On Saturday February 7th marked 300 days since Boko Haram kidnapped hundreds of Nigerian girls, and activists. Malala Yousafzai criticized world leaders for thier complacent responce. Malala urged advocates and head of state to treat the kidnapping the same way they would if girls who hailed from prominent families and pushed Nigerian politicians to make rescuing the girls a priority during next moth’s elections.
Yousafzai’s appeal came ahead of the UN study released on Monday, which noted that attacks schoolgirls worldwide have been occurring with “increasing regularity.”
“If this children were chlidren of politically or financially powerful parents, much more would be done to free them.” Yousafzai wrote. “But they come from an impoverished area of north-east Nigeria and sadly little has changed since they were kidnapped.”
On April 14, the terrorist group kidnapped more than 300 Nigeriann girls from a secondary school in Borno state. The group’s infamous leader, Abubaker Shekau, claimed responsibility and announced in November that the victims had been converted to Islam and married off, Reuters reported.
When the attack happened a social media firestorm served as a catalyst to to gather supporters and Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan promised Yousafzai in July that he would bring the girls home “soon.”
Since then more than 60 girls managed to escape Boko Haram in July, almost no positive news emerged.
“These young women risked everything to get an education that most of us take for granted,” the teen activist who founded the Malala Fund wrote. “I will not forget my sisters. We cannot forget them.”
The UN’s report on Monday called for a similar action ad warned of high prevalence of such crimes against schoolchildren and girls in particular, around the world.
According to reports at least 70 countries were attacked between 2009 and 2014. While the paper acknowledged that laudable progress has been made in enabling children to seek out education, girls are still facing overwhelming barriers, which include violent attacks, forced marriage, and access to those rights.
“Attacks against girls accessing education persists and, alarmingly, appear in some countries to be occurring with increasing regularity,” the authors concluded.”When girls are removed from education because of security fears and concerns about their subsequent marriageability,” the authors wrote, “additional human rights violations may occur, like child and forced marriage, domestic violence, early pregnancy, exposure to other harmful practices, trafficking and sexual and labor exploitation.”
I agree with Malala in that if the victims were children from families with political, or economic power that much more would have been done to try and save them. I wish more teens and children would appreciate what they take for granted like education, unlike some classmates who goof off without seeing the opportunities they have that some other might die for.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/09/boko-haram-malala_n_6646580.html