Niger opens borders to over Boko Haram displaced refugees

The Niger government has lifted a ban on refugee camps in the south of the country as record numbers flee Boko Haram attacks in neighbouring Nigeria.

The government had banned the camps fearing Boko Haram fighters might use them as bases to launch attacks in Niger and Nigeria as part of their drive to carve out an Islamic caliphate.

But a Niger government official said communities in Niger's Diffa region had been overwhelmed by new arrivals, prompting the government to reverse the two-year-old policy, a move welcomed by the United Nations.

"We hoped the displacement would stop, but people continue to arrive, and our villages and towns can no longer absorb the masses of people coming," Hassane Ardo Ido, general-secretary of Diffa province, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

According to government figures, some 150,000 refugees as well as returning Niger migrants are seeking shelter amongst locals in Diffa, an impoverished region recovering from drought.


- Reuters