#BringBackOurGirls: Nigeria's Plight
By Lara Breckon
If you have been anywhere near social media in the last month, it is almost certain that you have either consciously or subconsciously stumbled across the trending hashtag ‘BringBackOurGirls’. Unlike most things that go viral nowadays, this hashtag is not free-spirited, and is not about cats.
On April 15th of this year, 273 schoolgirls were kidnapped by the terrorist group Boko Haram in Nigeria from their dorm rooms at the Chibok Government Secondary School in the middle of the night. As if this wasn’t scary enough, an estimated 230 of the girls are still missing. The hashtag ‘BringBackOurGirls’ was started to raise awareness of the abduction, and persuades people to take action in helping form a petition to World Leaders to help locate the missing girls. In order to raise awareness, the petition also pleas that the slogan ‘BringBackOurGirls’ is posted all over social media in the hopes that the sheer number of people desperate for help will inspire serious action to take place in order to return these daughters safely to their homes.
Desperate enough as the situation is, statistics show that a mere 5% of Northern Nigerian girls are able to attend secondary school. The girls who were abducted were in the process of studying for final exams to graduate as lawyers and doctors. They were extraordinary and deserving, like every student, of protection (especially in a supposed safe learning environment). With such a small percentage of educated northern Nigerian girls as it is, not only has the kidnapping devastated the families of the girls, but it also threatens the country as a whole. The idea, especially in developing countries such as Nigeria, is that the educated girls can share their education with siblings, impacting their communities and breaking the cycle of poverty in order to break barriers such as early marriage, gender-based violence, sex-trafficking and domestic violence. Not only would this be of benefit for Nigerian girls, but the ideology also preaches that this will lead to a better, safer, healthier and more prosperous world for all, not just the girls.
Since the hashtag first appeared in Nigeria on April 23rd it has already been retweeted over 3.3 million times. The tweets come from 3 main countries, Nigeria (27%), the USA (26%) and the UK (11%) and the majority of them appear to come from women (56%). One of the most retweeted posts under the now famous hashtag came from First Lady Michelle Obama, and as of the 13th of May, had already received over 57.000 retweets.
If you are interested in helping by signing the petition, or would like to find out more, please visit the site ‘bringbackourgirls.us’. Our condolences go out to anybody suffering from this tragedy, and we hope that these girls will be safely returned home soon.