As Nigeria commemorates this year’s Children’s Day, the choice of the theme of violence against children and the urgent need to stop it is apt and timely. It speaks eloquently to the current difficult circumstances facing children in Nigeria today especially in the Northeast. Children bear the biggest brunt of the insurgency. The conflict has severely constrained full scale provision of health services thereby threatening their right to survival. In Borno State, children have not been to school for more than one year.
The use of children as suicide bombers and the increase in the numbers of suicide bombings is an alarming and appalling trend in the perpetration of violence against children.
More children and women have been used as suicide bombers in Northeast Nigeria in the first five months of this year than during the whole of last year.
In 2014, 26 suicide attacks were recorded compared to 27 attacks as of May 2015. In at least three-quarters of these incidents, children and women were reportedly used to carry out the attacks. Girls and women have been used to detonate bombs or explosives belts at crowded locations, such as market places and bus stations.
Jean Gough of representative of the United Nations Children Education Fund (UNICEF) in Nigeria had had cause to argue that children are not instigating the suicide attacks but that they are used intentionally by adults in the most horrific way. “They are first and foremost victims – not perpetrators.”
Since July 2014, nine suicide incidents involving children aged between approximately 7 and 17 years – all of them girls – have been reported. Their identity and exact ages have not been verified, as estimates are based primarily on eyewitness accounts.
An estimated 743,000 children have been uprooted by the conflict in the three most affected states in Nigeria; the number of unaccompanied and separated children could be as high as 10,000.
“Many children have been separated from their families when they fled the violence, and have no one to look after them,” said Gough, adding: “without the protection of their families, these children are at greater risk of exploitation by adults, and this can lead to involvement in criminal or armed group activities.”
Indeed, it is a matter of concern that the increasing use of children as suicide bombers has the great potentiality of leading to children being perceived as potential threats, which would put all children associated with armed groups at risk of retaliation. This situation would contrive to impede their rehabilitation and reintegration in the community.
Relevant None Governmental Organisation (NGO) like UNICEF and its partners are believed to be working with national authorities to reduce children’s vulnerability by identifying children who are without parents or relatives, and providing them with appropriate care.
In addition, over 35,000 children have been reached with psychosocial support so they can cope with the acute distress they have suffered as a result of the conflict.
This piece, coming from UNICEF in Nigeria, is in commemoration of Children’s Day today. [myad]
