The Islamist group Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls last year – and more than 200 are still missing. Marches started in Nigeria and New Zealand on Tuesday morning and more are scheduled across Europe and the U.S. later in the day.
On April 14 2014, the Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls from a boarding school in the northern town of Chibok. The abduction sparked global outrage and the social media campaign #BringBackOurGirls.
Boko Haram, based in north-eastern Nigeria, began its attacks in 2009 and has since launched increasingly violent assaults on Africa’s most populous country. An ongoing battle that pits the Islamists against Nigeria’s government and informal vigilante groups has claimed around 15,000 lives, with around half of those deaths happening in 2014, according to a Unicef report released on Monday.
Michelle Obama, the U.S First Lady, and Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel-Prize-winning Pakistani women’s rights activist, are among the famous women to have supported the #BringBackOurGirls campaign. Yousafzai posted this audio message to the missing girls on her website last week in the run-up to the anniversary.
Nigeria’s president-elect, Muhammadu Buhari, who is due to take office later this month, campaigned hard on a vow to quash Boko Haram if elected. Buhari said on Tuesday that, while he would make every effort to find the girls, he could not promise he would succeed.