No fewer than 800,000
children have fled their homes in north-eastern Nigeria due to the attack of
Boko Haram insurgents according to UNICEF.
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
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