Nigerian journalist and campaigner, Philip Obaji Jr. in this article published in www.newsdeeply.com\/refugees\u00a0 describes what working with children displaced by Boko Haram has taught him both about the power of storytelling and the importance of education \u2013 and access to clean water \u2013 to protect children at risk of\u00a0trafficking.<\/p>\n
MAIDUGURI<\/span>, NIGERIA\u00a0<\/span>\u2013 After the Boko Haram insurgency began in northeast Nigeria in 2009, thousands of people started fleeing the region to other parts of the country, including to my home city of Calabar in southern\u00a0Nigeria.<\/p>\n Many of these survivors were children who had lost their parents during the war. Rather than continuing their education, they were transported to Calabar by modern-day slave owners who found work for them as housekeepers and gatemen, and received pay on their\u00a0behalf.<\/p>\n I had never been to the northeast of my country, but I was so touched by their stories \u2013 including of rape, torture and intimidation by Boko Haram militants \u2013 I decided to move there to become a human rights educator and children\u2019s rights\u00a0advocate.<\/p>\n I relocated to Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria\u2019s northeastern Borno state, and moved around the internally displaced persons\u2019 (IDP<\/span>) camps in the region supporting displaced children so they could enrol in primary\u00a0school.<\/p>\n One day in 2013, a 13-year-old named Falmata came up to me in an\u00a0IDP<\/span>camp in Maiduguri and asked: \u201cCan you tell the whole world that I lost my parents, my siblings and my home, ad can\u2019t return to\u00a0school?\u201d<\/p>\n At that time, I saw Falmata\u2019s situation primarily as a concern for the Nigerian government and human rights organizations. I was constantly writing about the situation in letters and proposals to funders and policymakers, but journalism was far from my\u00a0mind.<\/p>\n One evening that August, I came back to check on Falmata and discovered that she had sneaked out of the camp the previous day. She had left a note behind saying that she was \u201cgoing to Niger\u201d with a woman she met a day before who \u201cpromised me a job in a\u00a0farm.\u201d<\/p>\n I was devastated with sadness and guilt. I thought maybe Falmata could have been saved if I had just documented and shared her story, at least on social\u00a0media.<\/p>\n Eventually, I did write about Falmata and shared her story on Facebook. It was the beginning of my foray into journalism. In 2015, I started writing other stories about children in communities targeted by Boko Haram, and soon newspaper editors both in Nigeria and abroad began to seek articles from\u00a0me.<\/p>\n I found that I was able to solve more problems by being both a human rights educator and a journalist. I was not only able to provide children with knowledge about human rights, but also educate the world about the rights violations happening to these\u00a0children.<\/p>\n