Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the United Nations to Wall Street to the Inner City

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, May 14 -- A just-circulated UN report on Children and Armed Conflict has two pages on Boko Haram and Nigeria, as a “situation not on the agenda of the Security Council” (although Nigeria is an elected member of the Security Council for 2014-15).

The report shows the state of knowledge of Boko Haram's attacks on children and students well before the most recent kidnappings. The report at Paragraph 182 expresses particular concern at “targeted attacks on schools by Boko Haram, which were on the increase in Yobe and Borno States since October 2012 and throughout 2013, resulting in the killing of at least 100 children and 70 teachers.”

And what was done?

The UN report continues, “in March 2013, at least 11 schools in Borno State were attacked resulting in the killing of at least seven teachers and three children. In June, two secondary schools were attacked in Yobe and Borno States, resulting in the killing of seven school children and two teachers in Yobe and eight boys and two girls in Borno. In July, a Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, publicly stated that they would burn schools and kill teachers and the group claimed responsibility for an attack on 6 July on a secondary school in Mamudo, Yobe State, killing at least 29 1 children and one teacher, some of them burned alive.”

The “1” after the figure 29 does not lead to any footnote.

These advance copies have been known to be changed before "final" release, in a process for which a description, and then proposals for reform, were provided here and then here.