United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power attended a Student Town Hall at the American University of Nigeria (AUN), Yola, Adamawa State. Excerpts from her remarks and question-and-answer session.
U.S.’s fresh plot against
Boko Haram
As some of you may know, I spent the past week leading a delegation of U.S. government officials around the region. We came on the request of President Obama to see firsthand how the ongoing campaign to combat Boko Haram was going, and to look at efforts to respond to the devastating impact of Boko Haram attacks. We started in Cameroon and we met even with Nigerian refugees over in Cameroon who plan to come home, want desperately to return to their communities. We also met with Cameroonian IDPs, internally displaced, who have been so affected. We then went to Chad and we are concluding our trip here in Nigeria. We met not only with government officials but with religious leaders and civil society leaders and, of course, students.
We are trying to hear directly from the people of the countries that we are visiting to hear how the challenges posed by Boko Haram are affecting you directly. And, of course, we seek to go back to Washington and back to New York with ideas about what more we can do to support community and national efforts to deal with the effects of Boko Haram and to defeat this evil once and for all.
My delegation includes representatives of the U.S. military, from the United Nations – from the United States, the State Department, and from the U.S. Agency for International Development. This team – military, political and diplomatic, economic and humanitarian – includes a composition that reflects our understanding of the multifaceted approach that is needed to counter violent extremism and to address the root challenges that help fuel its growth.
I am very eager to get to the part of this discussion where you all are the ones doing the talking, but I want to briefly lay out the way we see it. And we come here having acquired a lot of experience fighting terrorism in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Much of that experience has been very, very difficult. The environments are incredibly complex. But we have learned some lessons the hard way, and I wanted to share those lessons with you and hear from you thereafter.
The military, as you all know, has to play a key role in combating Boko Haram, including by driving terrorists out of the territory they occupy and ensuring that properly trained security forces, who also have the necessary equipment, are in place to prevent terrorists from retaking territory once they have been driven out. That is what Boko Haram attempted to do on Monday when its fighters attacked a Nigerian army position in Kareto, Borno State, but soldiers held their ground and beat back the attack. To strengthen this military capacity, the United States is very active here in Nigeria and across the region in helping train and equip vetted units in order that they may effectively perform operations against Boko Haram.
Intelligence sharing
and human rights
We are also sharing information as we gather it and working to improve coordination among the different militaries in the region because, as we all know, the terrorists are moving back and forth. They respect no boundaries, and, thus, we need to have seamless coordination among different national militaries who are trying to fight them.
As security forces take the fight to Boko Haram, it is absolutely crucial that they respect human rights to earn and to preserve the trust of local populations. This is something we have discussed in all of our meetings with the heads of state, of Cameroon, the president of Chad, yesterday with President Buhari here in Nigeria, as well as in our interactions with the respective regional militaries.
All of our governments who are involved in fighting terrorism must respect human rights. And when human rights abuses happen, or when civilians are intentionally killed, the perpetrators of those attacks need to be held accountable. This is the only way to convince soldiers that there will be consequences for violations of the laws of war, but it is also the only way to persuade victims that they have a chance at getting an impartial investigation if they come forward and they describe what happened to the local authorities.
Now, I don’t have to tell you, it is absolutely clear to the entire world that the overwhelming majority of abuses in the region are committed by Boko Haram. There is no parallel in the world to the group that in 2015 alone forced at least 44 children to blow themselves up, the youngest of whom was suspected of being just eight years old. Who does that? It is pure darkness. It is pure evil. But it is precisely because Boko Haram has inflicted such profound suffering that we need to ensure that soldiers confronting them maintain the trust of local communities. That trust, citizen participation, the partnership between militaries and local people, that’s what is going to enable us collectively – you, really, with our support – to defeat Boko Haram.
Now, I want to tell you, we have a fair amount of humility when we come to you and we discuss the importance of protecting human rights as one fights terrorism. After the terrible attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, some in our government, in the U.S. government, embraced the dangerous rationale that they had to violate human rights in order to protect American national security. And lately, if you follow the news, you might have even heard some prominent American political candidates making similarly misguided and dangerous arguments, saying that we need to use torture to keep Americans safe. It is just wrong. We have seen the costs of these actions. As President Obama rightly said, they were, as he put it, not only inconsistent with our values as a nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interests.
As we have learned throughout our history, cutting corners on human rights ultimately makes us less, and not more, safe. I want to stress, the United States stands with Nigeria, and we will support you as you defeat Boko Haram. We will also support you as you promote not only the security but the dignity and prosperity of people in the region.
Three ingredients key
to ending Boko Haram
And I would just like to discuss three more steps that I think we need to take together, three more ingredients that are key to ending the scourge of Boko Haram. First, and again, all of you know this, we need a humanitarian response that is commensurate with the scale of the current crisis. You all know the numbers; you live the numbers. The violence has killed thousands and displaced more than 2.5 million people here. In Nigeria, it is estimated that more than 90 percent of those displaced by Boko Haram are living with relatives and friends. Think about that. It is hard to imagine a greater testament to the hearts of the Nigerian people, to the generosity of the Nigerian people, than the fact that so many have opened their homes to those who have been uprooted. This is a really unusual phenomenon of having 90 percent of the displaced sheltered by other families.
At the same time, this statistic also shows the ripple effect of the violence and instability wrought by Boko Haram, ripples that are felt way beyond the communities directly affected. And you have seen it here in Yola where, as a result of mass displacement caused by this conflict, the population has doubled. And like so many Nigerians, your university community has stepped up in heroic ways. Working together with local religious leaders, the university has provided food and other basic supplies for thousands of people. At one point, a university security guard, Kamai Tumba, was hosting some 50 members of his extended family. Now, if you all see Kamai around, you give him a high-five for me because that is extraordinary. Fifty.
Students, including some in the audience today, began volunteering in the Malkohi camp, which I visited earlier today. One group of volunteers helped set up a virtual network to help displaced people find loved ones who had fled to other parts of the country. Some of these volunteers were in Malkohi on September 11, 2015, when a Boko Haram bombing there killed seven people and wounded many more, including several students at this very university. It speaks to the courage and the compassion of AUN students that so many of you continue to volunteer in this camp to this very day.
But even with the tremendous generosity of Nigerian families and communities like yours, the needs here and in the broader region are still overwhelming. To this end, I was pleased to be able to announce during this trip on behalf of my delegation and President Obama, that the United States will provide nearly $40 million more in new humanitarian assistance to the countries in the Lake Chad basin, bringing our total humanitarian contributions – to $237 million.
Significant as these numbers are and as these contributions are, the UN’s humanitarian appeal to help those in need in the region in 2016 is only 13-percent funded – 13 percent for the needs that you know so well. Unless that shortfall, which is massive, is filled and filled soon, people are not going to get the food, the medicine, and the other vital aid that they need to survive. So when I return to the United Nations in New York, I plan to deliver an urgent message to other UN member states that we need together to do much more to support Nigeria and other affected countries in responding to this immense crisis.
The second way we have to supplement the military response to Boko Haram is by tackling the longstanding poverty and inequality that existed long before this terrorist group emerged. The northeast has the higher infant mortality rate in the country, with one death every 10 births. The male literacy rate is 18 percent, the female literacy rate, 15 percent. It is for that reason that the U.S. government is supporting projects like Technology Enhanced Learning for All, TELA, here in Adamawa state.
As some of you know, the TELA programme aims to teach kids who are displaced, orphaned, homeless, or otherwise unable to go to school. It aims to teach them basic literacy and numeracy, primarily using radio broadcasts. The project has trained 750 facilitators from around the state, each of whom was given a radio, a set of workbooks, and other school supplies. Twice a week the facilitators convene kids in their communities to hear a short radio broadcast, following along in their workbooks as they listen. Your university has been central to this. TELA’s 750 facilitators were trained right here on your campus, and its curriculum was developed by a team led by today’s moderator, Dr. Jacob.
When, recently, a facilitator couldn’t make it to host a class, the kids in his neighborhood went house to house until they found someone who would lend them a radio. And when the kids couldn’t get a clear signal with that radio, they made an antenna out of a coat hanger. That is how hungry children are in your community to learn, and it is an inspiration for all of us who get to engage with you and witness this. It’s amazing.
This brings me to the third key ingredient in confronting the threat posed by Boko Haram, and that is building the inclusive, accountable, and rights-respecting institutions that will improve the foundation for good governance and economic growth. This is the long game in countering violent extremism, one that will require tackling what President Buhari has called the biggest monster of all – you know what this is? Corruption. They will also require embracing the vibrant civil society groups in the region and recognizing that their criticism, while difficult to hear, is a crucial part of making democracies like ours stronger.
And it will require knocking down the enduring barriers to opportunity faced by women and girls because as we know, societies where women enjoy equal rights and equal opportunities are, on average, more prosperous, healthier, more democratic, and more peaceful.
The job of building inclusive communities cannot be left to government alone. You can build it right here in your community. You are. And this is the challenge I’d like to close my remarks with today. You can help repair and, where necessary, rebuild the fabric of your communities which have been ripped apart by violence and fear. This fear is understandable. How can you tell a young girl who was abducted and forced to choose between marrying a terrorist or being killed – how can you tell her not to be haunted by the fear? What she’s going through is unimaginable. How can you tell a young boy who watched helplessly as his village was burned down and is forced to choose between fighting in Boko Haram and being killed – how can you tell them not to be consumed by hatred? These challenges are so daunting, the pain and the scars and the wounds and the trauma so deep.
Michika now divided
We have seen how such fear can divide communities who have long lived side-by-side and worked together, like these religious leaders. Consider the town of Michika in the north of this state, which used to have just a single market day. Since the town was liberated by Boko Haram last year, Michika’s residents are so divided that residents now hold two market days, one for Christians on Saturdays and one for Muslims on Sundays, an arrangement that is worse for merchants and worse for consumers. Consider the abducted boys and girls who’ve been freed or who managed to escape, only to find that their own communities can treat them sometimes with suspicion and distrust or turn them away, calling them a nobody, contagion.
Those are the kinds of fears you can and must work together to dispel by rebuilding inclusive communities from the ground up. That is what the Adamawa Peace Initiative is doing, by bringing together Christian and Muslim leaders in Yola, several of whom are here with us. They provide a living model of interfaith cooperation, and they diffuse tensions when they flare up. It is what your university is doing by welcoming 24 young women from Chibok who escaped Boko Haram, mentoring them in their studies and showing that they should be embraced.
Every student volunteer you have who goes out and helps rebuild the communal bonds that Boko Haram has sought to sever, whether it’s by taking in displaced families or coming up with a lesson plan for kids, these volunteers, they’re changing the world. They are a critical piece of the fight against Boko Haram. They are doing everything that is Boko Haram’s opposite. And terrorism will be defeated by active kindness, active reconciliation, active trust. Your communities and your nations are looking to you to take up that work in an unimaginably challenging time. We will be with you always. We will be with you to the very end, and the sky is the limit to the partnership between the American and the Nigerian people. And we will do everything in our power as a government to support your efforts to put this horrible chapter behind you.
Nigeria and
regional conflicts
We really want Nigeria to be a part of the solution when it comes to regional conflicts and potential atrocities. And this is an additional reason that we are investing in training and equipping the Nigerian military. We know you have your hands full here, and the Boko Haram priority is a huge priority for all of us. But Nigeria in the past has played a really important role in terms of regional security and stabilisation, and once we have defeated Boko Haram, we look forward to Nigerians continuing to lead all around the world to protect civilians.
