The report said that abducted women and girls held by Boko Haram ranged in age from infancy to 65. "They and many others they saw in the camps were subjected to physical and psychological abuse; forced labour; forced participation in military operations, including carrying ammunition or luring men into ambush; forced marriage to the captors; and sexual abuse, including rape," the report says.
A social worker who has dealt with victims of Boko Haram violence told HRW that the rape of abducted women had been underreported because of the stigma and shame attached to sexual abuse in northern Nigeria.
Some abducted women and girls described forced labour and participation in military operations.
The recent upsurge in violence has led to anger at the government's lacklustre response to the threat, prompting it to seek assistance from the US, UK and Israel, who are expected to help find the abducted schoolgirls and provide counter-terrorism training programmes.
Following the release of a video by Boko Haram earlier this week, showing around 130 of the abducted teenagers, Mungo Park escorted a group of girls who had managed to escape and relatives of those still missing to the nearby town of Maiduguri to identify the captives.
Both of the abducted clergymen survived five months of imprisonment.
Marduk collages harrowing news reports of female political activists abducted, tortured or "disappeared" in places such as Paraguay, Turkey, and China, and juxtaposes them with an equally violent script: a Sumerian creation myth in which the god Marduk murders and disembowels the goddess Tiamat, splitting her "like a flat fish into two halves" to make "a covering for the heavens".
Despite these calls for a ceasefire, the regime hit five mosques in the Damascus suburbs of Harasta yesterday, and abducted and murdered an Orthodox priest, Father Fadi Haddad, outside of Damascus.
Some critics have gone further in their attacks on Bergoglio, claiming he failed to protect two Jesuit priests serving under him who were abducted and tortured for five months at a navy base.
According to Human Rights Watch, the Makombo massacre, which left 321 dead and 250 abducted, including at least 80 children, was one of the worst atrocities committed by the LRA since its campaign against the Ugandan government began 23 years ago.
David Cameron revealed that Britain is sending surveillance aircraft and a military team to Nigeria to help the hunt for the abducted schoolgirls.
