modest support for returnees—mattresses, food packages, sewing machines—can provoke resentment among those who never left. Many told me they’ve received no recognition for their losses, no compensation, and no tangible support to rebuild their lives. “He joined them. I stayed and defended the village. Now he owns a shop. I have nothing,” a young man in Turu said bitterly.

At the Minawao refugee camp, women waited hours at understocked distribution centres while returnees collected supplies ahead of them. Orphaned children were passed over in school feeding programs designed for reintegrated fighters.

Some villagers believe, however inaccurately, that playing the part of a repentant fighter is now more profitable than remaining a peaceful civilian. This sense of moral injustice is corrosive: when those who committed harm are seen to benefit while those who endured it are left behind, the social contract begins to unravel.

Among returnees, women face the harshest stigma and exclusion. Many were abducted, coerced, or followed husbands into the bush, yet on return they are branded with a single label: “Boko Haram wives.” Their complex stories—of survival, coercion, and captivity—are erased in the public imagination.

“When she walks by, people lower their voices. They say she shared a bed with the enemy,” a teenage girl in Mémé told me. Children born in captivity carry the same stigma, denied access to schools, clinics, and even mosques. Yet these women are holding communities together. They run market stalls, form informal savings groups, provide credit and childcare. Their resilience is unspectacular but vital. “I sell snacks, she makes soap. We survive together,” said a returned woman in Koza. They are the true agents of reintegration—and yet they remain invisible in most donor frameworks.

Canada’s foreign policy ideals—dignity, inclusion, and survivor-centred justice—risk falling short when measured only by outputs. Donor programs often focus on what is easy to track: how many food kits are distributed, how many trainings delivered, how many beneficiaries counted. But peace is not a metric. It is a fragile social fabric, woven through relationships, recognition, and repair. “They come, take pictures, and leave. But they don’t carry our grief,” said a community elder in Kassa, a Podokwo village still recovering from multiple attacks.

Real peacebuilding means listening to survivors, women, and families quietly holding communities together. It means investing in long-term cohesion, not short-term outputs. It means recognizing civilian survivors, not just former combatants, as central to recovery. Above all, it requires creating space for truth and acknowledgment. In many communities, the return of fighters is met with silence and symbolic gestures, but that is not the same as justice. Without public reckoning, memory festers. Without recognition, trust collapses. “Peace here isn’t a word. It’s a daily decision,” a neighborhood chief in Makary told me.

If Canada truly wants to lead as a global peacebuilder, it must meet that reality with humility and persistence. Peace does not begin when the weapons go quiet. It begins with recognition—of harm, of resilience, and of the people who carry peace on their shoulders every single day.

Chétima Melchisedek is a professor of African history at the University of Québec in Montréal (UQAM). His research focuses on the Mandara Mountains region between Nigeria and Cameroon, with particular attention to slavery and the memory of slavery, as well as the Boko Haram insurgency in the Lake Chad Basin.