Despite stigmatisation that she has been greeted with by members
of her local community, a 16-year-old victim of Boko Haram, impregnated
by the insurgents, Um Haleema (not real name), has said she would keep
the pregnancy because her unborn baby deserves to live.
According to the soon-to-be teenage mother, her first few months
in captivity, at the hands of militant group Boko Haram, were enough to
break anyone's spirit, let alone that of a teenage girl so far from
home.
She said she was captured while trying to escape, along with three
of her friends, as Boko Haram burned and ransacked her village and that
during her captivity, she was forced to watch men, women and children
slaughtered, forced into marriage and also forced to wait on a "husband"
she hated.
But while she watched, she says she was also waiting for a chance
to break free. And after six long months, it finally came.
"I had planned my escape from the beginning. There was a time my
husband spent two weeks away, so I attempted to escape but guards
returned me and beat me," she told CNN in an interview.
Haleema said luck smiled on her when eventually, her captors'
vigilance began to slip and she managed to escape and she walked for
what felt like days, until she finally reached safety.
She recalled that she arrived home to discover that her father had
been killed by the same Boko Haram insurgents who had held her captive
for almost a year just as she had become pregnant by her Boko Haram
husband.
Now seven months pregnant, the former Boko Haram abductee, says
she lives daily with the fear of stigmatisation by the men in her
community.
"People in this village are rejecting me because of the pregnancy.
Some will be happy to have me dead. Many people are even saying that I
should go for an abortion," she lamented.
Though the men, according to her, have made it clear that they
would not have children fathered by Boko Haram live amongst them, and
have threatened to kill both her and her baby, she is willing to have
the baby and abortion is not an option.
Also speaking, Um Haleema's mother says she immediately feared the
worst when news got to her that her daughter had been abducted.
"Anybody captured by Boko Haram is presumed dead. They abducted my
step-daughter and my daughter. They took a total of seven girls from
this house," she said.
She said though some mothers consider abortion the only way out, it's not a risk she's willing to take with her daughter.
"We heard about one girl who died after she attempted an abortion,
losing both the mother and the baby. The girl was the only child to her
mother, so that scared us. If God wishes, she will give birth safely.
Life is in the hands of God alone," she pointed out.
However, men in the village have denied threatening Um Haleema and her unborn baby.
"I am not aware of any woman in this village who was impregnated
by them. If any woman is found to be pregnant, in our tradition, the
pregnancy is considered Haram (unlawful), hence we cannot accept them
wholeheartedly because they can be like baby snakes," a local vigilante
in the community said in an interview.
The vigilante leader said that his group didn't believe Um Haleema
had been forced into marriage and said that she and her unborn child
would always be viewed with suspicion. He however declined comment on
what he and his men might do about it.
There are no exact figures, but aid agencies and government
officials have told CNN that an alarming percentage of girls rescued
from Boko Haram have returned pregnant.
The UNFPA, which is working in camps for Nigeria's internally
displaced, reports that 214 women in the camps are visibly pregnant, but
it is still assessing how many got pregnant while being held by Boko
Haram, and if there are still more in the earlier stages of pregnancy.
"We do not know yet the total number of pregnant girls among those
rescued," said Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for United Nations
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a report. "The screening is still
ongoing."
UNFPA said it is working to meet the medical, physical and psychological needs of the freed women.
In recent months, Nigeria's military has raided several Boko Haram
bases freeing captive women and children. In late April to early May,
about 700 women and girls were rescued in separate operations.
