When over 270 Nigerian schoolgirls were abducted in April 2014 by Boko Haram, the world was shocked. A movement calling to #BringBackOurGirls swept social media.
Since then, an estimated 2,000 other children have been abducted across the region and forced to fight, marry, work, or even become ‘suicide’ bombers. Millions have witnessed severe violence, fled their homes and had their families torn apart. Violence in the Lake Chad region, covering Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon, is becoming one of Africa’s greatest humanitarian emergencies.
But around the world, this crisis is going widely unnoticed.
The conflict has a particularly heavy toll on the region’s children. Cycles of violence and exploitation have impacted their well-being, safety and long-term development as well as limiting access to basic health, education, nutrition and social services.
If the global community doesn’t act now, this rapidly increasing conflict could become one of the most under-reported and under-funded humanitarian efforts of our time. Here are six reasons children impacted by this conflict need our help.
In recent years, Boko Haram violence has triggered the massive displacement of 2.7 million people across the Lake Chad region - most of of them children. In just one year, the number of children uprooted by the crisis has increased by over 60 per cent, from 800,000 to 1.3 million children.
Fatima’s family was forced to flee Nigeria after violence broke out in her small village in Nigeria, killing five family members.
“I sometimes think about our table, where the breakfast was served, and how the house would be now."
The combined impact of violence against civilians and mass displacement has pulled more than a million children in the region out of school. Over 2,000 schools remain closed due to the conflict - some of them for more than a year - and hundreds have been attacked, looted, set on fire or used as shelter by displaced people.
When 11 year-old Talatu’s aunt and uncle were killed by Boko Haram, she became one of a million children forced out of school by violence in the Lake Chad region. Talatu fled with her mother to Cameroon, where she is learning again at a UNICEF supported school in the Minawao refugee camp.
In 2015, over 150,000 children participated in UNICEF’s schools or learning programmes. With enough funding, UNICEF can deliver school materials and access to education for 240,000 children in 2016. You can deliver 500 pencils to children around the world for just $19 today.
The Boko Haram conflict is exacerbating an already critical food and nutrition crisis that has been brewing for over a decade.
Issues like insecurity, displacement and bad weather have left an estimated 195,000 children with severe acute malnutrition in Boko Haram-affected areas across Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria.
UNICEF has trained health workers and community volunteers, many of whom are among the displaced, to provide an integrated package of services to manage and prevent acute malnutrition. UNICEF also helps expand nutrition programmes in the conflict affected areas. With increased funds, UNICEF could provide therapeutic feeding to 175,000 severely malnourished children in 2016. For just $26, you can provide 600 sachets of micronutrient powder to give infants in need around the world a powerful boost of vital vitamins and minerals.
During the conflict, women and girls have been trafficked, raped, abducted and forcibly married by Boko Haram. Even after being released from captivity, girls and women face distrust and persecution by their communities for perceived connections to the insurgent group. Their children, born as a result of sexual violence, risk being rejected and even killed for fear that they could turn against their families and communities when they grow up.
At 15, Fati (name changed to protect identity) has witnessed more violence than most people ever will. She spent four months in a forced marriage after being abducted by Boko Haram. Thankfully, she was rescued and reunited with her family in a refugee camp in Cameroon.
UNICEF is working with communities and families in Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger to fight stigma against survivors of sexual violence and to build a protective environment for former abductees.
In 2015, the estimated number of bomb attacks in North-East Nigeria and neighbouring countries increased sharply, as did the proportion of attacks involving children.
The use of children – especially girls – as so-called suicide bombers has now become one of the defining, and most alarming, features of the conflict. In just one year, the number of children involved in so-called ‘suicide’ attacks in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger has risen tenfold. Three quarters of all child ‘suicide’ bombers are girls.
Children who carry out these attacks are victims, not perpetrators. Bombs are strapped to their bodies - often without them knowing - and detonated remotely in public places.
In 2015, UNICEF provided over 145,000 children affected by the conflict with counselling and psychosocial support to help them cope with emotional distress.
Trapped in violence, children across North East Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon are missing out on their childhood every day. They are at risk of being caught in a cycle of violence – separated from their families, exposed to exploitation, abuse and recruitment by armed groups and held in detention. Many children have been killed, maimed and subjected to unimaginable atrocities.
The impact of violence will stay with Salta forever. This 11-year-old girl was in the wrong place at the wrong time when a suicide attack ripped through a market in Chad last year. Salta lost her arm and her life will never be the same again.
Tragically, too many children don’t survive such attacks.
One in nine children alive today is growing up in a conflict zone. Millions are being robbed of their education, exposed to horrific violence and pushed beyond the boundaries of human suffering. They are twice as likely to die from preventable diseases before their fifth birthdays.
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