On the run from Boko Haram, lost boy finds his mom again

Maiduguri, Nigeria -

Running his fingers over the wide scars on his knee and thigh,

13-year-old Usman recalled the moment he thought he would die.

The boy was fleeing a Boko Haram attack on his village in

north-east Nigeria with his mother last year when two militants

knocked him to the ground, and approached him wielding knives.

"I was scared that I would die ... that I would never see my

mother again," said Usman, explaining how he limped to a nearby

camp for the displaced in Bama town in Borno state, the heart of

the jihadists' brutal seven-year bid to create an Islamic state.

For two months, Usman heard nothing about his mother until

two aid workers brought good news. They had tracked her down to

her brother's house in the nearby city of Maiduguri.

"We cried when we saw each other, there was so much joy," he

told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, sitting next to his beaming

mother, Biba, in the cramped, dusty yard of his uncle's home.

More than 30 000 children like Usman have lost or been

separated from their parents during an insurgency which has left

nearly two million people uprooted after fleeing Boko Haram.

While two-thirds of these children are being cared for by a

relative, the remainder - around 10 000 - are forced to fend for

themselves, according to the UN children's agency (Unicef).

With many of them relying on the help of local communities

or displaced families to survive, aid workers are striving to

reunite these solitary children with their parents.

But tracing and tracking down relatives can take several

months - leaving them prey to child marriage, sexual abuse and

forced labour in the meantime, aid agencies say.

"Children may even resort to begging, hawking and

transactional sex to survive," said Rachel Harvey, chief of

child protection for Unicef.

When children arrive in a camp or community without their

parents, or alone, they are quickly referred to local aid groups

which carry out family tracing and reunification programmes.

Aid workers and volunteers take down as many details as

possible from the children and share the information with their

colleagues across northeast Nigeria, who go from camp to camp,

community to community, reading out names and following leads.

But with three-quarters of the 1.8 million people displaced

by Boko Haram living in communities across six states, rather

than in camps, the work can be arduous and time-consuming, said

Myriem El Khatib of the International Committee of the Red Cross

(ICRC).

"It is much easier to trace relatives living in IDP

(internally displaced persons) camps as people tend to gather

together based on the village they fled from," said El Khatib,

co-ordinator of the ICRC's Restoring Family Links programme.

"Outside of the camps, the displacement pattern is more

random, and there are many areas which we still cannot access

due to the insurgency. The average process takes many months."

Even when parents or relatives are tracked down and told

about their children, reuniting them is not always simple.

The makeshift foster families and caregivers who look after

unaccompanied children may refuse to let them go, according to

the Centre for Community Health and Development (CHAD).

Some people send the children to work or attempt to marry

them off for money, while others hope having another child under

their care will result in more humanitarian aid, said Shadrach

Adawara, family tracing and reunification officer for CHAD.

"In one case, an uncle refused to release his brother's

children, because he wanted to marry the eldest daughter off."

"Thankfully, a call between them resolved the issue, and

the children returned to their father," said Adawara, adding

that aid workers regularly check up on reunited children, and

refer them to services from healthcare to psychosocial support.

In some cases, children may decide not to go back to their

parents or relatives, several tracing officers said.

They may have suffered abuse or had been forced to work by

their parents, or decide to spare their struggling families the

added burden.

When 17-year-old Fatima, a former Boko Haram captive who

escaped after two years while heavily pregnant, was reunited

with her mother, they could not stop crying and hugging - having

presumed each dead for so long.

But Fatima soon realised she and her baby could not stay

with her mother and younger siblings in her hometown of Monguno.

"I saw the poverty, and many responsibilities of my mother

... and decided it would be better for me and my baby boy to

live with my older brother in this (Bakassi) IDP camp," Fatima

said, cradling and rocking her two-year-old to sleep.

While Fatima is relieved to be with her brother, she is one

of the lucky few. Only some 400 children - out of 32,000 living

alone or without a parent - have been reunited with their

families so far, according to figures from Unicef.

"It can be very frustrating because it can take so long,"

said El Khatib of the ICRC. "But it is worth it when you see the

emotion from the families ... whether it is tears of happiness

or just a pat on the arm and saying: 'Nice to have you home'."

Back at her brother's house in Maiduguri, Biba fusses over

13-year-old Usman - much to his embarrassment - as she recalls

the day they were reunited after two long months.

"I could not stop smiling," she said. "Everybody in the

neighbourhood saw my face, and knew he was finally back." 

* Thomson Reuters Foundation is the charitable arm of

Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights,

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