U.N. Chief Condemns Mass Kidnapping of Schoolchildren in Nigeria

Chibok Girls
BOKO HARAM/AFP Handout
Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has denounced Friday’s armed raid on a secondary school in Nigeria and called for the safe return of the hundreds of children who are still missing.

Attacks on schools and other educational facilities “constitute a grave violation of human rights,” Mr. Guterres said in a statement issued by his spokesperson, while urging “the Nigerian authorities to bring those responsible for this act to justice.”

Gunmen carrying AK-47 rifles stormed the Government Science Secondary School in Kankara in Nigeria’s northwestern Katsina state late Friday and some 400 students are missing, while 200 are accounted for, according to police reports.

In his statement, Guterres reaffirmed the UN’s solidarity and support to the Government and people of Nigeria in their fight against terrorism, violent extremism, and organized crime.

In a separate statement, Marie-Pierre Poirier, UNICEF Regional Director for West and Central Africa, called the attack “a grim reminder” that serious violations of children’s rights, including kidnappings, continue to take place with alarming frequency in northern Nigeria.

Violent mass rape of young girls is one of the favored weapons used by the terrorists.

“Children should feel safe at home, in schools and in their playgrounds at all times,” Ms. Poirier said. “We stand with the families of the missing children and the community affected by this horrifying event.”

Authorities have mobilized local police as well as the military in an effort to locate and rescue the missing children.

“The police, Nigerian Army and Nigerian Air Force are working closely with the school authorities to ascertain the actual number of the missing and/or kidnapped students,” said Katsina State police spokesman Gambo Isah. “Search parties are working with a view to find or rescue the missing students.”

President Muhammadu Buhari said that the military has located the bandits’ camp in Zango/Paula forest in the Kankara area, noting that there have been exchanges of gunfire in an ongoing operation.

So far, no organization has claimed responsibility for the attack, but several groups of bandits are active in northwestern Nigeria and kidnappings for ransom are not uncommon.

In April, 2014, members of the Boko Haram Islamist terror group kidnapped 276 girls from their school dormitory in Chibok in northeastern Borno State, over a third of whom are still missing.

Boko Haram militants again kidnapped over 100 schoolgirls from a secondary school in the town of Dapchi, in northeast Nigeria, in February 2018 and have been carrying out random attacks on Christian targets for years.

Last week, the U.S. State Department added Nigeria to its list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC), considered the world’s worst violators of religious freedom.

Under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, countries are designated as CPCs for engaging in or tolerating “systematic, ongoing egregious violations of religious freedom,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared in a press release.

At the same time, the State Department also designated several international terrorist organizations as “entities of Particular Concern,” namely Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, al-Qa’ida, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Houthis, ISIS, ISIS-Greater Sahara, ISIS-West Africa, Jamaat Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin, and the Taliban.

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