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Desperate parents of abducted girls have turned to U.N.
Abuja - Parents of the 200 Nigerian schoolgirls
kidnapped by Islamist rebels in April said they
were appealing directly to the United Nations
for help after losing hope that thegovernment
would rescue them.
A group lobbying for government action on
behalf of the parents met with U.N. Women,
the head of the U.N. representation in Nigeria,
and with officials of the U.N. Office for West
Africa last month. The group has also
appealed to UNICEF, campaign spokeswoman
Bukola Shonibare said.
U.N. officials were not immediately available
for comment.
"If the government cannot take action, we are
asking for the UN to come in and help and if
they reject, we just don't know what to do,"
Reverend Enoch Mark, leader of the parents,
told Reuters. Two of his daughters were
kidnapped.
It is not clear what any U.N. agency could do
withoutgovernment approval.
More than eight months since the abduction
of the girls from Chibok parents say they are
still in the dark about what the government is
doing.
A presidential spokesman said efforts to free
them continue but that details of the missions
are too sensitive to publish.
On April 14, Boko Haram militants raided the
school while the girls were taking exams. They
loaded 270 of them onto trucks. Around 50
escaped shortly afterwards.
Boko Haram had been kidnapping children for
more than a year, but the scale of this attack
shocked the world and sparked a
#BringBackOurGirls Twitter campaign that
drew in celebrities including Michelle Obama.
The five year old insurgency has killed
thousands of people, displaced more than a
million and raised fears voting in presidential
elections on February 14 will be impossible
across stretches of the northeast.
"The Chibok community is pained, we cannot
take this anymore," Dauda Iliya, spokesman
for the Chibok community in Abuja, said at a
New Year's Day rally of parents, adding that
they had written to the United Nations to
"protest this neglect and nonchalance by the
government."
President Goodluck Jonathan says the
government is trying to free the girls but a
botched rescue mission would endanger them.
Dozens, possibly hundreds, have been
kidnapped since the Chibok attack. Two weeks
ago, gunmen abducted 172 women and
children from Gumsuri, 24 km from Chibok.
- Reuters
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