with Boko Haram fell dramatically after 2015.<sup>4</sup> However up until late 2018, the period studied in this paper, the group still maintained the capacity to engage in violent attacks, remaining a highly dangerous threat to the lives of thousands of civilians and the stability of the region (ACLED, 2019).

The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) lists 4,440 violent events for the period between January 2009 and July 2019. **Figure A1a** shows the temporal distribution of events between 2009 and 2018 (the year of the survey). The spatial spread of these events in **Figure A2a** illustrates that ‘high-intensity’ conflict – as proxied by the total number of violent events – took place in urban or peri-urban areas of Borno state in and near Maiduguri. In relative terms, rural areas were characterized by less intense conflict.

Many of Boko Haram’s operations target civilians and women and girls in particular. Compared to other terrorist organizations, such as Al-Shabaab, their attacks are even more lethal and include more abductions (Matfess, 2020). Extreme violence against women and girls increased in 2014 during a period of relative strength and includes many forms of violence, such as lethal attacks and forced abduction (Holpuch, 2018). The reasons for targeting civilians and women in particular are multifaceted and appear to vary, including both instrumental and ideological motives (Matfess, 2020).

**Displacement** . By the end of 2020, the conflict had displaced about 2.1 million individuals in Northeast Nigeria (UNHCR, 2021). <mark>An estimated 56% of the internally displaced population are children</mark> (IOM, 2020). The number of IDPs increased rapidly in 2014 and has remained at more or less the same level to the present day. **Figure A1b** displays reported dates of (first) displacement in our survey data, which is representative for the displaced population in North-east Nigeria in 2018.

Most IDPs in North-east Nigeria are displaced within their state of origin, 74% of IDPs are located in Borno state and 83% of all IDPs are from that state. An estimated 57% of IDPs reside in one of the 2,085 documented host communities, while the remaining 43% live in one of the documented 307 camps or camp-like settings. Of the IDPs in host communities, 90% live in private buildings.

**Gender inequality and gender-based violence.** Gender inequality and gender-based violence are highly prevalent in the region, as the conflict and other factors create and perpetuate gender-based disparities, discrimination, barriers to empowerment, and risks of intimate partner violence (e.g., Ekhator-Mobayode et al., 2020). <mark>Specifically, the strong social and gender norms have been shown to shape nutrition and welfare outcomes across and within families (UN OCHA, 2018, Nwoke et al., 2022) a</mark> s well as conflict outcomes, such as recruitment into Boko Haram (Rexer, 2018).

Social norms in the region continue to create strong, gender-specific challenges and disadvantages for women in many dimensions (Agbonifo, 2020; CARE, 2022). Women are often primarily expected to fulfill their responsibilities as caregivers and subsistence farmers and face genderbased barriers to access to credit, land properties, employment, education, and medical care, among other things (Allanana, 2013; Onwuka et al., 2015). In addition, it has been shown that several factors, including climate stress and food crises, increase rates of marriages at an early age

> 4 <mark>There were more than 11,500 reported fatalities by the group in 2015, the deadliest year. By 2018 that number had fallen to approximately 2,700 reported fatalities (ACLED, 2019).</mark>

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