Weaponising Climate and Environmental Vulnerability: Violent Extremism, Girl-Child Suicide Bombers and Existential Threats to Childhood in the Lake Chad Basin in Central Africa

Abstract

This study investigates how climate change, insecurity and extreme violence intersect to harm children, particularly the girl-child in the Lake Chad Basin in Central Africa. Anchored on the Strain Theory on Crime and the Objectification Theory, it explores how climate stressors and protracted conflict heighten vulnerability and enable the weaponising of the girl-child as suicide bombers. Using an exploratory descriptive qualitative approach, the research draws on a systematic review of open-source records, international instruments, and academic literature from 1960 to 2025. Findings indicate that children, especially going girls, are the worst hit by climate-security crisis in the region, while significant gaps persist in research, monitoring and reporting on children’s rights affected by the climate-security nexus in the basin. The study urges on the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, regional and sub-regional bodies, member states of the Lake Chad Basin and researchers on children’s rights to recognise the growing evidence of the climate-security causality and integrate this into child-rights monitoring and reporting, policy and future research.