Graca Machel meets Nigeria’s Chibok parents

Nelson Mandela’s widow, Graca Machel, is meeting some of the parents of the 219 girls abducted by Islamist Boko Haram militants last year.

The meeting in Nigeria’s main city, Lagos, is to support the parents as they deal with the trauma caused by the abductions.

Seventeen of the girls’ parents have died since their abduction, the BBC’s Umar Elleman reports from the city.

The kidnap of the girls from a school in Chibok sparked global outrage.

In May last year, Mrs Machel, a prominent child rights campaigner, sent a message of encouragement to the Chibok parents and urged the Nigerian authorities to do more to free the girls.

The Nigerian army has rescued hundreds of hostages from Boko Haram, but none of the kidnapped schoolgirls have been found.

President Muhammadu Buhari, who took office in May, has given the military a mid-November deadline to defeat the militants.

With the support of neighbouring countries, Nigeria has recaptured most of the towns previously under Boko Haram control but the group still carries out frequent attacks, especially in Borno State, which includes Chibok.

The Chibok schoolgirls have not been seen since last May when Boko Haram released a video of around 130 of them gathered together, reciting the Koran.

Some of those who were kidnapped have since been forced to join the militant group, the BBC was told.

Amnesty International estimates that at least 2,000 women and girls have been abducted by Boko Haram since the start of 2014.

BBC.