General Lucky Irabor, Chief of Defence Staff, on Monday, charged the human rights community to deploy the same amount of pressure on the government to respect human rights provisions in the country on terrorists to lay down their weapons.
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Irabor gave the charge in Abuja at the commencement of a three-day training on ‘African Commission Guidelines on Human Rights in Counter Terrorism Operations’, organized by the Centre for Strategic Research and Studies of the National Defence College, in collaboration with the Open Society Initiative for West Africa.
“What I need to put forward to you (human rights organisations) and of course the rest other actors within the human rights system is that, often times you find out that greater attention is given to the government forces that are dealing with terrorism with little or very minimal attention being given to the adversaries, the Boko Harm and the ISWAP.
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“I believe the conflict can be easily resolved if or will be resolved faster than this if the same measure of pressure being brought on the government forces to respect Human Rights Commissions is brought on the adversaries to the extent that conflicts of such nature can be resolved, thereby reducing carnage being perpetrated against the innocent citizens, who in the first place are even aware of the contending issues that gave rise to the conflict,” he said.
While responding to the call, Anthony Ojukwu, Executive Secretary, National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), said only intelligence-driven counter-terrorism operations that will protect innocent citizens from the carnage of war would help the military more in its task to defend the country.
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