By Opeyemi Adelakun
More than 17,000 people affected by the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria’s North-East remain missing, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said.
The organisation disclosed the figure through its spokesperson, Aliyu Dawobe, during a two-day training programme for journalists on humanitarian reporting in Lagos.
Dawobe explained that the number of missing persons was previously estimated at more than 24,000 but had fallen to over 17,000 after the ICRC lost contact with some families affected by the conflict.
He said efforts were continuing to trace missing people and reconnect them with their relatives as part of the organisation’s humanitarian work.
“Crisis in the North-East has been ongoing for over 16 years. Millions of people are in need of food. Over 3 million children from the affected families are malnourished,” Dawobe said.
He added that many families had remained separated for years, with some people having lost contact with their loved ones 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,” he said.
Dawobe said journalists had an important role in drawing attention to the experiences of people affected by armed conflict, urging the media to give greater prominence to humanitarian consequences in their reporting.
“The ICRC wants the media to take the lead in changing the pattern of reportage about people affected by conflicts in Nigeria,” he said.
According to him, reporting should go beyond the immediate events surrounding conflicts and examine the experiences, trauma and needs of those affected.
“We want the stories to be focused on the sufferings of the affected people with a view to alleviating their pains,” Dawobe said.
He said journalists should also highlight the experiences of families searching for missing relatives and other victims living with the consequences of prolonged displacement and conflict.
The training brought together 50 journalists, with the ICRC urging participants to apply the knowledge gained to improve humanitarian and conflict reporting.
Also speaking at the programme, Dr Bala Muhammad, a lecturer in the Department of Mass Communication at Bayero University, Kano, said journalists covering conflicts needed a stronger understanding of International Humanitarian Law.
He said knowledge of the legal and humanitarian dimensions of armed conflict could help journalists produce more responsible reports about victims of insurgency, militancy and other forms of violence.
“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,” Muhammad said.
He urged journalists to make victims central to their reporting, stressing the importance of human-interest accounts in portraying the realities faced by communities affected by conflict.
“We want journalists to always place the victims at the centre of their stories. Human-angle stories are the most important,” he said.
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