News
(Abuja, October 31, 2016) – Government
officials and other authorities in Nigeria have raped and sexually exploited
women and girls displaced by the conflict with Boko Haram, Human Rights Watch
said today.
According to the organisation, the
government is not doing enough to protect displaced women and girls and ensure
that they have access to basic rights and services or to sanction the abusers,
who include camp leaders, vigilante groups, policemen, and soldiers.
In late July, 2016, Human Rights Watch
documented sexual abuse, including rape and exploitation, of 43 women and girls
living in seven internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in Maiduguri, the
Borno State capital. The victims had been displaced from several Borno towns
and villages, including Abadam, Bama, Baga, Damasak, Dikwa, Gamboru Ngala,
Gwoza, Kukawa, and Walassa. In some cases, the victims had arrived in the
under-served Maiduguri camps, where their movement is severely restricted after
spending months in military screening camps.
“It is bad enough that these women and
girls are not getting much-needed support for the horrific trauma they suffered
at the hands of Boko Haram,” said Mausi Segun, senior Nigeria researcher at
Human Rights Watch. “It is disgraceful and outrageous that people who should
protect these women and girls are attacking and abusing them.”
Four of the victims told Human Rights
Watch that they were drugged and raped, while 37 were coerced into sex through
false marriage promises and material and financial assistance. Many of those
coerced into sex said they were abandoned if they became pregnant. They and
their children have suffered discrimination, abuse, and stigmatization from
other camp residents. Eight of the victims said they were previously abducted
by Boko Haram fighters and forced into marriage before they escaped to
Maiduguri.
A situational assessment of IDPs in the
northeast in July 2016 by NOI Polls, a Nigerian research organization, reported
that 66 percent of 400 displaced people in Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe states said
that camp officials sexually abuse the displaced women and girls.
Women and girls abused by members of the
security forces and vigilante groups – civilian self-defense groups working
with government forces in their fight against Boko Haram – told Human Rights
Watch they feel powerless and fear retaliation if they report the abuse. A
17-year-old girl said that just over a year after she fled the frequent Boko
Haram attacks in Dikwa, a town 56 miles west of Maiduguri, a policeman
approached her for “friendship” in the camp, and then he raped her.
“One day he demanded to have sex with
me,” she said. “I refused but he forced me. It happened just that one time, but
soon I realized I was pregnant. When I informed him about my condition, he
threatened to shoot and kill me if I told anyone else. So I was too afraid to report
him.”
The Boko Haram conflict has led to more
than 10,000 civilian deaths since 2009; the abductions of at least 2,000
people, mostly women and children and large groups of students, including from
Chibok and Damasak; the forced recruitment of hundreds of men; and the
displacement of about 2.5 million people in northeast Nigeria.
Irregular supplies of food, clothing,
medicine, and other essentials, along with restricted movement in the IDP camps
in Maiduguri, compounds the vulnerability of victims – many of them widowed
women and unaccompanied orphaned girls – to rape and sexual exploitation by
camp officials, soldiers, police, members of civilian vigilante groups, and
other Maiduguri residents. Residents of the Arabic Teachers Village camp, Pompomari,
told Human Rights Watch in July that the camp had not received any food or
medicines since late May, just before the start of the month-long Muslim fast
of Ramadan.
Restricted movement in the camps is
contrary to Principle 14.2 of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal
Displacement, which provides that internally displaced people have “the right
to move freely in and out of camps and other settlements.”
In some cases, men used their positions
of authority and gifts of desperately needed food or other items to have sex
with women. A woman in a Dalori camp said residents get only one meal a day.
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.
Victims of rape and sexual exploitation
may be less likely to seek health care, including psychological counselling,
due to the shame they feel. Fewer than five of the 43 women and girls
interviewed said they had received any formal counseling after they were raped
or sexually exploited. A medical health worker in one of the camps, which has
10,000 residents, said that the number of people requiring treatment for HIV
and other sexually transmitted infections has risen sharply, from about 200
cases when the camp clinic was established in 2014 to more than 500 in July
2016. The health worker said she believed that many more women could be
infected but were ashamed to go to the clinic, and are likely to be suffering in
silence without treatment.
The Borno State Emergency Management
Agency (SEMA) has direct responsibility for distributing aid, including food,
medicine, clothes, and bedding, as well as managing the camps. Its national
counterpart, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), supplies raw food
and other materials for internally displaced people to the state agency under a
memorandum of understanding.
Aid workers have warned since early 2016
that displaced women have been forced to exchange sex for basic necessities and
that various elements, including members of the security forces in northeast
Nigeria, have been subjecting some of them to sexual and gender-based violence.
A Rapid Protection Assessment Report published in May by the Borno State Protection
Sector Working Group, made up of national and international aid providers,
identified sexual exploitation, rape, and other sexual abuse as major concerns
in nearly all 13 camps and several local communities hosting displaced people
in and around Maiduguri.
Following his visit to Nigeria in
August, the United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights of internally
displaced persons, Chaloka Beyani, said Nigeria’s government had “a tendency to
downplay the problem of sexual violence and abuse” of internally displaced
people. He expressed concern that this tendency “constitutes a hidden crisis of
abuse with fear, stigma and cultural factors as well as impunity for
perpetrators leading to under-reporting of abuse to the relevant authorities.”
Human Rights Watch wrote to several
Nigerian authorities in August requesting comment on the research findings. The
minister of women affairs and social development, Senator Aisha Jumai Alhassan,
promised in a meeting with Human Rights Watch on September 5 to investigate the
allegations and then respond. Her response has not yet been received at time of
writing.
“Failure to respond to these widely
reported abuses amounts to severe negligence or worse by Nigerian authorities,”
Segun said. “Authorities should provide adequate aid in the camps, ensure
freedom of movement for all displaced people, safe and confidential health care
for survivors, and punish the abusers.”
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