DAKAR, SENEGAL // Boko Haram militants are increasingly forcing children to carry out bombings, with the number of attacks since January already nearly reaching the total for all of last year, according to a report released by the UN children’s agency on Wednesday.
The report came the same day Nigerian security officials revealed they thwarted plans by the ISIL-linked group to attack the embassies of the United States and Britain in the capital Abuja.
Unicef says at least 117 attacks have been carried out by youth in the Lake Chad basin region since 2014, with nearly 80 per cent of the bombs strapped to girls, who were sometimes drugged before their missions.
The very sight of children near marketplaces and checkpoints is sparking fear, according to Marie-Pierre Poirier, Unicef’s regional director for West and Central Africa.
As a result, nearly 1,500 children were detained last year across Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad.
“These children are victims, not perpetrators,” Ms Poirier said. “Forcing or deceiving them into committing such horrific acts is reprehensible.”
On Wednesday, the department of state services said it arrested five suspected members of Boko Haram based in Benue state between March 25 and 26.
“The group had perfected plans to attack the UK and American Embassies and other western interests in Abuja,” the DSS said.
The security service said another suspected Boko Haram member, arrested on March 22, in north-eastern Yobe state, confessed details of the plot. The British High Commission and US embassy in Abuja did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Boko Haram has killed more than 20,000 people and forced more than 2 million to flee their homes since 2009 in an insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic state in the north-east of Africa’s most populous nation.
This week marks the third anniversary of the mass abduction of Chibok schoolgirls by Boko Haram, which has pledged allegiance to ISIL.
The mass abduction of 276 girls from a boarding school in Nigeria on April 14, 2014 mobilised an international campaign to find and free the girls, many of whom were forced into marriages with fighters and became pregnant. Dozens quickly escaped, and 21 were freed in October through negotiations with Boko Haram mediated by the Swiss government and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The government denied a ransom was paid and that it freed some detained Boko Haram fighters in exchange for the girls. At that time, officials said they were pressing on with negotiations and expected the release of a second group but no more have been freed.
Unicef emphasised on Wednesday that beyond the high-profile Chibok abductions, the practice of kidnapping children and forcing them to associate with the armed group has been prevalent.
“Young girls are spotted in the markets, and nighttime raids drag them from their beds. In some cases, parents are killed in front of the girls during the process,” it said. “This is typically followed by an extended journey to a Boko Haram base in the forest where the girls are forced into early marriage and sexual slavery.”
Unicef also called for the community reintegration of children who were once under Boko Haram’s control, saying many are stigmatised and feared.
However, a $154 million (Dh565.5m) appeal last year for the Lake Chad basin region remains only 40 per cent funded, the agency said.
* Associated Press and Reuters
