Source: www.persecution.org
Date: September 16, 2024
By Dr. Greg Cochran, ICC Fellow
“Demography is destiny,” or so goes the saying, most often attributed to the French philosopher Auguste Comte. Comte accomplished more than most people in his lifetime, being credited as the father of sociology and positivism — two movements that continued with inordinate influence after his death.
Whatever Comte accomplished in his life, he likely did not coin the phrase “Demography is destiny.” The origin of the phrase remains ultimately unknown. But the phrase itself remains a powerful touchstone. The future seems to belong to demographic trends. But what that means precisely is not as simple as it sounds.
For instance, countries in sub-Saharan Africa (particularly the Sahel) are primed to win the demographic battle due to a younger average population and higher birth rates than most other countries worldwide. As previously noted, demography is on the side of Africa, where 19 of the 20 youngest nations on Earth are situated. And yet, for some reason, most cultural prophets and political soothsayers speak of foreboding woes across the African continent.
A primary case in point remains Nigeria, where a spirit of gloom and hopelessness is on the rise. While not definitive, the World Bank’s outlook for Nigeria is at least indicative of the overall mood for the nation’s future. These few sentences capture the general tone toward Nigeria’s future:
“Despite having the largest economy and population in Africa, Nigeria offers limited opportunities to most of its citizens. Nigerians born in 2020 are expected to be future workers 36% as productive as they could be if they had full access to education and health, the 7th lowest human capital index in the world. Weak job creation and entrepreneurial prospects stifle the absorption of the 3.5 million Nigerians entering the labor force every year, and many workers choose to emigrate in search of better opportunities. The poverty rate is estimated to have reached 38.9% in 2023, with an estimated 87 million Nigerians living below the poverty line — the world’s second-largest poor population after India.”
Destiny is complicated, an intertwined web of population demographics, politics, economics, and environmental conditions. The World Bank in Nigeria also alludes to some environmental conditions. Specifically, desertification and climate-related environmental concerns force its outlook further in the negative direction of angst against the hope of Nigeria’s future. In this fear of the climate, the World Bank does not stand alone.
Global entities accept as fact the idea that the climate is actively destroying Nigeria’s prospects for a better tomorrow.
“Climate change and displacement are increasingly interconnected,” the UNHCR states on its website. “As extreme weather events and environmental conditions worsen with global heating, they are contributing to multiple and overlapping crises, threatening human rights, increasing poverty and loss of livelihoods, straining peaceful relations between communities and, ultimately, creating conditions for further forced displacement.”
Such statements lose the significance of the conditions they are seeking to remedy. Understood grammatically, this UNHCR statement asserts that climate change and displacement will likely create displacement conditions. The ease with which the climate is linked inextricably to forced displacement is magical — a masterful sleight of hand.
In further explanation, the UNHCR aims at four objectives for 2030:
- People fleeing persecution, violence, and human rights violations occurring in relation to the adverse effects of climate change and disasters who need international protection are effectively protected.
- Forcibly displaced and stateless people and their hosts can access services that promote the sustainable use of natural resources and a clean and healthy environment.
- People forced to flee, stateless people, and their hosts can prepare for, withstand, recover, and be protected from the effects of climate change.
- UNHCR minimizes its own negative effects on the environment.
In a twist of irony, these four objectives demonstrate that demographics are not destiny. We can see at least three aspects of the irony on display in these objectives.
First, the UNHCR is ironically thwarting the demographic makeup of Nigeria by accepting displacement as the new normal. Displacement means the demographic makeup of Nigeria today will not be equal to its demographic makeup next year, as hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of Nigerians will flee their homes. Is such displacement OK? Should Nigerians accept this displacement? Who’s responsible? Shouldn’t they stop? Each of the four UNHCR objectives betrays the responsibility of the Nigerian state to stop the violence and, thus, forestall the fleeing of refugees. Granted, the UNHCR’s role is not to dictate national security prescriptions. Rather, the UNHCR’s lane is to respond to the refugee crisis. Nevertheless, protecting refugees from bad actors by calling out those perpetrating injustice suits the role of the UNHCR better than promising to protect refugees from the global climate.
In a second display of irony, the UNHCR invokes the need for protecting refugees while refusing to acknowledge the very threat to the refugees. Notice that in each objective, the concern is protection from “the adverse effects of climate change and disasters.” As noted in objective one, people flee persecution, violence, and human rights violations.
Droughts don’t persecute Christians and minority Muslims; people do that. Floods do not commit acts of violence against Protestant Christians; people do that. Storms do not perpetrate human rights violations against Roman Catholics; people do that. In short, the refugees — those fleeing parts of Nigeria — are fleeing other Nigerians. Protecting those refugees from the climate won’t help until the real threat — violent violators of human rights — is named, confronted, and defeated. The UNHCR cannot, of course, carry out all those tasks, but they certainly can (and should) name the agents creating the crises and work to protect refugees from them.
In a third bit of irony, the UNHCR commits to providing protection from the effects of climate change while also taking care to produce a clean and healthy environment. Why is this environmental protection ironic? This is ironic because it pledges a strict ethic for the UNHCR to protect the environment with no hint of holding accountable those who rape, pillage, and destroy people and their villages.
Imagine being a resident of Yobe State’s Geidam District this past year when terrorists shot and killed 17 villagers, murdering them in open violence. Then, continue imagining the nightmare to include an unthinkable scene of the terrorists planting land mines around the funeral area so that 20 mourners attending the funeral were subsequently blown up: the village decimated, body parts strewn upon the land, and souls left as gutted and violently empty as the ground where the land mines were planted.
Now imagine in your breathless agony reading the following commitment from the UNHCR:
“UNHCR is minimizing our own negative impacts on the environment by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, transitioning to renewable energy sources, and improving the sustainability of our supply chain.”
Can such a statement be heard with any hint of sanity? Is there any serious way for Yobe state’s citizens to take comfort or encouragement from this fourth UNHCR objective? The emphasis on protecting the environment is naively ironic. Those who perpetrate evil against humanity show no care for the environment. They use the environment to hide bombs that destroy both land and people.
The gravity of human loss is overwhelming. The ironic emphases on climate and the environment only serve to hasten the demographic demise of the Sahel’s once most promising nation. It’s difficult to imagine that refugees under attack and fleeing for their lives will be helped by knowing that the UNHCR is committed to cutting emissions.
These ironic twists deal a severe blow to the premise that demography is destiny. Demography is a significant aspect of future populations, but bad politics, misguided virtue, and ineffective governance all have a way of contorting the destiny of demography. If Nigeria’s future is gloomy, that gloom is not the result of either the climate or the growing population. The gloom springs from a poverty of imagination and a lack of conviction to be guided by truth. If this is true, Christians in Nigeria have an opportunity to be — as Paul says the church should be — a pillar and support of the truth.