Parents of over 200 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by the
insurgent group, Boko Haram, in April 2014 said they were
appealing directly to the United Nations for help after losing
hope that the Nigerian government would rescue them.
A group lobbying for government action on behalf of the
parents met with United Nations Women, the head of the UN
representation in Nigeria, and with officials of the UN Office for
West Africa in December 2014. The group had also appealed
to UNICEF, campaign spokeswoman, Bukola Shonibare, told
Reuters.
UN 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,” leader of the parents, Reverend Enoch Mark, told
Reuters. Two of his daughters were kidnapped.
It is not clear what any UN agency could do without Nigerian
government approval.
More than eight months since the abduction of the girls from
Chibok, in remote north-East Borno State, parents said they
were still in the dark about what the government was doing.
A presidential spokesman said efforts to free them continued
but that details of the missions were too sensitive to publish.
On April 14, Boko Haram militants raided the school where the
girls were taking exams. They loaded 270 of them onto
trucks. Around 50 escaped shortly afterwards.
Boko Haram, which is fighting for an Islamic state and whose
name means “Western education is sinful,” 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, 2015 will be impossible
across stretches of the northeast.
“The Chibok community is pained, we cannot take this
anymore,” spokesman for the Chibok community in Abuja,
Dauda Iliya, 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.”





One of the mothers of the missing Chibok
schoolgirls wipes her tears as she cries during a rally by
civil society groups in Abuja. (R)Protesters gather
outside the Nigerian embassy in Washington DC, to
demand action for the release of Chibok 200 schoolgirls...
on Tuesday | credits: AFP


source; http://www.punchng.com/news/chibok-schoolgirls-parents-turn-to-un/