UNICEF says attacks by armed extremist group Boko Haram have forced 500,000 children to flee their homes in the last five months. The U.N.’s children agency says 1.4 million children overall are “on the run” in Nigeria and neighboring countries where the group has sown terror in recent months. More than half of the 1.2 million children who have fled northern Nigeria alone are under 5 years old.
Boko Haram
- Boko Haram is an Islamic extremist group based in northeastern Nigeria, also active in Chad, Niger and northern Cameroon.
- The group is led by Abubakar Shekau. Estimates of the group’s membership varies between 7,000 and 10,000 fighters.
- Boko Haram has killed more than 17,000 people since 2009, including over 10,000 in 2014, in attacks occurring mainly in northeast Nigeria
- The group’s official name is Wilayat Gharb Afriqiya, to designate it as a branch or “province” of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)
- Boko Haram was founded as a Sunni Islamic fundamentalist sect, influenced by the Wahhabi movement, advocating a strict form of Sharia law.
UNICEF
- UNICEF – United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund
- UNICEF was created by the United Nations General Assembly on December 11, 1946, to provide emergency food and healthcare to children in countries that had been devastated by World War II.
- Ludwik Rajchman, a Polish bacteriologist, is regarded as the founder of UNICEF and was its first chairman from 1946 to 1950.
- UNICEF is headquartered in New York City.
Test Your Knowledge
Who is the current head of UNICEF?
Name the famous Tennis Player who became a new goodwill ambassador for the UN Fund for Children?
