UNFPA has
supported 6.2 million people impacted by the Boko Haram insurgency in
North-eastern Nigeria.
© UNFPA Nigeria
Two years ago, on 14 April, 2014, Boko Haram abducted 276
girls from their dormitory beds at a secondary school in Chibok, Nigeria. On the
two-year anniversary of their disappearance, a video surfaced showing 15 of the
219 girls who are still missing standing against a wall in black robes.
They speak calmly, as they state their names and where they
were kidnapped from. It was the first video since May 2014.
These women are being used as a tactic of war by Boko Haram.
The UNFPA Executive Director, Babatunde Osotimehin, on 14 April, during a Commission
of Population and Development event discussing the ongoing crisis in North-eastern
Nigeria said that the girls and all other abductees have been traumatized long enough
and must be allowed to return to their families.
In the six years since the conflict with Boko Haram began in
the region, as many as 7,000 Nigerian women and girls have been abducted by the
insurgents, and approximately 20,000 civilians have died.
In addition, countless communities and villages throughout
the impacted areas of Nigeria have been razed during brutal insurgent attacks,
resulting in the internal displacement of 2.2
million people, including approximately 461,000 women of reproductive age.
One Amina, recounting Boko Haram's seige on her village said
that the shooting would not stop and went on for hours. There were dead bodies
everywhere, but she escaped to a nearby village.
According to her, the insurgents tricked them into a fake
reconciliation process to allow those hiding to come out; her husband and four
of her children were killed that day.
With her home and community in rubble, she had no choice but
to set out on foot, hoping she and her remaining family members would not
encounter Boko Haram again as they searched for help and safety.
After walking 100 kilometres, she found the GGSS Camp for
internally displaced persons, supported by UNFPA.
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| Amina during a community psychosocial support session. © UNFPA Nigeria |
When Amina arrived at GGSS, she was silent and withdrawn,
and quickly fell into a deep depression. But she soon began attending
UNFPA-supported community psychosocial counseling sessions, where she has been
able to discuss her trauma with women and girls who offer support and stories
of their own.
Providing hope to the hopeless
The Ministry of Health’s Director of Emergency Medical
Response & Humanitarian Service Dr. Mohammed Aminu Ghuluze, said that
currently, there are no exiting facilities for local government. He said that they
have all been burned down and destroyed, and the remaining public facilities
are overstretched.
UNFPA is working to fill this void and provide impacted
women and girls with safe spaces and critical sexual and reproductive health
and gender-based violence services, including psycho social counseling.
Apart from the 6.2 million people that have received support
from UNFPA, 1.1 million women who have received sexual and reproductive health
care and the safe delivery of over 63,000 children.
UNFPA has also supported psycho social counseling for approximately 28,000
survivors of gender-based violence and medical treatment for nearly 400
survivors of rape.
This year alone an estimated 81,689 pregnancies will occur
among internally displaced women in North-eastern Nigeria, and tens of
thousands of displaced women and girls who have been traumatized by the ongoing
brutality
According to Ratidzai Ndhlovu, UNFPA’s Representative in
Nigeria, they have started psycho social counseling to be able to give women
resilience so they are able to remain strong and continue hoping they will get
their beloved ones back if they have been abducted.
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