World affairs:
Hudson: Action needed for the sake of all Nigerian women.
We just celebrated Mother’s Day, and it is painful to think of the mothers in Nigeria who woke up on that holiday not knowing if they would ever see their daughters again. And since the literacy rate among Nigerian women is only 50 percent, these were the foresighted mothers, the ones who saw that their daughters’ futures would be brighter with education, and who made the sacrifice to send them to the boarding school at Chibok.
At Chibok, two worlds clashed, and with that clash another future hangs in the balance — that of Nigeria itself. The two worlds that met at that dormitory, the world of the Islamic militant group Boko Haram and the world of those more than 270 kidnapped schoolgirls, represent two wildly different destinies for their country. In one vision for Nigeria, everything on Earth is for men to take and use for private ends — power, wealth, women, girls — producing a land full of bloodshed and corruption and waste. In the second vision for Nigeria, men and women work in equal partnership to ensure their country is healthy, progressing and prospering, and that all are safe within its borders.
Nigeria’s problem is that its government is still in the mold of that first world. Indeed, it was not until intense international pressure was brought to bear on the government of Goodluck Jonathan that any movement at all had been made. American and British officials are in Nigeria now to advise and support rescue missions. Ironical- ly, however, there might not have been any kidnapping at all if the government had acted upon intelligence that Boko Haram was going to attack the dormitory that day.
Why didn’t they act? No doubt there were logistical difficulties, but there was also a philosophical one. Violence against women and girls is rife in Nigeria, which is scaled at the worst possible rank on the WomanStats Physical Security of Women index. Furthermore, 60 percent of Nigerian women are married before the age of 18, and 10 percent have been married by age 12. In the Islamic north of the country, there is no minimum age of marriage for girls, and in the non-Islamic south, “child marriage” is common. In other words, the sale of girls into what amounts to sexual slavery is already widely practiced in Nigeria. No wonder the government didn’t think the kidnapping of much concern; its views on females are closer to Boko Haram’s than to those who are retweeting #BringBackOurGirls.
Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy at New York University, has written that the most successful moral revolutions in history — such as the extinction of the Chinese custom of foot-binding in the space of less than 30 years — are always a two-step process. The first step in the foot-binding case was an awakening by the Chinese elite that the practice was viewed by the international community as barbaric. This caused deep shame. Nigeria is at this crucial point now.
But the second step is also needed: action. The Nigerian government is in a position to capitalize on the country-wide revulsion over the kidnapping. In addition to attempting to rescue the girls — which should also include huge disincentives for potential “buyers” that anyone found with a kidnapped girl will spend years in prison and suffer the confiscation of their worldly goods — it is time to open a national dialogue on the treatment of Nigerian women and girls.
When Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, she asserted that “the subjugation of women is a threat to the common security of our world and to the national security of our country.” Normalized ill treatment of women is a marker of predatory, dysfunctional and unstable regimes. We see this right now in Nigeria. While the United States is right to assist in the rescue of these girls from the Chibok dormitory, it must also initiate a conversation with the Nigerian regime about the link between the security of women and the security of the states in which they live.
Those girls personify the brightest possible future for Nigeria. The country must move heaven and earth to reclaim them, and then it must do the same for all Nigerian women.