In Defense of Hashtag Diplomacy

In Defense of Hashtag Diplomacy
Debra Heine

In response to Hashtag diplomacy is bottled whine:

My initial reaction to the #BringBackOurGirls “hashtag diplomacy” was the same as yours – revulsion at the feel-goodism and moral preening disguised as doing something pro-active – nonsense we’ve all come to expect from liberals.

The girls were kidnapped on April 14, so those jumping on the hashtag bandwagon to “raise awareness” now, are a little late to the game. That goes triple for any hashtag diplomats who might have passed on designating Boko Haram a terrorist group, years ago, which would have given our military the tools and authorities they needed to go after them. Not mentioning any names.

BUT.

It should be noted that the social media campaign began in Nigeria weeks ago to put pressure on the  do-nothing government to — do something.

Via The UK Guardian:

It was first used on April 23 at the opening ceremony for a UNESCO event honouring the Nigerian city of Port Harcourt as the 2014 World Book Capital City. A Nigerian lawyer in Abuja, Ibrahim M. Abdullahi, tweeted the call in a speech by Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, Vice President of the World Bank for Africa to “Bring Back the Girls!”

Another mass demonstration took place outside the Nigerian Defence Headquarters in Abuja on May 6 and many other protests have been organised in response to a social media campaign asking for people around the world to march and wear red in solidarity. People came out in protest at the Nigerian embassy in London, in Los Angeles and New York.

The campaign is directed not so much at the terrorist thugs as the Nigerian government which has done so little to protect its people from these terrorist thugs.

The Nigerian paper, Vanguard, reported “the Christian Association of Nigeria has formally accused the Governor of Borno State of ‘conspiracy and collusion'” along with some other “uncomfortable facts” about the kidnapping.

Given these circumstances, I can’t place too much fault on people who are sincerely trying to do what they can to keep the story in the news and show the Nigerian government that the world is watching.

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