LAGOS– From 14-16 March, a regional workshop was held in Lagos to conduct a stocktaking of all national and regional efforts to implement the “Regional sub-Strategy on the Screening, Prosecution, Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Boko Haram Associated Persons in the Lake Chad Basin Countries” (Regional SPRR Strategy).
The workshop was the final regional SPRR event to be held under the current UNOCT/UNODC/CTED project to support the SPRR of persons associated with Boko Haram. The past eight months have been marked by a massive wave of apparent defections from Boko Haram following the death of its leader, Abubakar Shekau. This in turn revealed, for all parties involved, the need to prioritize and harmonize SPRR to handle this new challenge and recognize the rights and the needs of victims and affected communities as necessary elements for achieving reconciliation and sustainable peace.
The regional workshop will be followed by national activities in Cameroon and Chad and a bilateral activity for Niger and Nigeria, to be concluded by June 2022. CTED, UNODC, and UNOCT will also engage with the LCBC and donors to discuss future United Nations support for implementation of the RSS and its SPRR Strategy.
Security Council resolution 2349 (2017) urges the States of the Lake Chad Basin region to develop and implement a regional and coordinated strategy that encompasses transparent, inclusive human rights-compliant disarmament, demobilization, deradicalization, rehabilitation and reintegration initiatives, in line with strategies for prosecution, where appropriate, for persons associated with Boko Haram and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), also known as Daesh. In the same resolution, the Council urges States of the region to develop and implement consistent policies for promoting defections from Boko Haram and ISIL and for deradicalizing and reintegrating those who do defect.
The Regional SPRR Strategy was developed with the support of the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) and the Terrorism Prevention Branch of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC/TPB). In 2020, the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT), UNODC, and CTED launched a joint project entitled, “Supporting Lake Chad Basin Countries to Develop and Implement Strategies for the Screening, Prosecution, Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Boko Haram-Associated Persons”. Thus far, 10 national, bilateral and national activities have been implemented under the auspices of this project. including the Lagos regional workshop which was specifically supported by the EU-Nigeria-UNODC-CTED partnership. Other United Nations entities, particularly the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), have undertaken complementary efforts.