—UNICEF said
yesterday that no fewer than 800,000
children have fled their homes in north-
eastern Nigeria 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 has over 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 their school in the north-eastern
city of Chibok, 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 seeks to impose 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,” UNICEF
