THE AFRICAN WOMEN’S DEVELOPMENT FUND (AWDF)

On The One Year Anniversary Of The Abduction of 276 Girls From Chibok, Nigeria

April 14, 2015

Today marks a year since the violent terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls from Government Girls Secondary School in the small town of Chibok in the North-Eastern state of Bornu, Nigeria on April 14, 2014.

Fifty-seven girls escaped in the hours following the kidnapping as their abductors fled into dense forest on the outskirts of the town, but 219 are still in captivity. The girls were writing exams in their boarding school. To date, their grief-stricken families have no word of their whereabouts.

“Two hundred and [nineteen] is not just a number. These girls were in school to study. They had dreams and hopes for a future they might have had as doctors, teachers and engineers – futures as nation builders that have been mercilessly trampled. We must not sit back in the face of such appalling violence.” – AWDF CEO, Theo Sowa.

 

The African Women’s Development Fund stands in solidarity with the families of the missing girls and is deeply concerned about human rights violations and the threat to peace and security for women across the continent.

The Chibok kidnappings and other recent attacks on educational institutions, like the recent massacre of 147 students at a university campus in Garissa, Kenya, represent flagrant violations of our right to security.

We call on the government of Nigeria and regional governments to ensure that every single girl is found or accounted for. Now, more than ever, we need to highlight and support groups that enable women to promote peace and security across the continent and to defend all women and girls from such heinous attacks.

The vision of AWDF is for African women to live in a world in which there is social justice, equality and respect for women’s human rights.

#365DaysOn

#ChibokGirls
#NeverToBeForgotten