FG to Adopt National Policy on Protection of Civilians in Conflict Situations
The federal government plans to adopt a national policy on protection of civilians in conflict situations.
Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed gave this hint on Thursday while addressing a High-Level Roundtable organised by the Atlantic Council, an American think tank on international affairs, in Washington, DC.
Mohammed said government was planning to adopt the policy to further strengthen and entrench its constitutional practice of protection of civilians.
The minister said the protection of human rights was a cardinal objective of the Buhari Administration, and that the violation of rights was not a government policy.
He also controverted a recent report by Amnesty International (AI) accusing the government Nigeria of impunity and complete disregard for extant laws and international obligations.
Mohammed said the report was not a true reflection of the character and ethics of the federal government or any of its agencies.
Since the counter-insurgency war started in 2009, AI had issued periodic reports on alleged human rights violations by the Nigerian military, with the latest of such reports bordering on violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by the Nigerian Armed Forces and other government agencies.
He told the Roundtable that the government had taken several measures to address human rights violations in the course of the counter-insurgency operations, including the establishment of human rights desks in all military formations, training on mainstreaming human rights into counter- insurgency operations, and court martial of officers indicted for human rights violations.
The minister also spoke on the counter-insurgency operations, noting that Boko Haram had been badly degraded and was incapable of carrying out organised massive attacks beyond using women and children to carry out suicide bombings against soft targets.
He also faulted the narrative that the incessant farmers-herders clashes were of religious and ethnic nature as they had been portrayed in some circles.
Furthermore he said that the conflict is driven mostly by an increased contest for dwindling natural resources like land and water, worsened by demographic pressure and climate change.