- Safiu Kehinde
Amnesty International has called on governments at all levels to prioritize the rescue and societal reintegration of girls who had suffered insurgency.
The human rights organisation’s Programme Manager, Barbara Magaji, made the call at a programme organised by Amnesty International to illuminate the challenges faced by girls on Friday in Abuja.
Magaji said that the programme was in commemoration of the 2024 International Day of the Girl Child and had the theme “Girls’ Vision for the Future”.
She maintained that the programme engaged girls to speak for girls by empowering them to lend their voices to the campaign for the reintegration of girl survivors of insurgency in the North-East.
“Part of our agenda for this year is to push for reintegration of the girls and young women who have had all types of violations through the terrorists across the country.
“Our advocacy is for government not to forget them. Some of them have come back with children who are tagged children of terrorists and some are still there.
“So, our call to government is to ensure that they reintegrate them back into the society to take care of them to ensure that those who still want to be educated are educated and ensure other provisions like health.
“Some of them left as girls, some of them have come back as mothers. So it is important that government addresses this and attend to their needs,” she said.
Magaji added that girls from different secondary schools in the FCT are demanding that the government should attend to those girls who had faced violations.
In the same vein, she said that Amnesty International was also using the event of the Girl Child Day to advocate for an end to harmful practices like breast flattening, genital mutilation among others against girls.
Meanwhile, Helen Adah, Programme Manager, Amnesty International, said that Oct.11, the International Day of the Girl Child, is a day set aside to celebrate girls all around the world.
“At Amnesty International, we value every child, the girl child as much as the boy child. But the girl child faces different unique challenges, so this is a day to bring those challenges to the limelight.
“This is not only about their challenges, we also want to celebrate their wins, their potentials and that is why we have invited girls from different schools to celebrate them,” she said.