Photo: YAHOO
Doctors Without Borders says thousands of children have died of starvation and disease in Boko Haram-ravaged northeastern Nigeria, quoting a new survey that has brought Nigerian officials to stop denying the crisis.
Emergency program manager Natalie Roberts says a survey of two refugee camps in northeastern Maiduguri shows that a quarter of the expected population under-5 children is missing, assumed dead.
Doctors Without Borders first sounded the alarm in June but Nigerian camp officials as late as September denied any child was suffering malnutrition.
Roberts says the organization hopes that official recognition of the calamity in which “thousands are dying every day” will help bring urgently needed aid before older children also start to succumb.
The crisis is aggravated by alleged theft of food aid being investigated by Nigeria’s senate.
On October 31, Human Rights Watch, HRW, accused Nigeria officials of sexually abusing Boko Haram victims, citing the case of a 17-year old girl.
The international non-governmental organization said the 17-year-old girl was raped and made pregnant by a policeman.
“One day he demanded to have sex with me,” she said.
“I refused but he forced me. It happened just that one time, but soon I realised I was pregnant.
“When I informed him about my condition, he threatened to shoot and kill me if I told anyone else. So I was too afraid to report him,” she explained.
Her case is only one of many.
In a report on Monday, HRW accused Nigerian officials of sexually exploiting women and girls living in camps for victims of Boko Haram in the restive northeast.
HRW said it had in July documented 43 cases of women and girls in seven internally displaced persons’ (IDP) camps in Maiduguri, the epicentre of the seven-year Islamist insurgency, who had been abused by camp leaders, vigilante groups, policemen, and soldiers.
