‘Sowing Seeds for Recovery’ in Northeast Nigeria

Aisha M. receives her share of seeds to be planted in
Gombi, Nigeria.

GOMBI, Nigeria: Aisha was home with her husband and children the day they heard that that Boko Haram was coming. The family left the village that same day, taking only what they could carry.

“We managed to escape to the mountains,” Aisha recalled later. “But many of my relatives who didn’t leave soon enough were killed.”

Three years later, Gombi and communities like it in northern Adamawa state remain devastated. All that’s left of Aisha’s house is a charred heap of collapsed concrete and corrugated tin. Any food is long gone. Farm fields are strewn with debris. Home for thousands of families is little more than space on the floor of a host neighbor’s house.

How Can We Call Ourselves Civilized While Women Are Victims of Barbarity?

 By US Secretary of State John Kerry and UK Foreign  Secretary Philip Hammond

Women and Children Rescued by Nigerian Soldiers from Boko Haram
 extremists Arrive at Military Office in Maiduguri, northern Nigeria.

The abhorrent sexual violence waged by groups such as Isis and Boko Haram must be countered by governments and at local levels.

In Syria and Iraq, Isis terrorists have turned kidnapping and the sale of women and girls into recruitment and fundraising tools. Thousands of women have been enslaved and raped. In Somalia and Nigeria, terrorists have abducted scores of young women to force them into sham “marriages” characterized by degradation and abuse.

These practices are a stain on the conscience of the world. Sexual abuse is not a legitimate tactic of conflict or war. Women and girls are not slaves to be awarded to terrorist fighters. And mislabeling this abuse as “marriage” does not alter the reality that rape is rape and rape is wrong.