Exploited, Threatened, Rejected

"As 'suicide' attacks involving children become commonplace, some communities are starting to see children as threats."
"Let us be clear: these children are victims, not perpetrators. Deceiving children and forcing them to carry out deadly acts has been one of the most horrific aspects of the violence in Nigeria and in neighbouring countries."
"This suspicion toward children can have destructive consequences: how can a community rebuild itself when it is casting out its own sisters, daughters and mothers?"
Manuel Fontaine, West and Central Africa director, UN Children's Agency

Women and children rescued from Islamist militant group Boko Haram in the Sambisa forest by the Nigerian military arrive at an internally displaced people's camp in Yola, Adamawa State, Nigeria, on May 2, 2015. There's been a ten-fold increase in child suicide bombers deployed by Boko Haram over the last year, UNICEF says. (Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters)

The abducted, terrorized and exploited children and women whom Boko Haram has spirited away from their communities in tandem with mass murder and the destruction of villages, is sundering familial and clan and tribal relations. When abducted children who have been threatened, starved, violated and abused in every conceivable way manage to escape and return to their home communities they have become ostracized, discovering that they no longer have a place among those who were once their family.

They are distrusted. They are regarded as being no different after their time with the Islamist jihadists than their captors. The fact that these terrified children were exposed to the commission of dreadful atrocities, of threats that they will die if they do not submit, of witnessing the deaths of their friends and comrades, subjected to violence themselves in the process learning to obey to preserve their lives elicits little sympathy from villagers who have themselves often been the subject of Boko Haram's deadly ravages.

All the more so as the jihadist group has embraced the utility of using children as suicide bombers in ever greater numbers. Little wonder that communities that have suffered death with the advent of child suicide bombers view those children as threats. Among the suicide bombers, 75 percent are girls, according to a new report issued by UNICEF. Even though these rejected children many of whom are believed to have been captives are "victims, not perpetrators".

"Nigeria's security forces have contributed to the problem by using schools as military bases, putting children at further risk of attack from the Islamist armed group."
"At least 611 teachers have been deliberately killed."
Human Rights Watch

"Boko Haram has exploited common desires of youth ... to get ahead economically. Many youth described either accepting loans prior to joining or joining with the hope of receiving loans or capital for their mostly small, informal businesses."
Mercy Corps

Rebecca Issac, a Chibok schoolgirl who had escaped from the Boko Haram, reacts during an event that marks the second anniversary of the Boko Haram abduction of Chibok schoolgirls, in Abuja, Nigeria April 11, 2016. (Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters)

Girls and women escaping Boko Haram clutches describe their agonized experiences with sexual abuse and forced 'marriages'. The mass of the over 200 schoolgirls abducted from their residential school in Chibok, Nigeria two years ago have never been recovered. And the Nigerian military has been treating children abducted by Boko Harm as representing threats equal to the manner in which they regard the adults.

The military have placed boys on "wanted posters" across northeastern Nigeria, along with the visages of dozens of elite Boko Haram suspects.