UNICEF
said on Monday that no fewer than 800,000 children had fled their homes in the
North-East because of the activities Boko Haram insurgents.
UNICEF’s
Regional Director for West and Central Africa, Manuel Fontaine, told newsmen in
Berlin that the number of child refugees had doubled in 2014.
Fontaine
said the children fled to Chad, Niger and Cameroon and within Nigeria.
“Scores
of girls and boys have gone missing in Nigeria – abducted, recruited by armed
groups, attacked, used as weapons or forced to flee violence,’’ the UN
children’s agency said.
The
agency’s report was released a year after the Boko Haram’s kidnapping of 276
girls from the Government Secondary School, Chibok in Borno State, inciting
worldwide condemnation.
According
to Fontaine, over 200 of the girls remain missing, adding that the abductions
were only one of numerous tragedies being replicated on an epic scale across
Nigeria and the region.
Boko
Haram, which claims to seeks an imposition of Sharia, the strictest application
of Islamist law, has killed about 14,000 people in northern Nigeria since 2009.
According
to UNICEF, the group uses children as fighters, cooks, porters and scouts,
rapes girls and women, forces them into marriage and sexually enslaves them.
“The
children, fleeing the violence, are often traumatised, lose contact with their
families and are cut off from education and health care,” it said.
Revealed: How Boko Haram made 800,000 children refugees – UNICEF
Reviewed by Unknown
on
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
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