#BringBackOurGirls If You Can

As many of you know, on April 15th Boko Haram kidnapped 234 school girls in Nigeria, causing a national tragedy, widespread panic, and a cry for action. Boko Haram touts that Western education is a sin, and those who are taught must be punished. In the two plus weeks after the abduction, there has been extensive criticism of the Nigerian government and President Goodluck Jonathan for not being proactive in the search and recovery of the girls.

The call has turned to demonstration, through the means of social media as well as protests around the globe. The globally trending hashtag #BringBackOurGirls has been highly active, both denouncing the human rights atrocity that has taken place and acting as an unofficial platform of allegiance for organizations and individuals to announce their support for finding the girls as soon as possible.

From the Global Fund for Women, Amnesty International, UN Women, Girl Rising, CARE International UK, Malala Fund, Global Voices, CNN International, BBC, FEMNET, Human Rights Watch, to even Anderson Cooper and countless individual Twitter account holders, the cry is sounded. Until this social media rally happened, news sources were allegedly not as concerned with the atrocity and many theories have been developed as to why. What changed the ‘not caring’ into such a campaign for aid? Well, with nearly 435,000 tweets and re-tweets, as well as Facebook shares, people are finding more ways to advocate their support of the Nigerian people. Protests have cropped up in London, New York, and many other locations– mobilizing support for recovering the girls and reaching the ears of the press, as well as the Nigerian government.

The question remains: do you believe that this type of electronic people power will make a lasting impact on the search for the girls? Is widespread attention to the issue and empathy for the suffering families and citizens in Nigeria enough? What more can be done to lay the ground work for effective support of those effected by this atrocity, as well as the other similar incidents that happen globally?

It would prove to be deeply disturbing if #BringBackOurGirls became another passing phase, an Interwebz social trend that clamors for sound but has no lasting fury or measurable results. Do you believe that this event is the straw that proverbially breaks the camel’s back (this camel being the extensive web of human trafficking that exists in our world and our own nation, what happens to so many young girls and boys in armed conflict, vulnerability of women and war-crime rates…) or will it, too, fade out and become a glib collective memory of the worst of human behavior?

Foreign Policy writer and director of journalism project Women Under Siege, Lauren Wolfe, calls these questions to the forefront in her recently published article “Lost Girls“, stating:

“”Is this sort of what people are normally discussing when they’re discussing the problem of worldwide trafficking? Not exactly,” says Finch. What has happened here, she explains, is more about how women are used repeatedly and historically as a tool of war.

Boko Haram is sneering at a world that has shown time and again that girls are expendable and easily weaponized.”

Tracing the commonalities of rates of abductions and crimes committed against women historically in armed conflict, Wolfe’s poignant article begs the question as to whether attention to the subject generates progressive change or goldfish memory.

So, how can we effectively mobilize efforts to ensure that these girls return to their families? What’s more, how can we secure that the education of women, the safety of citizens in armed conflict, and these crimes against humanity stop? What would that take… how many tweets and shares, likes and postings?

How many people does it take to bring back one girl, let alone 234?