The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said that more than 17,000 persons displaced by the actions of Boko Haram terrorists across Northeast, Nigeria are still missing.
The ICRC spokesman, Mr Aliyu Dawube, said this at the completion of a 2-day training for media on humanitarian reporting in Lagos.
The initial total was in excess of 24,000 but was scaled down to more than 17,000 due to loss of contact with some of the impacted families by the ICRC, Weekend Trust reports.
He said, however, that the ICRC was trying to trace the missing persons and put them back with their families as part of its humanitarian duties.
The crisis in the Northeast has lasted for 16 years. There is a need for food by millions of people. More than 3 million children from the affected families are malnourished.
“Over 10 years, many people have been separated from their loved ones. “People have been displaced in the region,” he stated.
Dawobe said the media had a greater role to play in telling the public about the horrible situations of the afflicted folks.
The program focused at boosting journalists’ skills in humanitarian reporting, he said.
“The ICRC is asking the media to take the lead in changing the way in which people affected by conflict in Nigeria are reported. Africans & Diaspora
We want the tales to be on the sufferings of the afflicted individuals with a view to easing their difficulties.
“We want the media to highlight the sufferings of the people affected by the conflicts; to report real human angle stories associated with the missing persons and the trauma they are going through,” he said.
He said that 50 journalists were picked for the training and charged the recipients to use the chance to better their journalism.
He said the program was aimed at enabling journalists to get access to human-angle stories that would affect the lives of victims of armed conflicts in Nigeria.
Also addressing, a lecturer in the Department of Mass Communication, Bayero University, Kano, Dr Bala Muhammad said journalists needed to be informed on International Humanitarian Law (IHL), with a view to refocusing their pattern of journalism.
“The training is about humanitarian journalism and conflict reporting. We want journalists to discover solutions to mitigate sufferings and hardships encountered by victims of insurgency, militancy and other crimes.
We want journalists to always make the victims the center of their tales. “The most important ones are the human-angle stories,” he remarked.
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