Nigerian President Promises Investigation Into Officials' Abuse Of Boko Haram Victims
A new report from Human Rights Watch said nearly 50 women who fled Boko Haram were abused by officials.
A new report that accuses Nigerian officials of abusing women fleeing Boko Haram are "deeply disturbing" and will be investigated, Nigeria's president said on Monday.
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The report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) says that nearly 50 women who fled Boko Haram have been mistreated by the officials in charge of the camps housing them.
The abuses the human rights group documented in July 2016 took place at the seven camps near the city of Madiguri in northeastern Nigeria's Borno state. Borno has borne the brunt of the internally displaced people (IDPs) fleeing Boko Haram, with an estimated 1.4 million people displaced at the end of the last year.
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According to HRW, the vast majority of the cases in the camps — 37 out of 43 — saw male officials coercing women and girls into sex "through false marriage promises and material and financial assistance."
"A woman [...] said residents get only one meal a day," one anecdote in the report reads. "She said she accepted the advances of a soldier who proposed marriage because she needed help in feeding her four children. He disappeared five months later when she told him she was pregnant." According to HRW, the pattern of abandoning women once they were pregnant was one that saw frequent repetition in the camps.
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The report also accuses the Nigerian government of restricting the movement of people in and out of the camps, raising the need for women to turn to officials for sex to survive.
"For the past three days we have not eaten because there is no firewood to cook the food," one woman told HRW. "To make it worse, they will not even allow us to go out to fend for ourselves. Most times you have to beg the camp officials to intervene with the guards before they will give you the pass to go out. Why will you refuse if any of those people ask you for marriage? You have to survive."
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