Red Cross counsels 100,000 repentant B’Haram fighters

The International Committee of the Red Cross has announced plans to key into the rehabilitation of the about 100,000 repentant Boko Haram combatants to facilitate their reintegration into their home communities.

The ex-combatants are already undergoing a rehabilitation programme by the Borno State Government at the Hajj Camp, Maiduguri.

“We are fashioning out a programme of psychological and psychosocial rehabilitation for the repentant insurgents to facilitate their reintegration in their home communities and enable live the rest of their lives as normal citizens of the country,” ICRC’s Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Field Officer in Borno State, Comfort Dauda, told The PUNCH in Maiduguri in commemoration of this year’s World Mental Health Day.

“The rehabilitation programme is to cure the Boko Haram ex-combatants of their psychological and psychosocial trauma that may impede their ability to live as normal citizens,” she explained.

Dauda said ICRC had, since 2016, provided over 10,000 diverse victims of the armed conflict with psychosocial support services from the IDP camps.

“We are currently working with the Borno State ministries of health and women affairs to extend our psychological and psychosocial support services to the returnee communities across the local government areas, following the closure of IDP camps in the state,” the trauma counselling field officer disclosed.

The World Health Organisation’s global theme for this year’s Mental Health Day is Mental Health, A Universal Human Right,’ from which the ICRC crafted its own as Strengthening Mental Health In Armed Conflict.