More than 17,000 people displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria’s North-East remain missing, despite ongoing military operations against terrorist groups in the region, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has disclosed.
The ICRC said the missing persons were among thousands of people separated from their families during more than 16 years of insurgency, displacement and violence across the region.
The organisation’s spokesperson, Aliyu Dawobe, disclosed the figure in Lagos at the conclusion of a two-day training programme organised for journalists on humanitarian and conflict reporting.
According to Dawobe, the number of people being traced was previously estimated at more than 24,000. He explained that the figure had since fallen to over 17,000 because the ICRC had lost contact with some of the families previously registered as having missing relatives.
He stressed, however, that the reduction did not necessarily mean that all the affected persons had been found.
Dawobe said the ICRC continued to work with families and relevant authorities to trace missing persons, establish their whereabouts and facilitate reunification with their relatives whenever possible.
“Crisis in the North-East has been ongoing for over 16 years. Millions of people are in need of food. Over three million children from the affected families are malnourished,” he said.
He added that many families had endured prolonged separation, with some people having lost contact with their relatives for more than a decade.
“A lot of people have been separated from their loved ones for over 10 years. A lot of people have been displaced in the region,” Dawobe stated.
The prolonged humanitarian crisis has left communities across the North-East dealing with the consequences of conflict, including displacement, food insecurity, family separation and psychological trauma.
Dawobe said the media had an important role to play in drawing public attention to the experiences of people affected by the insurgency.
He urged journalists to move beyond reporting only military operations, casualty figures and security developments and devote greater attention to the humanitarian consequences of the conflict.
According to him, the training was designed to equip journalists with the skills required to report conflicts from a humanitarian perspective while giving victims and affected communities greater visibility.
“The ICRC wants the media to take the lead in changing the pattern of reportage about people affected by conflicts in Nigeria,” he said.
Dawobe said journalists should produce stories that highlighted the suffering of displaced persons, missing people and their families, with the objective of encouraging greater attention to their needs.
“We want the stories to be focused on the sufferings of the affected people with a view to alleviating their pains,” he added.
He also urged journalists to report the experiences of families searching for missing relatives and the trauma associated with prolonged separation.
“We want the media to raise concerns about the sufferings of people affected by the conflicts; to report real human-angle stories linked to the missing persons and the trauma they are facing,” Dawobe said.
Fifty journalists participated in the two-day training. Dawobe encouraged the participants to apply the knowledge gained during the programme to improve the quality and impact of their humanitarian reporting.
He said journalists had an opportunity to use their platforms to draw attention to issues affecting victims of armed conflict and encourage discussions that could contribute to improving their circumstances.
Also speaking during the programme, a lecturer in the Department of Mass Communication at Bayero University, Kano, Dr Bala Muhammad, stressed the importance of journalists having a sound understanding of International Humanitarian Law.
Muhammad said greater knowledge of humanitarian principles would help journalists report conflicts more responsibly and ensure that victims remained central to their stories.
“The training is on humanitarian journalism and conflict reporting. We want journalists to find ways to ameliorate the sufferings and hardships faced by victims of insurgency, militancy and other crimes,” he said.
He urged journalists to consistently place victims at the centre of their reports rather than treating them merely as statistics in stories about conflict.
“We want journalists to always place the victims at the centre of their stories. Human-angle stories are the most important,” Muhammad added.
The ICRC training therefore emphasised the need for conflict reporting that combines accuracy, sensitivity and attention to the rights and dignity of affected people.
With thousands of people still unaccounted for, the humanitarian organisation said continued efforts to trace missing persons and reconnect families remained essential to addressing the long-term consequences of the insurgency in Nigeria’s North-East.
