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A ruthless campaign of violence by the Islamist extremists of Boko Haram has devastated Nigeria’s northeast. The group’s five-year insurgency has taken a terrifying toll on an impoverished region where many already feel politically marginalized.
The U.N. Security Council warned on Tuesday that escalating Boko Haram attacks could destabilize the whole region and may amount to crimes against humanity. The council’s rare statement came after Boko Haram’s recent massacre in the town of Baga, reportedly the group’s deadliest yet, and as violence increasingly spills over into neighboring countries.
“The human fallout of the crisis has been underreported, including the suffering of displaced people and the plight of women,” Nnamdi Obasi, senior Nigeria analyst for the International Crisis Group, told The WorldPost. He described life in northeast Nigeria as “hellish.”
These five facts show just how bad the situation has become:
Over 10,000 people were killed last year
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Northeast Nigeria was afflicted by drought and desertification even before Boko Haram’s attacks laid waste to the region’s agriculture and worsened the existing food shortages. Militants often seize livestock and food supplies, and markets and farms have been shut down amid the violence. In some areas, there has been no planting or harvest for three years. Three million people will not be able to meet their basic food needs by July 2015 without a humanitarian aid effort in the region, USAID’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network warned this month.
Meanwhile, people living in areas under Boko Haram’s control are starving. Though the militants claim to be establishing a state, they plunder towns without establishing any state structures. Residents of one town that was recaptured from Boko Haram last year were found to be malnourished and some were unable to speak, a Red Cross official told Reuters.
Even those who manage to flee Boko Haram are going hungry. For instance, UNICEF warned on Tuesday of alarming rates of malnutrition among Nigerian children in a Cameroon refugee camp. “Children are suffering the dire consequences of the conflict in Nigeria, losing their homes, missing out on education and risking their lives,” UNICEF’s Christophe Boulierac told reporters.
Children displaced by Boko Haram attacks line up in an internal displacement camp in Yola, Nigeria, Nov. 27, 2014. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)
