The United Nations warned Friday that the threat from Boko Haram jihadists was complicating efforts to help tens of thousands of Nigerian refugees living in dire conditions in northern Cameroon.
The UN refugee agency said one of its teams had earlier this month managed to visit previously inaccessible border areas of Cameroon's Far North Region -- including Fotokol, Makary and Mogode districts.
The
UNHCR staff had helped pre-register more than 21,000 refugees who had
fled deadly Boko Haram attacks in north-east Nigeria over the past two
years and had been living for months with often impoverished host
families, spokesman Leo Dobbs told reporters.
"It was the first time we have been able to visit these people and there are believed to be many more," he said, with UN figures indicating a total of around 27,000 refugees were living outside of camps in the region.
Dobbs said the refugees "urgently need assistance", adding that the UNHCR "would like to help and have helped in a little way, but the continuing Boko Haram threat is a hinderance to regular access".
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Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau pictured in a screen grab from a video released on Youtube(BOKO HARAM/AFP/File)
Boko
Haram, which is seeking to impose strict Islamic sharia law in
neighbouring Nigeria's mainly-Muslim north, has killed at least 20,000
people in the region and left more than 2.6 million homeless in its
six-year insurgency.
Cameroon has been
fighting the group since 2014, and operations by a joint regional force
have helped the Nigerian military retake swathes of territory from the
insurgents, although the jihadist group still poses a security threat to
civilians.
Dobbs said that while some of
the refugees in Cameroon's far north were staying with destitute host
families, most were sleeping out in the open, in makeshift shelters or
on dirt floors in dilapidated classrooms.
"Others were in abandoned villages whose residents had fled Boko Haram attacks earlier," he said.
UNHCR
is encouraging people to relocate to the Minawao camp further from the
border, which is home to nearly 60,000 refugees and where they can
safely access assistance, Dobbs said.
He
pointed out that the UN agency was having difficulty intervening in the
far north due to Boko Haram attacks in the area, which have also
internally displaced some 199,000 Cameroonians.
Across Cameroon, UNHCR said it ensures protection and assistance to some 370,000 refugees and asylum seekers, mainly from the Central African Republic and Nigeria.
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