Human Rights Watch Monday said it has found that Nigerian girls abducted by the Islamist militant group, Boko Haram, were being forced to convert, marry their captors and endure physical and psychological labour.
Releasing a reported account of the disturbing condition of the abducted girls in the captivity of the Islamist extremist group, the global rights group said Boko Haram has abducted more than 500 women and girls since 2009.
It has intensified abductions since May 2013, when Nigeria imposed a state of emergency in areas where Boko Haram is most active.
The 63-page report, the Human Rights Watch said, is based on interviews with more than 46 witnesses and victims of Boko Haram abductions in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa states.
The interviewee included girls who escaped the April 2014 abduction of 276 girls from Chibok secondary school.
The report alleged that the Nigerian government has failed to adequately protect women and girls from a “myriad of abuses”.
The government has also failed in providing them with effective support and mental health and medical care after captivity, ensure access to safe schools, or investigate and prosecute those responsible for the abuses.
The kidnapping of the Chibok girls sparked a Twitter hashtag, “BringBackOurGirls,” and a global campaign to pressure Nigeria’s government to do more to get the girls released.
“The Chibok tragedy and Bring Back Our Girls campaign focused much-needed global attention to the horrific vulnerability of girls in northeastern Nigeria,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch.
“Now the Nigerian government and its allies need to step up their efforts to put an end to these brutal abductions and provide for the medical, psychological, and social needs of the women and girls who have managed to escape.”
The report narrates the ordeal of a 19-year-old secondary school student in Konduga, Borno State, who was abducted along with five other female students traveling home from school in January.
The school girl said that they were held in the insurgents’ camp deep within the 518-square-kilometer Sambisa forest for two days.
They were released after they pretended to be Muslims and pledged never to return to school.
The report said another 19-year-old woman was abducted in 2013. She told the rights group that she and other abducted girls were held in several hill camps for three months. She became a military porter and slave, forced to carry ammunition and to cook for 14 gunmen.
At one point of time, she was forced to lure five young men from a vigilante group opposed to Boko Haram, most of them teenagers, into a trap.
The prisoners were taken back to the Boko Haram camp. The insurgents tied up the young men and slit their throats, yelling, “Allahu akbar!” meaning “God is great.”
“Then I was handed a knife to kill the last man. I was shaking with horror and couldn’t do it. The camp leader’s wife took the knife and killed him,” the 19-year-old said, according to the report.
A 15-year-old girl said she and others were forced to convert to Islam after “unbearable” pressure.
“On that day, the leader handed us green hijabs, gave us new Muslim names and instructed the other women in the camp to daily teach us Arabic words. A week later, he performed a ceremony, reading out words in Arabic language and then announced that we were now wed,” she said. Once forcibly married, the report says, the girls were raped daily.
The rights group urged the Nigerian authorities to “urgently provide adequate measures to protect vulnerable communities, including ensuring children safe schools and the right to education, and ensuring victims of abduction and other violence access to medical and mental health services”.
“Abuses by Boko Haram and inadequate responses by the government are leaving many people in northern Nigeria beset by fear and anguish,” Bekele said.
“The government and its allies need to step up their protection, support services, and prosecutions of abuses on both sides to stop this cycle of terror.”