100 female police officers have been deployed Nigeria’s north-eastern state of Borno State to camps for those affected by Boko Haram’s insurgency.
The state’s police commissioner Damian Chukwu saud the female officers will ensure the protection of women.
This comes days after a Human Rights Watch report alleged that several women had been sexually abused by security officers.
The deployment of the officers, drawn from various divisions, is also to “dig out true happenings” in the camps, Mr Chukwu told the Nigerian News Agency.
Nigerian President Buhari said he was “worried” and “shocked” about the HRW report and ordered an investigation into the alleged abuses.
The HRW report said women and girls had been coerced into sex and abandoned when they became pregnant.
“It is disgraceful and outrageous that people who should protect these women and girls are attacking and abusing them,” said HRW’s Mausi Segun.
The group blamed the vulnerability of women – many of whom are widows and unaccompanied orphans – on irregular supplies of food, clothing, medicine and other essentials in internally displaced camps in the Borno state capital, Maiduguri.
