How did Africa’s most populous country get buried in the recesses of the ICC? Focusing on Ukraine and Gaza, Prosecutor Karim Khan seems to have forgotten a case opened by his predecessor, who herself took ten years to conclude that the International Criminal Court (ICC) should investigate.
“We are a voiceless society,” Hamsatu Allamin told Justice Info from Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria’s north-eastern Borno state where her NGO, the Allamin Foundation, works with victims and survivors and advocates for accountability. “We have more than 300 NGOs and UN agencies working in my part of the country, but none of them goes into issues of human rights. Victims and survivors have nowhere to turn for redress, or even to be listened to.”
And the International Criminal Court (ICC) is not helping. The war between Jihadist group Boko Haram and Nigeria’s security forces has been ongoing for almost 15 years in the northeast of the country [see box below]. Gambia’s Fatou Bensouda, the former Prosecutor of the ICC concluded in 2020 there was “reasonable basis” to believe war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed by both sides, and that this warranted a full ICC investigation. But three years and a half later, her successor Karim Khan of the UK has still not requested one.
On the part of Boko Haram, Allamin points to mass abductions of civilians, especially women and girls; sexual violence including rape, forced marriage and sexual slavery; and forced conscription of children. On the part of the military, she cites allegations of arbitrary arrests and disappearances, extrajudicial killings and sexual violence against women. “Some of them have even come out with babies, and some with pregnancies,” she told Justice Info. “I have registered some 800 women who have conceived and given birth in a military detention facility. And then there are a lot of allegations of torture.”
She says she has registered over 8,000 mothers and wives of the disappeared, and some 4,000 women and girls who have been abducted and sexually abused. Such allegations have been documented by numerous local and international NGOs, as well as the ICC Prosecutor. Both sides in the conflict have been accused of directing attacks against civilians.
ONGOING VIOLATIONS BY BOTH SIDES
The war was at its height between 2014 and 2016, but is still ongoing. Even though Boko Haram’s sphere of influence and attacks have lessened as the government regained territory, the pattern of abuses remains the same, says Matt Wells, deputy director of Amnesty International’s crisis response team. “We continue to see attacks on civilians, abductions, use of children – both boys and girls – by Boko Haram,” he told Justice Info. “And the same is true for the Nigerian military. We continue to see large-scale arbitrary detention of those who are perceived to be affiliated with Boko Haram, and no due process or steps towards fair trials. There continue to be inhumane conditions for those in detention.”
He says there have been some improvements over time by the Nigerian military, with fewer women and children being detained compared with the past, when it was on a “massive scale”. But, he continues, there has been no accountability.
