WASHINGTON, D.C. - In a new report issued today from The Fund for Peace, a Washington, D.C.-based NGO, explores what may be driving Boko Haram’s increased use of women and children as suicide bombers in northern Nigeria, including detailed recommendations to the international community on how to better understand and confront this tragedy.
The report, led by Programs Director Patricia Taft, focuses on the latest trends in tactics and actions by the Boko Haram terrorist group, that has in recent years come to prominence for brutal attacks in northern Nigeria and neighboring countries, including the well-publicized abduction of nearly 300 school children in Chibok in 2014.
“There has been a tendency to view women and girls impacted by the insurgency purely through a lens of victimhood, rather than recognizing their individual agency, however constrained by the perverse incentives and horrible options available to them in a time of war,” Ms. Taft said. “In failing to understand these complex and uncomfortable dynamics, we greatly limit our capacity to respond in a way that has an actual impact in stopping it.”
Ms. Taft also highlighted that the current situation in northern Nigeria represents a “crisis of violence against women and girls at a level not seen in most modern conflicts.”
Further, she noted that in data analyzed by FFP over the past two years, “Even as Boko Haram increasingly targets civilians, inflicting devastation on the social fabric of communities, since the election in April 2015 there has been a marked drop in the number of fatalities associated with the insurgency.”
