Remember last year when an Islamic extremist group, Boko Haram, kidnapped around 300 schoolgirls? The world was up in arms. International support was given to find the schoolgirls, drones scoured hundreds of miles, rallies all over the world shamed the actions. We even had a hashtag, #bringbackourgirls that cycled through every social medium. Then it
Remember last year when an Islamic extremist group, Boko Haram, kidnapped around 300 schoolgirls? The world was up in arms. International support was given to find the schoolgirls, drones scoured hundreds of miles, rallies all over the world shamed the actions. We even had a hashtag, #bringbackourgirls that cycled through every social medium. Then it sort of just phased away. Other more pressing issues of leaked celebrity photos and Donald Trump overshadowed the tragedy that unfolded in Nigeria. Today, aside from the 50 girls that managed to escape on their own a day after the kidnapping, not a single girl has been rescued and the global outcries have been silenced by time and indifference.
In fact, the situation has grown even more horrible since those kidnappings. Boko Haram pledged their allegiance to ISIS and began their violent rampage that has destroyed entire villages and displaced an estimated 800,000 people from their homes. Even worse, Boko Haram continues to kidnap children. Since their initial mass kidnapping, they’ve kidnapped over 400 more children and the government denies it even happened. According to UNICEF, Boko Haram is severely abusing the children they kidnap and even use them as suicide bombers. In Nigeria, the outcry is still marching on and rallies happen almost daily in a desperate attempt to bring their children back home. Abroad, there are no more rallies, no more hashtags, no more high profile media coverage. Is our society’s attention span so short that we would turn our backs on hundreds of children and let them suffer and die? Evidently it is.
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