Boko Haram Has Rendered 800,000 Children Homeless - UNICEF

The war between Boko Haram, military forces and civilian self-defence groups in the north-east has forced around 800,000 children from their homes over the past year, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

UNICEF’s regional director for West and Central Africa, Manuel Fontaine, said the Chibok kidnapping was one of a series of “endless tragedies being replicated on an epic scale” across the region.

“Scores of girls and boys have gone missing in Nigeria – abducted, recruited by armed groups, attacked, used as weapons or forced to flee violence,” he said.

The agency’s report was released a year after Boko Haram’s kidnapping of 276 girls from their school in the north-eastern city of Chibok, inciting worldwide condemnation.

The report, Missing Childhoods, says at least 15,000 people have been killed since 2009, when Boko Haram stepped up its violent campaign. Last year, 7,300 were killed, while more than 1,000 civilians have died since the beginning of 2015.

UNICEF says children have become frequent and deliberate targets for murder, sexual abuse, kidnappings or forced marriage.

“Countless numbers of children, women and men have been abducted, abused and forcibly recruited, and women and girls have been targeted for particularly horrific abuse, including sexual enslavement,” the report says.

“Schools have been attacked. The conflict is exacting a heavy toll on children, affecting not just their wellbeing and their safety but also their access to basic health, education and social services.”



Not only are children as young as four being used by Boko Haram as cooks, porters and lookouts, the report says, but young people are reportedly being recruited by the vigilante groups fighting the Islamist insurgents in north-east Nigeria.

UNICEF has recently called for international donors to increase their support because hundreds of thousands of displaced people are putting additional strain on already stretched health, education and social services systems in host communities.