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MAIDUGURI, Nigeria – The surprise release by a Nigerian militia of 894 children the group had 'recruited' as child soldiers has been welcomed by human rights groups.

The Civilian Joint Taskforce (CJTF) was established in Maiduguri, in northeast Nigeria, to help in the fight against Boko Haram Islamist fighters which had taken over their city. The vigilante group has more than 26,000 members, 1,800 of which have died in their bid to oust Boko Haram.

The children released on Friday are now aged 15 to 19. They were abducted/recuited in 2017, the same year the CJTF signed an agreement to end and prevent recruitment and use of children as soldiers.

"Today, 894 children, including 106 girls, were released from the ranks of an armed group called (the) Civilian Joint Taskforce (CJTF) in Maiduguri, north-east Nigeria as part of this group’s commitment to end and prevent the recruitment and use of children," UNICEF Spokesperson Christophe Boulierac said Friday.

According to the UN agency, the children of the troubled region "have borne the brunt of years of conflict."

"They have been used by armed groups in combatant and non-combatant roles and witnessed death, killing and violence," UNICEF said in a statement, noting that the CJTF was formed in 2013 to protect communities and help the Nigerian military fight against separatists.

In total, 1,727 children and young people have now been released by the CJTF, and UNICEF says that it has not recruited any more children since the 2017 agreement, which was signed in September that year – after the 894 children had been taken in. Between 2013 and 2017, the UN agency believes that more than 3,500 children had been recruited and used by non-state armed groups in north-east Nigeria.

Others have been "abducted, maimed, raped and killed," it says, amid ongoing clashes, mass displacement and alarming levels of food insecurity.

Highlighting the scale of need in a report released earlier this week, UN humanitarian coordinating office OCHA, said that the organization and its partners reached more than 1.2 million people with food security assistance across Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states in March. 

Nearly 20,000 children under the age of five were treated for severe acute malnutrition, OCHA said in a statement, adding that humanitarians provided protection services to 87,000 people, while more than half a million people gained access to sanitation facilities.

"The children and young people released today will benefit from reintegration programmes to help them return to civilian life and seize new opportunities for their own development," Mr. Boulierac told journalists in Geneva. "Without this support, many of the children released from armed groups struggle to fit into civilian life as most are not educated and have no vocational skills."

At least 9,800 people formerly associated with armed groups, as well as vulnerable children in communities, have accessed rehabilitation services between 2017 and 2018, the UNICEF spokesperson added.

Speaking in Nigeria, Mohamed Fall, UNICEF Representative of UNICEF and Co-chair of the UN Task Force on Monitoring and Reporting on Grave Child Rights Violations reaffirmed his commitment to liberating and helping youngsters caught up in the conflict.

"We cannot give up the fight for the children, as long as children are still affected by the fighting. We will continue until there is no child left in the ranks of all armed groups in Nigeria," he said.

Background:

Since 2012, non-state armed groups in north-east Nigeria have recruited and used children as combatants and non-combatants, raped and forced girls to marry, and committed other grave violations against children. Some of the girls became pregnant in captivity and gave birth without any medical care or attention.

The UN Secretary-General’s Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict lists parties to conflict who commit grave violations against children in situations of armed conflict, including recruitment and use of children.

In 2016, the CJTF was listed in the annexes of the Secretary-General’s Annual Report for Children and Armed Conflict for the recruitment and use of children. Following the listing, UNICEF, in its role as Co-chair of the United Nations Country Task Force for the Monitoring and Reporting on grave violations against children, has been working with the group and Nigerian authorities to develop an Action Plan which was signed in September 2017. Through the Action Plan, the CJTF commits to put in place a number of measures to end and prevent child recruitment and use. Identifying and releasing all children within the group’s ranks and instructing its members not to recruit or use children in the future are examples of such measures.

UN Security Council resolutions 1539 (2004), 1612 (2005), 1882 (2009), 1998 (2011) and 2225 (2015) on Children and Armed Conflict established measures and tools to end grave violations against children, through the creation of a monitoring and reporting mechanism, and the development of action plans to end violations by parties listed in the annexes of the Secretary-General’s Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict.

An action plan is a signed commitment that allows the United Nations to support a party to conflict listed in the annexes of the Secretary-General’s Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict by laying out concrete and time-bound measures it must take to end and prevent the recruitment and use of children, as well as other grave violations.

Measures requested in the action plans usually include, but are not limited to, the issuance of military orders prohibiting the recruitment and use of children, criminalization of the recruitment and use of children, the release of all children in the ranks of security forces and the establishment of programmes to support their reintegration into civilian life, as well as the inclusion of age-verification mechanisms in recruitment procedures and the strengthening of birth registration systems. (UNICEF).

(Photo credit: The Borgen Project).