Boko Haram Funded By Charitable Donations, Extortion, Others – UN

The United Nations has identified generous contributions and extortion as some of the means through which the Boko Haram terrorist group is being funded.

The international body revealed this in a report from Kairat Umarov, the Chairperson of the Security Council Committee pursuant to resolutions 1267 (1999), 1989 (2011) and 2253 (2015) concerning Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Da’esh), Al-Qaida and associated individuals, groups, undertakings and entities.

It said some non-governmental organisations were sending funds to local terrorist groups in the West African region.

The UN also said member states were worried that radicalisation was increasing the threat level in the region.

“Boko Haram (QDe.138) and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have had a similar impact in their areas of control, including the Lake Chad basin,” the report disclosed.

“The predominance in the region of the cash economy, without controls, is conducive to terrorist groups funded by extortion, charitable donations, smuggling, remittances and kidnapping.”

The report also covered the abduction of some students of the Government Girls College in Dapchi, Yobe State by the insurgents in February.

It said, “111 schoolgirls from the town of Dapchi were kidnapped on 18 February 2018 and released by ISWAP on 21 March 2018 in exchange for a large ransom payment.”

The document is the 22nd Report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team submitted pursuant to resolution 2368 (2017) concerning ISIL (Da’esh), Al-Qaida and associated individuals and entities.

Thousands have been killed and millions displaced as a result of the Boko Haram insurgency in the North-eastern part of the country.

But the Nigerian military has been working with the security forces in countries in the Lake Chad region to fight the insurgents and restore calm in the affected states, especially in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa.

The military’s effort has led to the recent voluntary return of some displaced persons who fled their homes in the heat of the insurgency in 2014.

However, the terrorist group has carried out a few attacks on some of the communities in the troubled region while the government insisted that the insurgents have been technically degraded.