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Nigerian Troops Accused of Raping and Starving Boko Haram Survivors

HeadlineMay 25, 2018

In Nigeria, a new report by Amnesty International finds thousands of women and girls who survived sexual assault and kidnapping by Boko Haram militants faced widespread hunger and starvation, as well as further sexual abuse by the Nigerian security forces who claimed to be rescuing them. Amnesty’s report found that since 2015, thousands of women and girls died of malnutrition and starvation in camps for internally displaced people in Nigeria’s Borno state due to a lack of food, while soldiers demanded sex in exchange for humanitarian assistance. This is one woman who asked to remain anonymous as she described the abuses to Amnesty researchers.

Anonymous woman: “You’ll see a soldier with food in his hand, and he’d say, 'If you like me, take this food.' They would say, 'Come with us,' and we would think of our children crying for food. If you’d accept the food, he’d come back to have intercourse with you. And if you refused, he’d use force to rape you.”

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