Boko Haram female victims suffer rape, terror

Asmaa El-Batakoushi

Circumstances currently being witnessed by Nigeria force women to take part in some violent acts.

Some of them join Boko Haram voluntarily and others are abducted and forced to carry out terrorist operations.

Boko Haram uses women in their suicide operations; according to the information published by the Global Terrorism Database and other scientific research, there were more than 150 female suicide bombers.

Foreign reports have revealed the reasons for women’s choice to carry out suicide bombings. The main reason for this is the high rate of kidnapping in the group, indicating a high proportion of women within its rows.

The reports also showed that the use of women is more effective than men, especially in terms of cost, mainly because they were recruited by force. This means there was no cost to recruiting them, and the emergence of female suicide bombers increased publicity and interest in media coverage.

At an instrumental level, Boko Haram deploys female bombers because women can infiltrate targets undetected and are less likely to be searched for weapons.

Moreover, many women joined the terrorist group to escape the patriarchal structure of domestic life, while others joined to gain money, respect, and status. But by far the biggest majority were abducted and forced to join.

With patriarchy, poverty, corruption, early marriage, and illiteracy long thwarting their life chances, some women see an opportunity in Boko Haram to advance their freedoms or reduce their hardship.

Nigeria scores low in areas of gender development and equality. This includes literacy rates, educational attainment, employment, reproductive health and adolescent birth rates, and political involvement as reported in the gender inequality and development, and human development indices.

This leaves them with limited options and little chance of changing their circumstances.

Willing participation and coercion isn’t unique to Boko Haram. Earlier research shows that women are willing participants in other terrorist groups too and that they join because of personal or family motivations. However, their situations can quickly become coercive when sexual victimization occurs.

The Boko Haram group has kidnapped thousands of girls and women. It is estimated that this terrorist organization has killed more than 14,000 people in Nigeria and neighboring countries since 2009 during its bloody campaign to establish an extremist state.

Earlier, UN officials said up to 7,000 women and girls had been kidnapped in Nigeria’s north-eastern region. Among the abducted groups, more than 200 schoolgirls abducted from the town of Chebok two years ago, provoking a wave of international outrage, but their fate is still unknown.