June 2014


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Nigeria’s Abducted Girls -- Too Little Too Late


The Hampton Roads Messenger 3


speed progress toward the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (eight international development goals that were established following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000).” The Millennium Development Goals range from cutting extreme poverty rates in half to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, by the target date of 2015.


It’s unfortunate that the goals


did not cover the security of Nigerian school girls, but Adebayo says that is the responsibility of the Nigerian military. “The entire country should cease


all criticisms and focus on


bringing our girls home,” she said. Slow to React Last week, Amnesty International


Ed. Note: OurWeekly Publisher and CEO Natalie Cole recently interviewed former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young on the kidnapping of the estimated 276 Nigerian schoolgirls, allegedly by Boko Haram militants, on April 14. In 2006, Cole spoke to Young about U.S. involvement in Africa. In that conversation he pointed to the logistical and political challenges complicating such efforts, as well as to the complex social mix on the ground. “The best intelligence you can have is boots on the ground,” Young said at the time. Young believes there is still a logistics problem, however, he believes the new formation of Africom (United States Africa Command) will make a differ- ence and somewhat improve, but not solve, the problem.


BY WILLIAM COVINGTON “When we look at the logistic


issues there are plenty—the primary being geography and how technology interprets it when drones are used to seek out humans.”


One of the was referring detecting issues Young


difficulty drone aircraft encounter when


to could be the thermography—a


ground-heat reading used by drones to locate humans while traveling at high altitudes. Thermographs can be blocked by foliage, and suspected areas where the girls might be held, have dense foliage.


“Another concern that I have—


that has not yet surfaced—is a law known as the Leahy Amendment,” said Young. “It may complicate any type of joint military operations with Nigeria.”


named Patrick


He is referring to a 1997 law, after


Leahy—a


its sponsor, Senator Democrat


from


Vermont. The law bars United States forces from working with militaries, or units within them, accused of chronic human rights violations. In the past, U.S. military brass have complained that the law has prevented them from training foreign soldiers. According to news sources in Nigeria, it appears to be limiting what forces on the ground can do to help find the children.


“For example, there is a specific


counter-terrorism unit with which we don’t interact in Nigeria because we’re not able to [because of] Leahy,” Young said. “However, we’re not prevented from


working with the Nigerian


military for those soldiers or units that were not affected, and we are doing human rights training on appropriate use of force with the military for those elements that we can work with.”


Young asked, “Are you aware the average life span in Nigeria is around 48 years, and the age of the school girls abducted is between 12 and 15? These


girls are daughters, sisters,


and hopefully they will return home and live on to become mothers and productive women in Nigeria with the years they have left.”


Kidnapped Adolescents According to Psychology Today,


adolescence is a transitional


reported that the Nigerian military may not be as strong as the U.S. government has portrayed them to be publicly, finding that it declined to provide assistance to the schoolgirls despite at least four hours of advanced warning “due to poor resources and a reported fear of engaging.”


Peter M. Lewis is a senior


associate with the Center For Strategic Studies Africa Program. He is also


the director of African Studies and an associate professor at the Paul H. Nitze school of


Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C.


titled,


In 2011, Lewis prepared a report “Nigeria


Assessing Risk to


Stability” which was commissioned by the United States Africa Command. Lewis believes


the military slow response


to the abduction of the school girls may be the direct result of civilian and


tensions, factionalism


within the military, and corrosive rivalries among politicians. He says the Nigerian military is made up of several hundred thousand personnel and among those numbers you have Christians, Muslims, and individuals that are descendants of tribes that aren’t always amicable to one another.


Lewis believes, after hearing rumors of interdepartmental transmittals, that ranking officers were apprehensive in getting involved based on the aforementioned issues. He is confident no one will ever get to the bottom of exactly what happened in regards to the slow response time and the Nigerian Military's failure to protect its girls.


Advanced International


from childhood to adulthood; a time of disorientation and discovery, adolescence can bring up issues of independence and self-identity.


When Funmi Adebayo, executive


director of Girls Alive Counselling Initiative in Northern Nigeria, read that definition, she said she didn’t believe it applied to most countries like Nigeria. The vulnerability


stage Maya Angelou FROM PAGE 1


of adolescent


girls in Nigeria isn’t unique. When situations in communities, states and nations go badly, women and children (especially young girls) are often the most negatively affected. They are usually the majority in any refugee camp, and they often experience the most unpleasant treatment. They are too often exploited and abused by the men who are expected to protect them.


Their is a strong possibility that the missing Nigerian girls will be subjected to sexual violence or forced into childhood marriages.


ladies


“Now these kidnapped must contend


young with the


stress, disruption and displacement encountered during war situations and other disasters which often lead to a rise in sexual violence and abuse. In addition to its psychological effects, sexual and domestic violence typically has severe effects on a girl’s general health.


Forced sexual encounters


increase the risk of HIV and other STDs. Let’s just pray that these young ladies have not been impacted.”


Adebayo goes on to describe


how adolescent Nigerian girls fall into marginalized divisive groups and are treated as second-class citizens within the Nigerian culture.


“They are deeply disenfranchised by their youth, their gender, and their status. Those who are impoverished, trafficked, affected by humanitarian crisis, disabled, out-of-school because of marriage and other reasons, face numerous infringements on their basic human rights,” Adebayo continued.


“Investing in the health, education, and rights of women and girls are strategic ways to address poverty and


were living with their mother in San Francisco. Angelou excelled in the arts, winning a scholarship to study dance and drama at the Labor School. But at 14 she dropped out to become the city's first black female cable-car conductor. Angelou returned to high school at 16, but she became pregnant her senior year and graduated just a few weeks before giving birth to her son, Guy. In her second autobiography, Gather Together in My Name, Angelou describes leaving her mother's home to forge an independent life and raise her infant son. She supported the two of them by working as a waitress and cook. But she also got caught up in some difficult circumstances, working as a madam and prostitute for a short stint. She also briefly struggled with drug addiction.


Yet she didn't abandon the arts. In 1954 and 1955, Angelou toured Europe with the production of the opera Porgy and Bess. She studied with modern-dance pioneer Martha Graham and danced with Alvin Ailey. In 1957 she recorded the album Calypso Lady, in which she sang her own compositions.


Angelou moved to New York in 1958 and began to concentrate on her writing, joining the Harlem Writers Guild and becoming friends with writers such as James Baldwin. She also performed


wrote and performed in a benefit for the Southern Christian


off-Broadway and Leadership


Conference (SCLC) with actor Godfrey Cambridge.


She left New York in 1960 and headed to Cairo with Guy and her husband, South African civil


rights


activist Vusumzi Make. The family moved to Ghana the following year, and Angelou taught at the University of Ghana's School of Music and Drama. She also worked as an editor and writer. (She wrote about her experiences in Ghana in her fifth autobiography, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes.) While living


abroad, she mastered French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and the West African language Fante.


his


Angelou met Malcolm X during visit


to Ghana and returned


stateside in 1964 to help him set up the Organization


of Afro-American


Unity. He was assassinated soon after her arrival, however, and the fledgling organization soon closed. Focusing on the civil rights movement, she became good friends with Martin Luther King Jr., who asked her


to be northern


coordinator for the SCLC. She was devastated by the loss of another friend when King was assassinated, on her birthday, in 1968.


Angelou found healing in writing.


I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, published in 1970, followed her life through the birth of her son. While its tremendous success raised her literary profile, the book's candid treatment of the traumas of racism and being raped as a child made it a controversial presence in school curricula and on library shelves.


She would go on to publish more


than 30 works of verse, nonfiction and fiction, including the poetry collections Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Diiie (1971), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; And Still I Rise (1978); and Phenomenal Woman:


Women (1995). Angelou also


Four Poems Celebrating took


on film and television. She wrote the Pulitzer Prize-nominated


screenplay


Georgia, Georgia in 1972 and penned the script for the TV drama Sister, Sister—starring Diahann Carroll, Rosalind Cash and Irene Cara—in 1982. In 1996 Angelou directed the feature film Down in the Delta.


A recipient of the National Medal


of Arts in 2000 and the Lincoln Medal in 2008, Angelou also received more than 30 honorary degrees. In 1993 President Bill Clinton asked her to compose a poem for his inauguration. Her reading of On the Pulse of Morning, broadcast


international-


ly, was the first recital by a poet at a presidential inauguration since Robert Frost read "The Gift Outright" at John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.


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