A photo of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari taken on February 2015.
Nigeria's new president, Muhammadu Buhari, has criticized the United States' refusal to provide weapons to Nigeria, calling it "aiding and abetting" Boko Haram, according to BBC.
Boko Haram, an Islamic militant group, which wants to establish an Islamic state in Nigeria, has been responsible for some 10,000 killings since 2009. The militants are also responsible for kidnapping foreigners, and Nigerian locals, including hundreds of girls and women.
The U.S. government has pledged to aid Nigeria defeat the militant group, but a U.S. law known as the Leahy Law has prohibited the United States from providing any military assistance to a foreign country that violated human rights, unless completely corrected.
Documented reports of mass human rights abuses and war crimes by the Nigerian military over the course of Nigeria's war against Boko Haram has fostered straining relations internationally, namely, with the United States.
According to a report released by Amnesty International, a human rights organization, more than "7,000 people died in military detention facilities" from poor conditions, the Nigerian military has "arbitrarily arrested at least 20,000 people," and "more than 1,200 suspects were extrajudicially executed by the military."
"The vast majority of arrests carried out by the military appear to be entirely arbitrary, often based solely on the dubious word of an informant," the Amnesty International report said.
The Nigerian military has rejected these allegations.
Although Buhari has responded to these claims, promising to investigate the allegations, he insists that they are "unproven," and the Leahy Law has left Nigerian forces "largely impotent," said Buhari to an audience of policy-makers, activists and academics in Washington. "They do not possess the appropriate weapons and technology which we could have had if the so-called human rights violations had not been an obstacle," he said.
"I was kind of astonished," said John Campbell, a former ambassador to Nigeria. "It implies that the U.S. has contributed to Boko Haram's violence by declining to supply military equipment," a claim that Campbell suggested was not true.
Amnesty International addressed that Nigerian authorities have consistently defended their conduct despite receiving allegations of committing war crimes, including former Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan, who regarded claims of humans rights violations as "exaggerated."
Buhari suggested in his inauguration speech that unlike his predecessor and former president Jonathan, he "shall overhaul the rules of engagement to avoid human rights violations in operations," and "shall improve operational and legal mechanisms so that disciplinary steps are taken against proven human rights violations by the armed forces"
However, there is little effort being made to hold those responsible to account, said Amnesty International.
Other countries like Bangladesh, Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Turkey, Indonesia, and Pakistan have also been stopped from receiving aid from the United States under the Leahy Law.
Brandon Cho is a volunteer student writer at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
