BREAKING: We've urged United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres to urgently invoke Article 99 of the UN Charter and bring Nigeria’s escalating insecurity—marked by mass abductions, killings, attacks on civilians, mass displacement, and other grave human rights violations—to the attention of the UN Security Council.
Nigeria’s escalating insecurity and grave human rights violations are reflected in repeated abductions, killings, attacks on civilians, and mass displacement in Oyo, Benue, Borno, Plateau, Kaduna, Zamfara, and several other parts of the country.
The scale, persistence, and regional implications of the insecurity and grave human rights crisis in Nigeria pose a threat to international peace and security and risk aggravating existing threats in the region.
Article 99 of the UN Charter is designed precisely for situations in which emerging or ongoing crises require urgent preventive diplomacy, sustained international scrutiny, and coordinated international action.
Several years of violence and conflicts in several states have created appalling human suffering, physical destruction and collective trauma across Nigeria. Our appeal is grounded in the preventive mandate of the UN Charter and the urgent need to address a rapidly deteriorating situation in the country.
Article 99 of the UN Charter provides that: ‘The Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.’
Placing the escalating insecurity and grave human rights violations in Nigeria on the Security Council’s formal agenda would strengthen the credibility and effectiveness of the United Nations system in fulfilling its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.
It would also ensure sustained international attention to attacks on civilians, including abductions, killings, and displacement.
The crisis in Nigeria is not merely a domestic law-enforcement issue. Its effects increasingly implicate regional peace and security through cross-border movement of armed groups and weapons, large-scale displacement, growing instability extending beyond Nigeria’s borders, and weakening human rights protection and rule-of-law institutions.
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