Nigeria’s Alleged Forced Abortion Campaign Demands Action

Last December, reports of a shocking program of forced abortions emerged in Nigeria. The Nigerian military, a Reuters investigation found, has allegedly forcibly terminated the pregnancies of at least 10,000 women and girls who were rescued or returned from Boko Haram-controlled territories in the country’s northeast. A follow-up report found that the army has also massacred children. Both patterns of abuse, Reuters reported, are part of the military’s systematic campaign amid the Boko Haram conflict to end the armed group’s supposed “bloodline.”

Nigerian authorities have rejected these allegations outright, but this is not the first report detailing alleged abuses by the Nigerian military in the Boko Haram conflict. Nor is it the first report to find patterns of violence, including possible crimes against humanity, in which the military has specifically targeted women and girls. For too long, this issue has been ignored by Nigeria’s allies and the United Nations. Now, the international community must act.

Over the past decade, the Nigerian military’s abuses have been well documented. For example, in 2015, Amnesty International issued a report concluding that the military had extrajudicially executed more than 1,200 people, arbitrarily detained at least 20,000 people (leading to at least 7,000 deaths in custody), and committed countless acts of torture in the Boko Haram conflict. These numbers have continued to grow.

In 2018, Amnesty International reported that since 2015, tens of thousands of men, women, and children fled or were forced from their homes by the military following operations to take back territory from Boko Haram. While many of the men were subjected to arbitrary detention or enforced disappearances, the women, children, and older people were held in camps, where hundreds—possibly thousands—of people died from malnutrition and preventable diseases. According to Amnesty International, many women were raped and systematically forced to become “girlfriends” of soldiers. Nongovernmental organizations and journalists have also reported on sexual exploitation in these camps and the arbitrary military detention of children.

Furthermore, Amnesty International documented in 2018 hundreds of arbitrary detentions by the military of women and girls with perceived Boko Haram affiliations, including those whose only supposed crime was to have been abducted by the armed group and forced into marriage.

Despite the efforts of survivors bravely advocating for their rights in front of national and international decision-makers, there has been almost no meaningful accountability.

Between 2009 and 2018, various authorities within the Nigerian government have established more than 20 different forms of inquiries—including commissions, committees, and panels—to look into allegations against both Boko Haram and the Nigerian military. But none of these appear to have made a dent in the prevailing culture of impunity.

In 2017, Nigeria’s then-acting president, Yemi Osinbajo, set up a Presidential Investigation Panel on Review of Compliance of Armed Forces With Human Rights Obligations and Rules of Engagement. The panel heard witness and survivor testimony, but its findings were never made public. As another example, after the publication of Amnesty’s 2018 report on the military’s gender-based crimes, both the Nigerian National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the Senate announced an investigation. The Senate investigation never materialized. The NHRC Special Investigation Panel on Sexual and Gender-Based Violence was set up in 2019; it heard complaints from Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones, but it has yet to finalize and share its reports.

Meanwhile, Nigeria’s allies have repeatedly ignored accusations against the Nigerian military. Governments have continued to support the military, with Washington approving last April the sale of nearly $1 billion worth of military equipment to Abuja. Any significant mention of the Nigerian military has been absent from the U.N. secretary-general’s annual reports on conflict-related sexual violence—the main U.N. documents naming and shaming entities committing sexual violence—including in the most recent report issued in March 2022. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has also failed to open an investigation in northeast Nigeria, despite the fact that it concluded a decadelong preliminary examination more than two years ago, which found a reasonable basis to believe that both Boko Haram and the Nigerian military have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes and that Abuja has failed to hold those responsible to account.

Recent responses to the Reuters reports, however, offer some hope for change. The allegations have led to more outrage and mobilization in Nigeria and abroad than ever before. Shortly after the report was issued, 228 women’s organizations, both domestic and international, collectively demanded an investigation from the federal government. Amnesty International Nigeria and other international human rights organizations active in the region have echoed these demands.

The U.S. departments of State and Defense, lawmakers in Washington and London, and the German foreign minister are among those who have either called for an investigation, said they will raise concerns with their Nigerian counterparts, or announced that they will review military assistance. According to people we spoke with in our work at Amnesty International and the Global Justice Center, whom we have chosen to keep anonymous, key offices within the U.N. and other multilateral bodies are also reviewing the forced abortion report. And, in an unprecedented step breaking his previous silence, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres publicly called on Nigerian authorities to investigate the forced abortion allegations and ensure accountability if needed.

These calls have started to lead to action. On Feb. 7, the NHRC inaugurated a Special Independent Investigative Panel on Human Rights Violations in the Implementation of Counter Insurgency Operations in the North East. Lucky Irabor, Nigeria’s chief of defense staff, has pledged to cooperate with the NHRC’s investigation.

However, this is not enough. If past experience is anything to go by, then there is every risk that the investigation will lead nowhere. Already, a group of Nigerian feminists has called on the NHRC to make public its plan for the investigation as well as its findings and recommendations when the investigation concludes.

The international community must support these demands as well as take three additional steps to build on this momentum. First, international pressure triggered by the Reuters reports will need to be sustained. Second, this pressure must focus on more than just the forced abortion allegations, as shocking as they are, and demand action to address all credible allegations of abuse in the armed conflict as well as provide support to survivors. As Reuters documented, many of the women allegedly subjected to forced abortions suffered numerous abuses at the hands of both Boko Haram and the military; seeking accountability for only the alleged forced abortions will, even if successful, not bring survivors the full justice they deserve.

Finally, it is time for the ICC to open an investigation. The ICC’s delay is inexcusable, particularly given that the court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, made a commitment last year to prioritize addressing gender-based violence and crimes against children. Furthermore, the ICC Appeals Chamber upheld the first conviction for a crime of reproductive violence—forced pregnancy—in the court’s history last December. Investigating and potentially prosecuting the allegations of forced abortions could build on this important precedent. And while forced abortions are not yet specifically cited as their own crime under international law, the ICC could investigate these acts under a number of other crimes under international law—in particular, the crimes against humanity of torture, sexual violence, gender-based persecution, and what is known as “other inhumane acts.”

There will naturally be questions to be answered. The Nigerian military has given a number of reasons for rejecting the Reuters reports, and although some of these—such as attacks on Reuters’ motives—can be disregarded, others raise questions also being asked by some civil society activists. These include, for example, how thousands of forced abortions could have been carried out since 2013 without being detected earlier by organizations active in the region—including Amnesty International—or how to account for the fact that many women who arrived pregnant from Boko Haram-controlled areas delivered babies in military detention and rehabilitation facilities and eventually left with those children.

These issues will require careful consideration in any investigation. However, it is possible that trauma and stigma have made it extremely difficult for survivors to speak out about their abuses, particularly in a country where abortion is heavily criminalized. (The law in Nigeria prohibits abortion in all circumstances, except when done to save the pregnant woman’s life, and it is enforced with heavy prison sentences.) Access to the region where the conflict is ongoing and security are also massive challenges, with Nigerian civil society activists and media facing threats and international organizations at risk of restrictions or even expulsion for speaking out.

Despite these challenges, survivors have a right to justice and reparations. Without accountability, the war crimes and possible crimes against humanity being perpetrated in Nigeria, particularly against women and girls, will not stop.