The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), has officially announced that its aid worker, a 24-year-old Nigerian midwife Hauwa Mohammed Liman who was captured by Boko Haram in May has been killed by her abductors.
Reuters, in an updated report, revealed that Red Cross said this on Tuesday, October 16, during an interview session with Patricia Danzi, its regional director for Africa saying the death of Hauwa was because it failed to pay her ransom, adding that paying such a ransom would set a regrettable precedent for other 16,000 of its aid workers across 80 countries in the the world.
However, the Geneva-based aid agency said that though it was reluctant on paying Hauwa’s ransom, it appealed to the the Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA), a faction of Boko Haram, to spare the life of the valiant aid worker.
“When health care workers are captured or abducted there is always a demand. We are a humanitarian organisation so we cannot enter into such kind of negotiations. So we always ask for unconditional release. And that’s what we did. That was the plea.
We believe that there is no cause that can justify an execution of a young healthcare staff (worker). We are now in a period of mourning…Then we will have to rethink what we can do. And the (security) guarantees we can get. Because we want to give humanity a chance, we want to be there for the people that still need our help.”
Nigeria is the ICRC’s second largest operation in Africa and its aid workers help 80,000 mainly displaced people in the northeastern town of Rann. Liman and two other Nigerian aid workers, Alice Loksha and Saifura Hussaini Ahmed Khorsa, were working in Rann when they were kidnapped by ISWA in March. Saifura was killed in September.
