MAIDUGURI, Nigeria | During her recent visit to Maiduguri, in the North of Nigeria, United Nations Global Advocate for Peace Maryam Bukar Hassan had a chance to visit some of the critical programs that UNMAS implements in the country to help protect communities from the threat of explosive remnants of war (ERW) and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The 2025 Landmine Monitor ranks Nigeria as fifth in the world for people killed or injured by landmines and other explosive hazards.
A Nigerian national herself, Maryam also met with children ambassadors for explosive ordnance risk education who help spread awareness on the risks of explosive ordnance with their peers. Together, they developed awareness messages on the importance of Explosive Ordnance Risk Education (EORE), education and youth engagement.
What stayed with me most from Maiduguri was the realization that, in Borno State, children are carrying messages that can mean the difference between life and death.
Maryam’s reflection from Borno
I met six young Explosive Ordnance Risk Education ambassadors. They were 18, 17 and 13. They spoke with remarkable openness about loss, displacement and the realities that shaped their decision to become ambassadors. One had lost his uncle to an IED. Another had been forced to flee his home with his family.
That young person said something I have not been able to forget: “For me, education is not a right; it is a privilege.”
No child should have to negotiate whether education is a right or a privilege. No child should have to understand, so early, that simply reaching a classroom safely can depend on circumstances beyond their control.
Yet these young ambassadors have transformed what they have lived through into protection for others. Through radio programmes, they have helped their messages reach more than 115,000 people, including audiences beyond Nigeria’s borders. Mine Action clubs are now present in 32 schools across 16 local government areas, positively reaching more than 5,000 children.
One child told me, “I believe that when children read the messages, they will spread faster.” Another said she was motivated to become an ambassador by her “curiosity for change.” I found those words extraordinary. Curiosity is often described as a desire to know, but in her hands, it had become a desire to change what other children might experience.
One of the ambassadors has also been a member of True My Voice (a dynamic platform dedicated to empowering African poets and amplifying their voices on social and cultural issues that matter most), my own initiative, for three years. Meeting him there felt like a beautiful full-circle moment. During our Healing Through Poetry session, every child contributed a line to a collective poem. They shared their vulnerabilities without holding back, and together, we turned their experiences into something they could carry as a mantra: not an erasure of what had happened, but a declaration that their stories could also protect, heal and give courage to others.
Meeting survivors
Then I met the survivors.
The story that broke something open in me was that of Abubakar Bukar Garba, a husband and father of five from Monguno. He had been a businessman, but after economic hardship affected his livelihood, he returned to farming. One day, while travelling to his farm, he stepped on an IED. Fragments became lodged in his leg, and he had to drag himself forward in that condition before he could be taken home.
Because access to adequate medical care in Monguno was difficult, what appeared to be a metal wound was treated locally. The fragment was removed, but the wound became infected. The infection continued to spread until the flesh of his leg began to decay.
It was during a sensitization visit that Mine Action personnel and their partners found him and helped get him to a hospital. They were able to stop the infection from spreading further, but they could not save his leg.
Abubakar can no longer farm. He has a wife and five children depending on him, but no capital with which to begin again. He told us, “I cannot farm. No one is going to give me capital. I have nothing to help my family with.”
I could not listen to him and simply walk away. Within my personal capacity, I supported him in taking a first step towards starting another business. But I also knew that what one person could do in that moment was not a substitute for the sustained survivor assistance and livelihood support that people like Abubakar need.
After listening to the survivors, I froze. When I returned to the car, Edwin, the Head of UN Mine Action in Nigeria, asked how I was feeling. I could not answer without crying.
I cried because innocent people continue to inherit the consequences of wars they did not begin. Long after attention moves elsewhere, the war remains beneath their feet. It waits along the road to a farm. It enters a family through the body of its provider. It takes not only a limb, but sometimes a livelihood, a sense of independence and a family’s security.
Borno is living a dual reality. Communities are rebuilding, children are learning and families are trying to return home, but the remnants of conflict continue to kill, injure and restrict movement. The crisis may no longer receive the same attention as conflicts described as “active,” but for the person who cannot safely reach a farm, school or home, the danger is still active.
Why mine action remains indispensable
Peace is not only the end of fighting; it is the restoration of dignity. Dignity is being able to return home without fear. It is being able to cultivate your land without a battle waiting for you in the ground. It is ensuring that survivors are not left alive but without the means to live.
At the Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camp, I witnessed children learning life-saving messages through storytelling, games and creative participation. Across the entire visit, I saw storytelling being used as a form of protection: through radio, drama, poetry and play. Storytelling was not an accessory to the work. It was life-saving infrastructure.
As someone from Borno, this mission was not simply a field visit; it was a return home. It reminded me why I must continue to raise my voice for sustained support for Mine Action in Nigeria not only for clearance and risk education, but also for survivor assistance, rehabilitation and livelihoods.
The world must not look away simply because a conflict has lasted long enough to become familiar. The children of Borno should not have to become experts in avoiding explosives. Survivors like Abubakar should not have to face poverty as the second explosion.
Their lives, their dignity and their futures must remain urgent.
UNMAS continues to work with national authorities and partners in Nigeria to address the threat posed by explosive ordnance through our five pillars of mine action. In 2026, UNMAS so far provided EORE to more than 89,000 people in Nigeria, half of them children. While significant, this represents only around one fifth of the needs identified in the 2026 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP), which estimates that more than 425,000 people require mine action support.
