Health Apartheid in Displacement: Gendered Dimensions of Health Rights Denial Among Minority IDPs in Maiduguri

Abstract

Abstract The displacement crisis in Borno State, Nigeria, has produced widespread human suffering, disproportionately affecting minority groups in Maiduguri. Despite increasing recognition of the intersections between armed conflict, forced displacement, and health inequities, there remains limited scholarly and policy engagement with the structural and historical conditions underpinning these relationships. This study foregrounds critical perspectives informed by decolonial and feminist legal theory to advance a framework for conceptualizing the health–displacement–minority rights nexus. We trace how colonial legacies, ethno-religious hierarchies, and gendered violence have converged in Nigeria’s governance of internally displaced persons (IDPs), producing what we describe as a regime of health apartheid. This regime manifests in structural barriers to healthcare access, securitization of humanitarian spaces, and the systematic invisibilization of minority IDPs in policy responses. Drawing on international human rights law, particularly the African Charter and the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, we argue that current approaches insufficiently address the gendered dimensions of health rights denial. A critical rights-based approach rooted in intersectionality opens new possibilities for transformative research, advocacy, and governance, challenging the carceral and exclusionary logics that dominate humanitarian health interventions in Maiduguri.