Boko Haram
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Boko Haram has freed 21 of more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by the Islamist militant group
in April 2014 in the northern Nigerian town of Chibok, the government said on Thursday.
Around 270 girls were taken from their school in Chibok in the northeastern Borno state, where the Islamist militants have waged a seven-year insurgency to try to set up an Islamic state.
"The release of the girls ... is the outcome of negotiations between the administration and Boko Haram brokered by the International Red Cross and the Swiss government," a presidency statement said. "The negotiations will continue."
Nigeria will continue its military operations against Boko Haram, the country's information minister said. He also said Nigeria did not swap any Boko Haram prisoners for the release of the girls, who would be brought to the capital Abuja later on Thursday.
Here are 10 key facts about the Chibok schoolgirls and the Islamist militant group Boko Haram:
Since 2009, Boko Haram has waged an insurgency to carve out an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria that has killed at least 15,000 people and displaced more than two million.
The most high-profile attack took place on April 14, 2014, when Boko Haram kidnapped 276 school girls, from a secondary school in Chibok in northeast Borno state. About 50 of the girls escaped in the initial melee but 219 were captured.
Nigeria's government and military, then under the command of former president Goodluck Jonathan, faced heavy criticism for their handling of the incident, with towns and cities across the nation witnessing protests.
The kidnappings prompted a strong social media reaction, with the phrase #bringbackourgirls tweeted around 3.3 million times by mid-May 2014, and the campaign which followed backed by U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama.
Hope for the girls was briefly raised in April 2015 when the Nigerian military announced it had rescued 200 girls and 93 women from the Sambisa forest, northeast of Chibok. It was later revealed that the Chibok girls were not among them.
One of the Chibok girls, Amina Ali, was rescued in May. Held for months by the Nigerian government, she told her mother that the girls were starved and resorted to eating raw maize, and that some had died in captivity, suffered broken legs or gone deaf after being too close to explosions.
Boko Haram in August published a video showing footage of dozens of the Chibok girls, and a masked man saying some of their classmates had been killed in air strikes. In the video, unidentified bodies could be seen on the ground.
About 2,000 girls and boys have been kidnapped by Boko Haram since the beginning of 2014, according to Amnesty International, which says they are used as cooks, sex slaves, fighters and even suicide bombers.
Boko Haram used 44 children to carry out suicide attacks in West Africa last year, up from four in 2014, with some as young as eight, mostly girls, detonating bombs in schools and markets, according to the U.N. children's agency UNICEF.
Boko Haram, which last year pledged allegiance to Islamic State, controlled a swathe of land in northeast Nigeria, around the size of Belgium, at the start of 2015 but was pushed out by Nigerian and regional troops, which are now in a final push to defeat the militants.
Reuters
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Media report that 21 Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram have been released to the Nigerian government
Another 21 of the 200 girls kidnapped over two years ago by Boko Haram have been released to the custody of the Nigerian government.
More to follow...
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Boko Haram militants have largely been routed by the Nigerian army, but they have not disappeared and still pose a threat in the northern part of Borno State.
Boko Haram controlled some of northeast Nigeria at the start of last year, but it has been pushed out of most of that territory by the Nigerian army, aided by troops from neighboring Cameroon, Niger and Chad, Reuters reported in September.
Geneva-based officials representing the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) say security in northern Nigeria remains fragile and that people who have suffered for years at the hands of Boko Haram are living in fear of renewed attacks from the militant group.
Over the past two weeks, U.N. aid workers have been interviewing community leaders and individuals in a number of newly accessible areas of Borno State to learn their needs and concerns.
UNHCR spokesman William Spindler says they have assessed the situation in towns like Monguno, Bama, Damboa and Shani.
“They have found similar patterns in these places of a high level of vulnerability among people displaced by Boko Haram,” he said, “with nearly every family affected by very worrying protection issues and that some of these people live in fear that the insurgency group could attack them again.”
Spindler says the displaced people are living in desperate conditions.
For example, he said more than 60,000 people who fled to Monguno largely from the Marte local government area, are living in dilapidated school buildings and makeshift shelters in nine sites.
They are suffering food shortages, he said, yet they continue to arrive in Monguno to escape the Nigerian military’s ongoing operations to dislodge Boko Haram from the northern part of Borno State.
Spindler says women and children are particularly vulnerable. Many families are headed by women, he said, because their husbands were killed by Boko Haram, were forced to join the insurgents or disappeared.
He tells VOA these people have lived under the brutal rule of Boko Haram for a long time and are having difficulty recovering from the experience.
“They are traumatized,” he said. “They are in need of help. Some of the problems that we see are related to the fact that they do not have the necessary aid or livelihoods. So, that is why we see some of these negative coping mechanisms like survival sex and other practices.”
Spindler says women are forced to send their children, some as young as 5, to sell small items or beg in the street so they can buy food and medicine. Others, he says, send children to collect firewood to sell. This puts the girls at risk of sexual attack.
Few of the refugees are likely to return to their home villages soon because of continuing insecurity and the presence of land mines in their villages and fields, Spindler said.
Boko Haram is blamed for about 20,000 deaths since beginning its insurgency in northern Nigeria in 2009. The Islamist extremist group says it wants to create a strict Islamic state in Muslim-majority northern Nigeria.
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The security situation in the Far North region remains of concern. Despite the security measures taken by the Cameroonian authorities to prevent Boko Haram’s attacks, the Islamist sect continues to perpetrate raids in the border areas of Cameroon. The Logone et Chari and Mayo Sava Divisions were particularly targeted resulting in killings, lootings and cattle robbery.
On the other side of the border, the Nigerian army continues to strike bases occupied by Boko Haram. Thus on September 13, a total of 194 Nigerian refugees (139 children, 36 women and 19 men), coming from Djakoua, a Nigerian village belonging to the town of Bama, arrived in the town of Kerawa in Mayo Sava Department.
Held captive by elements of Boko Haram since 2014, these newcomers have escaped after their place of captivity had been bombed by the Nigerian army. As other new arrivals, these refugees lack personal identity documents, are in urgent need of shelter, access to drinking water and basic health care as well as food and non-food items (mat, kitchen utensils, jerry cans, blankets etc.).
Due the considerable number of refugees that Cameroon is hosting, President Paul Biya was invited to the Leader’s Summit on refugees and migrants organized by US-President Obama at the margins of the 71st UN General Assembly. In his intervention, the Head of State of Cameroon reiterated the commitment of his country to continue its policy of hospitality and solidarity towards refugees.
He also appealed to the international community to step-up support to countries dealing with large and protracted refugee situations, including Cameroon. The President furthermore emphasized the strong engagement of UNHCR and its partners in reinforcing basic services in refugee hosting areas and underlined the importance of the recently signed convention between the Ministry of Public Health and UNHCR, which guarantees refugees UNHCR Factsheet | Cameroon | September 2016 access to public health services, and applauded the efforts underway to deliver refugee identity cards after biometric verification.
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Up to 80,000 children will die in northeastern Nigeria without much-needed humanitarian assistance, a senior UN official said. Boko Haram's insurgency has left tens of thousands dead, and millions more displaced.
UN Assistant Secretary-General Toby Lanzer on Friday said that without further assistance, northern Nigeria and surrounding areas impacted by the Boko Haram militant group's onslaught will become the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
"If we don't engage in a much more comprehensive manner, including scaling up our emergency relief programs, what awaits us down the line is the biggest crisis facing any of us, anywhere," said Lanzer, who heads the UN's humanitarian division in the Sahel region.
The militant group's seven-year insurgency, aimed at establishing a so-called caliphate, has left at least 20,000 people dead and displaced more than 2.5 million people in the region.
The death toll is likely higher due to consequences of the conflict, including fatalities caused by severe malnutrition and lack of access to medical supplies.
'Anywhere except that of Syria'
The UN has requested $739 million (657 million euros) to provide much-needed humanitarian assistance. Lanzer appealed for the funds to protect at-risk populations.
However, UN authorities have received about $197 million, well below commitments from governments and international organizations.
"We're now talking about 568,000 across the Lake Chad basis who are severely malnourished, 400,000 of them are in the northeast of Nigeria," Lanzer said.
"We know that over the next 12 months, 75,000 - maybe as many as 80,000 - children will die in the northeast of Nigeria, unless we can reach them with specialized therapeutic food," the UN official added.
Nigeria's armed forces have pushed the militant group out of several of its strongholds, allowing humanitarian workers to access some affected areas, which Lanzer described as a catastrophe unrivalled "anywhere except that of Syria."
More than 6 million people are described as "severely food insecure" across the Lake Chad region, according to UN figures.
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The leader of Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, appeared in a video posted on social media on Sunday in which he rejected statements by the country’s military that he had been seriously wounded.
Last month Nigeria’s air force said it had killed senior members of the group which has killed around 15,000 people and displaced more than two million in a seven-year insurgency aimed at creating a state adhering to strict Islamic laws. It said Shekau had been wounded.
“You broadcast the news and published it in your media outlets that you injured me and killed me and here I am,” said a man purporting to be Shekau in a video addressed to “tyrants of Nigeria in particular and the west of Africa in general”.
“I will not get killed until my time comes,” he added, in the 40-minute video posted on YouTube delivered in Arabic and Hausa which is spoken widely in northern Nigeria.
The military has reported Shekau’s death in the past, only to have a man claiming to be him appear later, apparently unharmed, making video statements.
Last month’s announcement by the air force came days after Islamic State, to whom Boko Haram pledged allegiance last year, announced the appointment of a new leader of the West African group in an apparent rejection of Shekau.
That appointment was later dismissed in a 10-minute audio clip on social media by a man purporting to be Shekau, exposing divisions within the jihadist group.
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