TheCable

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) says the women and children recently freed from Boko Haram by the Nigerian military are showing marked improvement after receiving counselling help.

The agency, which has been collaborating with the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), State Emergency Management Agencies (SEMA) and the government, has been to various internally displaced camps in different parts of the north, and has expressed determination to continue complementing the efforts of government, relief agencies and the Red Cross in rehabilitating victims of insurgency.

“Upon the arrival of rescued women and children in Malkohi camp in Yola, UNFPA responded immediately by providing reproductive health care and psychosocial counseling to survivors of violence,” read a statement released to TheCable by Ratidzai Ndhlovu, resident representative of UNFPA.

“Women and girls who survive unimaginable trauma of captivity and brutalizing violence need immediate and compassionate care and UNFPA has been, as always, determined to ensure that they are given everything they need to be able to heal with dignity, safety and a restored sense of self-worth.

“After a few weeks of counseling, there was marked improvement in the survivors.”

UNFPA also responded to reports that it was encouraging some of the pregnant victims to consider abortion.

“We are being told that all the visibly pregnant mothers in the IDP, camp must be aborted and others sterilised for fear that their babies will become Boko Haram terrorists, since some of them have been raped by the sect,” Sonnie Ekwuwusi, a director at PRO-LIFE, a non-governmental organisation, had said at a press conference in Lagos.

“UNFPA’s abortion and sterilisation services are geared towards depopulation. The UNFPA is an organisation whose primary interest is population control. In the developed countries of the world now in their demographic winter, UNFPA’s job is to promote population increase by all means.”

But UNFPA insists it is only concerning itself with saving lives, restoring dignity to “vulnerable women and girls” and rebuilding their broken lives.

“UNFPA does NOT promote abortion as a method of family planning nor does it have any abortion-related interventions in Nigeria,” it said.

“UNFPA supports voluntary family planning so that women and men can freely determine the number, timing and spacing of their children, as well as prevent unwanted pregnancies — it is their human right to do so and to have the means to exercise that right. This helps reduce recourse to abortion. All UNFPA support abides by Nigeria’s laws.”

It also re-stated its commitment to “delivering a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every child birth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled”.

“Our mandate was determined by United Nations Members, including Nigeria,” it said. “Indeed, Nigeria is one of the countries whose 1965 appeal to the United Nations ultimately inspired UNFPA’s creation a few years later.”