Mr. Laban Onisimus:

My name is Laban Onisimus. I lead the education teams in conflict-affected regions of Nigeria focusing on child protection and education in emergencies. My key responsibilities involve influencing states’ commitment to ensuring access to education and gender-responsive education, with an emphasis on the nexus of development and humanitarian intervention.

The protracted crisis in the Lake Chad region remains one of the most severe humanitarian emergencies in the world, affecting the north-east of Nigeria and the far north of Cameroon. More than 17 million people have been affected across the four countries of the Lake Chad Basin. Approximately 10.7 million of them are in dire need of humanitarian assistance to survive and more than 6 million of them are children.

The following are the key issues affecting us: abduction of children; sexual violence against girls; attacks on schools; and recruitment and use of girls for attacks. On 14 and 15 April 2014, 276 female students aged between 16 and 18 were abducted in Chibok in Borno State. This was the first major case of abduction that received global attention. As I address the committee today, some of those girls have yet to return home. Some parents have died waiting for those children. Thousands of adolescent girls have been denied the right to education and a dignified life because of the 11 years of crisis in that region. This has led to mental, emotional and health-related issues. In some cases, the lack of access to healthcare facilities has resulted in people dying.

The root cause of this crisis is the hostility to secular education. Because of this, we have repeated attacks on schools, universities, teachers, administrators and students, wreaking havoc on the existing fragile education system in the country. Children are being abandoned and have been displaced from their communities. Many teachers are being forced to flee to other states.

I will now digress a little bit to highlight the use of girls in armed conflict, including those used as suicide bombers. Girls are normally viewed as less of a threat than their male counterparts. From June 2014, when the insurgent groups reportedly deployed their first female suicide bomber, to date, approximately 468 women and girls have been deployed for suicide attacks. This is the most by any terrorist movement in the world so far.

What are we doing to respond to these challenges? Plan International has been supporting the increased access to safe inclusive and quality primary and secondary education for both boys and girls, especially in areas of displacement and resettlement. We have gone a step further by providing credible alternatives for relevant and flexible accelerated basic education as well as non-formal education opportunities for out-of-school children. Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school children in the world with about 10.5 million children out of school. We are also strengthening the capacities of public administration and community engagement through school-based management committees to help with the delivery of safe and inclusive education services.

We recommend the following: improve the security conditions for adolescent girls: advocate for comprehensive and sustained measures to protect education from attack; take measures to mitigate the security threats faced by adolescent girls as a result of the economic and associated food and water crises; recognise that girls have their own specific rights, needs, and agency in humanitarian settings and require age-appropriate policy responses; facilitate access to education, which responds to the specific needs of adolescent girls, particularly at secondary school level; and increase funding for development and humanitarian aid to the north-east of Nigeria.