Insurgency: How to rehabilitate, re-integrate victims of Boko Haram- ICCT
An International Center for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) has released a detailed reports on how the federal government and other stakeholders could successfully rehabilitate and reintegrate all the victims of insurgency especially in the North-east part of the country.
ICCT, in partnership with WANEP and Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, while releasing its report at the weekend in Abuja, said there were claims that politicians in the North-east region have leveraged religion as a tool to recruit the unemployed, and that such politicians have been complicit in the arming of Boko Haram.
Reading the reports to the media, ICCT’s representative Faisal Khan and another researcher Ms Isioma Nkemakolam, said it recommended that the government should ensure all ratified international and regional legal instruments (regarding CVE) are incorporated in any rehabilitation and re-integration framework.
The organisation also believe that the government should work in close cooperation with NGOs and CSOs in the development and implementation of national rehabilitation and reintegration frameworks.
“In order to maintain the trust of communities, it is paramount that NGOs/CSOs are autonomous entities acting within a government-devised framework.
“It is necessary that local governments, the police, and community authorities all commit to a high-level of transparency if R&R frameworks are to be sustainable for the long-term.
“Stakeholders should emphasise preventative rather than reactive measures for example, by training traditional and religious leaders to become “agents of change”, or by empowering youth to be economically independent.
“Social work partners should be empowered and supported in their provision of psycho-social support.
“Stakeholders should take responsibility for ensuring that perpetrators are held accountable for their actions. This should be done through the strengthening of judicial and legal processes.
“The interventions on CVE should not be discriminatory as current practices seems to reward violence.”
When asked, the organisation said apart from making the reports public, it will go further to ensure concerned stakeholders, most especially the federal government, through the office of the Vice President put the recommendations to use.
