In April 2014, the terrorist organization Boko Haram kidnapped 276 high school girls in Chibok, a town in northeast Nigeria. About 57 of the girls managed to escape on the night of their capture.
Boko Haram had demonstrated its intentions regarding the education of girls and young women prior to the mass kidnapping — two months before the Chibok kidnapping, Boko Haram attacked a high school in a nearby state, Yobe. The terrorists separated the students by gender, “shot or burned to death” 59 boys and told the girls to “go away and get married and to abandon their education.”
The kidnapping of the Chibok girls reflected Boko Haram’s attitude towards not only education and culture, but also the place and role of women in society.
The mothers of the 219 kidnapped girls protested, but little attention was generated due to their low socioeconomic status, degree of organization and location. Within three weeks, other more powerful women intervened to advocate for the rescue of the girls. They included Oby Ezekwesili, a two-time federal minister and former vice president of the World Bank.
The #BringBackOurGirls/#BBOG movement emerged from a coalition between elite women and middle-class allies, marking a new trajectory in human rights advocacy led by African women.
The kidnapping of the Chibok girls and the global ascendance of the #BBOG movement is a study in the interplay of human rights advocacy, terrorism and national and geopolitics. My new book, Terrorism, Politics, and Human Rights Advocacy: The #BringBackOurGirls Movement, is the first book-length sociological investigation of the #BBOG........