The lost girls of Nigeria

[sheshe2]

Understanding what has happened and how to rescue them means beginning to face what has happened to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of girls over the years in global armed conflict. Sadly, women are the “spoils of war” around the world — and nobody cares

Over the last week or so, multiple stories in the news have been asking why the media is ignoring the kidnapping of more than 200 girls (some reports say as many as 276) by Boko Haram, an extremist anti-Western group in Nigeria. Yet there have been literally hundreds of Facebook posts, thousands of tweets and dozens of stories in the media about what is going on. It took a week or two — longer than it should have, yes, considering the horror of what has been perpetrated — but in the end, this case has gotten more attention than any single case of girls abducted in armed conflict in recent memory, possibly ever. People are paying attention.

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The kidnapping of so many schoolgirls at once, however, has upped the ante. Boko Haram has chosen a group — girls — that is historically vulnerable, yet whose members carry precious undertones about the purity of most societies. And with that designation as the bearers of purity, girls become a group that is little more than a symbol. In reality, these girls are human beings who are marginalised, exploited and ignored globally. Girls are the low-hanging fruit of the biblically proportioned anger at Eve.

Beyond the difficulty of figuring out how to categorise this case, there is a cultural limit to how far we are willing to go in discussing something this harrowing, says media activist and writer Soraya Chemaly. “Things like sexualised violence against women and girls seems to be always just the wallpaper,” says Chemaly. “It’s just there, and people expect it to be there, and we manage that through a whole series of euphemisms in conversations and the media.” News stories have been referring to what happened to the kidnapped Nigerian girls as “child marriage”, Chemaly says, an expression that “waters down what’s happening and makes it palatable to people when it’s really unpalatable.”

But understanding what is going on is crucial to putting an end to it, says Akila Radhakrishnan, legal director at the Global Justice Center: “The failure to comprehend the specific experiences of girls impedes accountability, reparations and rehabilitation efforts.” The case of Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga, at the International Criminal Court, for instance, which focused on accountability for the use of child soldiers, failed to include any form of sexualised violence in the charges or the sentencing. “Of the 129 victims who participated in the trial, 30 reported being subject to or witnessing sexualised violence. For those girls, sexualised violence was a part of how they experienced the conflict,” Radhakrishnan says. But the decision not to include consideration of this crime in the final verdict, notes Radhakrishnan, “renders justice meaningless for these survivors.”

Read More:http://gulfnews.com/opinions/columnists/the-lost-girls-of-nigeria-1.1330072



By Lauren Wolfe

[Warpy]

1. They sell the girls for marital slaves

but don't forget that this bunch also murders the boys who are going to school. Their whole focus is against western style education. They want to revert to madrassas for the boys in which they learn nothing but how to recite passages from the Quran. For the girls, they want marriage in childhood and childbirth starting at puberty, like all good breeding cattle.

This mindset, which is echoed but not quite duplicated by the religious fringe right in the US, is the biggest danger modern humanity has to face.

[redqueen]

2. She is so sadly correct.

“Things like sexualised violence against women and girls seems to be always just the wallpaper,” says Chemaly. “It’s just there, and people expect it to be there, and we manage that through a whole series of euphemisms in conversations and the media.” News stories have been referring to what happened to the kidnapped Nigerian girls as “child marriage”, Chemaly says, an expression that “waters down what’s happening and makes it palatable to people when it’s really unpalatable.”

This time it was a group of school girls. Due to their age and the fact that they were all taken as a group, people were finally moved to care.

[sheshe2]

4. I know, redqueen,

That paragraph is heartbreaking "child marriage". Yes, let's water it down to protect the worlds sensibilities. No need to clutter their pretty little minds.

The media is not helping by glossing over the truth these girls or any of other crimes that are being committed against boys and girls alike throughout the world.

[Supersedeas]

7. other massacres there are barely mentioned and rarely

provoke demonstrations

[Bluenorthwest]

3. It took a couple of weeks? I disagree, Americans and DUers have been ignoring horrific

stories out of Nigeria for months. Boko Harum has killed thousands. Here are a few fairly recent mass murders by then which were met with yawns and questions about what's for dinner.
Feb 26-At least 59 children have been killed in Nigeria after Islamist gunmen opened fire at a boarding school before burning it to the ground, officials say.

Members of the Boko Haram group targeted secondary school students as they slept in a dormitory, police say.

Military spokesman Lazarus Eli said the gunmen "opened fire on student hostels" at the Federal Government College, which is in the town of Buni Yadi in Yobe state and attended by students aged 11 to 18.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-26/scores-dead-in-boko-haram-nigeran-school-attack/5284250

Sept 30- Islamist insurgents have shot dead at least 40 students who were sleeping in their college dormitory in north-east Nigeria.

All of the dead are said to have been students of the College of Agriculture in the town of Gujba, some 30 kilometres from Damaturu, the capital of Yobe state.

Local military blamed the early morning attack on the militant terrorist organisation Boko Haram, whose name loosely translates to "Western education is forbidden" and is notorious for slaughtering students.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-29/students-gunned-down-as-militants-attack-college-dorms/4987926

In July, 41 students were killed by Boko Harum as they slept using gunfire and explosives.

So sure. It took a couple of weeks.

[redqueen]

5. They've been slaughtering students, male and female, for years.

It was this story about them kidnapping female students to sell that took weeks to catch on - as something that could be helped, because the students are still alive.

[Cha]

6. Thank you for all the information you're posting on Our Missing Girls, she.