Boko Haram attacks fuel prostitution in Cameroon

A growing number of Cameroonian teenagers who fled from Boko Haram attacks have become sex workers to survive. A report on the allAfrica site notes they were happy middle school students in the village of Amchide on the Nigerian border just three years ago. When the Islamist militants attacked in 2015, they were separated from their parents and fled into the woods. ‘Because of poverty and Boko Haram, girls from 10 to 16 years old are prostituting themselves in the streets of Maroua,’ said Ezechiel Marvizia, national co-ordinator of the Association for the Protection of Children Separated from their Families in Cameroon. Marvizia estimates there are about 150 underage sex workers in Maroua, and more in towns such as Mora, Mokolo and Kousseri.