Intersecting Vulnerabilities and Health Education Programming for Adolescent Girls in Internally Displaced Persons Camps in North East Nigeria: A Feminist Ethnography

Adolescent girls in internally displaced persons camps in North East Nigeria occupy a position of compound vulnerability shaped by displacement, gender inequality, poverty, and disrupted education and health systems. This study employed feminist ethnography to examine intersecting vulnerabilities and their implications for health education programming for adolescent girls in internally displaced persons camps across Borno and Adamawa states. Eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork was conducted across four camps, involving participatory observation, 48 in-depth interviews with adolescent girls, mothers, camp health workers, and humanitarian programme officers, and three photovoice workshops with adolescent girl participants. Data were analysed using feminist intersectional analysis and critical reflexive thematic analysis. Findings documented how gender, age, displacement, ethnicity, and social capital intersected to create differentiated health education access and experience among adolescent girls. Existing health education programmes were largely designed without meaningful adolescent girl participation and failed to address their most pressing needs including reproductive health, psychosocial wellbeing, and nutrition. The study makes an original feminist theoretical and methodological contribution to health education scholarship in humanitarian settings and advocates for transformative, girl-centred health education programme design in displacement contexts. Keywords: intersecting vulnerabilities, adolescent girls, displacement camps, health education, feminist ethnography