Anti-Boko Haram Militia Vows To Stop Using Children-UN

Civilian militia helping the Nigerian military
against Boko Haram have promised to
stop
using children as part of their security
operations, the United Nations said on
Friday.



The Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) agreed
to the measure as part of a new action
plan signed
in the northeastern Borno state capital,
Maiduguri, Unicef said in a statement.



The UN’s annual report on children and
armed conflict, published in May, found
that 228
children, some of them as young as nine,
were working for the CJTF.



The youngsters were assisting with
intelligence searches, night patrols, crowd
control and at
checkpoints.




Unicef said an action plan developed since
then involves the CJTF promising not to
recruit and use children, and to release
any minor currently performing duties.



“We have seen too many childhoods
destroyed by the crisis in the northeast,”
said Unicef’s representative in Nigeria
Mohamed Fall.




“Today’s agreement is an important
milestone for child protection and paves
the way for a brighter future for children
caught up in the conflict.”



Boko Haram’s Islamist insurgency has left
at least 20,000 people dead and displaced
more than 2.6 million others since it
began in 2009.



Children have been particularly affected,
with abductions and forced recruitment
widespread,
as well as attacks on schools teaching the
so-called “Western education” the group
despises.



The UN report said at least 3,900 children
were killed and 7,300 others injured as
the humanitarian situation worsened in
northeast Nigeria between January 2013
and December
2016.




Boko Haram, which has been pushed out
of captured territory by a sustained
military counter-offensive since early
2015, has
increasingly used children as suicide
bombers.



Unicef said in August that 83 children had
been used as human bombs in northeast
Nigeria since the start of the year — four
times as many as in
2016.



Fifty-five were girls, most of them aged
under 15. Twenty-seven were boys and
one was a baby strapped to a girl.



Since 2014, a total of 125 children have
been used as bombers.


Source-Voplink