By Yekeen Nurudeen
The United Nations has revealed that Cameroonian soldiers are currently forcing thousands of Nigerian refugees displaced by the BokoHaram terrorists to go back home despite a recent agreement between the two countries to prevent forced returns.
The U.N. Refugee Agency , UNHCR said Cameroonian soldiers have so far this year sent home more than 2,600 refugees against their wish to villages in Northeast Nigeria, where insecurity persists and access to basic services remains limited.
Nigeria and Cameroon alongside the UNHCR at the start of March signed an agreement stating that refugees residing in Cameroon who do not want to return to Nigeria will not be forced to do so.
“But … the reality is forced returns have continued to happen,” UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch told a news briefing in Geneva, adding that some refugees in Cameroon had been forcefully returned to Nigeria as recently as last Friday.
The UNHCR said young children and pregnant women are among the refugees who have been forcibly sent back to Nigeria by the Cameroonian army, with some families having being separated and mothers forced to leave their children behind in Cameroon.
Baloch said the returns were being carried out by the Cameroonian army, and that the UNHCR had expressed its concern to the government about a lack of control over the military.
Boko Haram has killed some 15,000 people and forced more than two million to flee their homes during its seven-year campaign to carve out an Islamic state in Northeast Nigeria.
More than 85,000 Nigerian refugees reside in neighbouring Cameroon’s far North region, where the Islamist militants also launch attacks,often using female suicide bombers and children.
Most of the returnees are unable to go back to their homes due to the threat of Boko Haram, and are instead taken to Nigerian camps for the internally displaced, the agency said.
A regional drive by the armies of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria has recaptured much of the territory Boko Haram once held, but the militants have stepped up attacks in the Lake Chad region since the end of the rainy season in late 2016.