Boko Haram child soldiers recovering at orphanage

The Islamic militant group Boko Haram rose to international infamy last year when it kidnapped hundreds of Nigerian school girls. Abductions continue to be a priority for the group ... and not just for ransom and propaganda purposes. Child soldiers make up a crucial part of the group's front-line fighters.

More than 80 former child soldiers with Boko Haram are now being cared for at a small orphanage in Maroua in northern Cameroon. Some are as young as five years old.

The atrocities of Boko Haram will only be discovered after Boko Haram is militarily defeated. I worry that we may stumble across more gruesome discoveries- Chris Fomunyoh,  director with the National Democratic Institute

Chris Fomunyoh, a director with the National Democratic Institute, a Washington-based think- tank, visited the orphanage last week.  

“[The children] didn’t look that good,” he told As It Happen’s Carol Off. “Although I was told this was an improvement over their conditions when they first arrived at the orphanage two months ago.”

The children were rescued by Cameroonian military from a Boko Haram training camp in November, 2014. They weren’t active soldiers for the group.

“They were probably still in the early stages of being prepared to become eventual fighters,” Mr. Fomunyoh said, adding that they were still being indoctrinated by the militant group at the time of their rescue.

Mr. Fomunyoh says the children have not been able to talk about their experiences under Boko Haram, or where they had lived before.  

“That’s part of the tragedy with these kids. They can neither speak French nor English. They speak a little Arabic and a bit of the local dialect, so communication with them is extremely difficult,” he said. In fact, the language barrier has made it impossible for the orphanage to locate any of their relatives. “The inability of the kids to communicate with the manager is going to slow down the whole identification process.”

Mr. Fomunyoh said he believes the reason the children have so little language skills is because they were kidnapped years ago, disconnecting them from their families and robbing them of parental guidance or formal education.

He said that rehabilitating the children and reintegrating them into society will be a long and difficult process.

“The atrocities of Boko Haram will only be discovered after Boko Haram is militarily defeated. I worry that we may stumble across more gruesome discoveries, especially in areas that have been under Boko Haram influence.”