ICC Note
The Lake Chad basin has become home to many displaced families who have fled Boko Haram’s frequent and violent attacks. The swamp-like area is located where Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria’s borders meet and houses approximately 2 million people. A recent Red Cross report reveals the horrific living conditions the families, including the increasingly more common means of survival for mothers: prostitution. Many mothers living in the Lake Chad basin are the head of their households and have few resources to provide for their children. As undernourishment and disease continue to spread, mothers resort to the last income source they know. No woman should be forced to engage in prostitution to feed her family. Additional resources and investigation are needed to better assist these displaced families.
1/6/17 Nigeria (All Africa) – The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Thursday said women in the Lake Chad basin had been forced to prostitute to survive.
ICRC attributed it to an insurgency by Boko Haram fighters that had driven millions from their homes and left children to starve.
The violence has displaced over 2.4 million people across the swamp lands of Lake Chad, where the borders of Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria meet, and disrupted the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of others,” ICRC said.
According to the United Nations, up to a million people have been cut off from humanitarian aid by Boko Haram in spite of a regional military offensive against the Islamist militants.
“It’s extraordinary to see a woman and her family and they have nothing other than what they have been given.
“The children are clearly malnourished and it’s just hopeless,” Simon Brooks, head of ICRC’s delegation in Cameroon, said.
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