<\/p>\n
The European Union (EU) and the United Nations Children\u2019s Fund (UNICEF) are providing community-based psychosocial services to more than 5,000 out-of-school children in Borno State in northeastern Nigeria.<\/p>\n
The objective is to improve the mental health of displaced children who do not attend school.<\/p>\n
UNICEF said children continued to bear the brunt of the 12-year conflict and were often the victims of abuse by the Jam\u0101\u2019at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da\u2019way Wa\u2019l-Jih\u0101d (JAS), more commonly referred to as Boko Haram, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and criminal gangs.<\/p>\n
Through the EU-funded Support to Early Recovery and Resilience Project, implemented by UNICEF, at least 5,129 conflict-affected out-of-school children in Borno State in six local government areas were receiving services, including mental health support, in safe spaces to strengthen their wellbeing, resilience, literacy skills and self-reliance.<\/p>\n
The project had provided 15,552 out-of-school children with vocational training; 1,610 out-of-school children with literacy and numeracy skills and 5,194 children enrolled into integrated Qur\u2019anic schools.<\/p>\n
Folashade Adebayo, the communications officer for UNICEF Nigeria, said more than 300,000 children had been killed in northeast Nigeria and more than one million had been displaced.<\/p>\n
A recent Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) needs assessment of conflict-affected children in northeast Nigeria revealed pervasive psychosocial distress manifesting in high levels of anxiety, suspiciousness, anger, aggressiveness and hyper-vigilance.<\/p>\n
Babagana Umara Zulum, the governor of Borno State, said on Twitter: \u201cI am ready to work with UNICEF to protect and promote the rights of children, especially those affected by conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe scars of conflict are real and enduring for children,\u201d said Peter Hawkins, UNICEF\u2019s representative in Nigeria. \u201cToo many children in northeast Nigeria are falling victim to a conflict they did not start. Attacks against children must stop immediately. In the meantime, we are committed to working with our partners to provide psychosocial and other support to conflict-affected children so they can regain their childhood and restart their lives.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
UNICEF said stress and violence had been linked to poor brain development, depression and poor self-esteem, and children exposed to conflict and violence were at risk of long-term mental health and psychosocial issues.<\/p>\n
It said psychosocial support would help conflict-affected children to manage their emotions, solve problems, deal with crisis and maintain healthy relationships.<\/p>\n
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The European Union (EU) and the United Nations Children\u2019s Fund (UNICEF) are providing community-based psychosocial services to more than 5,000 out-of-school children in Borno State in northeastern Nigeria. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":17061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humanitarian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17068"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ndarason.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}