The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has asked for a step up of strategy to protect women and child victims of insurgency in Nigeria.
A statement by the agency on Friday said that in the past years, multiple armed groups, including Boko Haram and its splinter faction ISWAP, have used children as strategic pawns for their terror tactics in Nigeria.
The statement added that Boko Haram had abducted, recruited, and exploited thousands of children since the group began attacks around the Lake Chad Basin in 2009.
From 2017 to 2019, the UN verified 5,741 grave violations against children in the North-East Nigeria while 1,385 children had been recruited and used by Boko Haram. These numbers are likely to be far higher in reality owing to access constraints in monitoring.
The UNODC decried that some boys had been forced to attack their own families to demonstrate loyalty to Boko Haram.
“Girls have been killed when forced to carry out roles as fighters and suicide bombers, in addition to being subjected to forced marriages and sexual violence. When these children exit the groups, they have experienced prolonged violence, their bonds to the communities have been severed, their personal development has been warped, and they continue to face stigma and social exclusion,” the UN body said.
It further said, “UNODC has been supporting the efforts of Nigeria in preventing and responding to violence against children by terrorist and violent extremist groups, under a new European-funded project called “STRIVE Juvenile”. The project aims to increase resilience of children and society against violent extremist and terrorist tactics.”
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