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Over 22,000 pupils cannot go to school due to Niger unrest: UN
NIAMEY, March 28, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – More than 22,000 children in Niger’s lawless west cannot go to school and nearly 100,000 people have been displaced by jihadist violence, the United Nations said Friday.
The affected areas are in the Tillaberi region near the border with Mali and Burkina Faso, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, referring to an area repeatedly targeted by insurgents allied to Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State.
The world’s poorest nation according to the UN’s development rankings for 189 countries, Niger is also struggling with Islamist insurgencies that have spilled over from Mali in the west and Nigeria in the southeast.
Hundreds of lives have been lost, nearly half a million people have fled their homes, and devastating economic damage has been inflicted in the former French colony.
“As of January 31, 2021, 22,876 students of whom 10,513 are girls, cannot go to school” in the Tillaberi region alone, OCHA said, adding that 312 schools in the zone “are closed due to insecurity.”
It said “over 95,000 people” had fled their homes due to the unrest in Tillaberi, over 511,000 faced food insecurity while more than 30,000 could not access health care in an area “with big waves of measles, meningitis and Covid-19.”
Nearly 300 “security incidents” were recorded in the Tillaberi regio last year, claiming the lives of 200 civilians, according to OCHA.
BSS/AFP/MMA/1055HRS