We can’t #BringBack our #MinabGirls

In 2014, #BringBackOurGirls became a global rallying cry to bring home the kidnapped girls of Chibok, Nigeria.

Today, I’m trying my best, again, to not fall deep into a feeling of total despair knowing that roughly 175 people, many or most of them little girls, have been killed at a girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran. This time it’s worse. We cannot #BringBackOurGirls.

As of this writing, at least 82 Chibok girls are still held captive. Just a few short months ago in November (or what politically feels like a lifetime ago), 315 schoolgirls were kidnapped from St. Mary’s Catholic School in Papiri, Nigeria, and the world barely took note.

And today, the Minab schoolgirls are dead. I’m late posting this blog because I’ve been sitting in my feelings. But I’m here now and writing.

I am just exhausted by reading about everything going wrong, violent, and deadly at schools and I’m as angry as I feel helpless seeing another scenario where young children are harmed at the one place in their childhoods that should be a refuge from the outside world, where they can be curious, interested, and questioning as they learn about themselves, the world, and their place in it. But at this point, there are too many girls who cannot even consider their place in it because the violence outside schools has permeated any and all of the concrete and abstract protected barriers that are supposed to keep a school safe.

Bombing a school is clearly, “a grave violation of humanitarian law” as UNESCO reminds us, but I’m not sure who is listening to these agencies or to my despair who might be in any position to stop it.

When the US Secretary of Defense (only Congress can change his department name and title to war) tells the media that the government is “investigating” the Minab school airstrike, I am left without comfort and with building cynicism. Having recently read Virginia Guiffre’s memoir, perused (or deep dive) some Epstein files, I’m pretty sure the US government hasn’t done much to arrest and bring child sex abusers to any sense of justice and so I’m even less convinced, I mean, I have no confidence at all, that the Pentagon will fully investigate and support any semblance of justice for the little (gasp, Iranian, gasp Muslim) girls of Minab.

For the girls of Minab, this is not just an Iranian problem because of whatever opinion you may have of their government, their people, or their diasporic community. It is still and always will be about girls’ safety in going to school.

For the girls of Chibok, this is not a Muslim problem because the Catholic girls at St. Mary’s were also kidnapped. And it’s not just a Nigerian problem because in Uganda, the majority of students, not just girls but all students, are sexually abused in school. And it’s not an African or non-Western problem because girls in this country where I sit, the USA, sit with record-breaking anxiety rates in fear of school shootings and ICE creating chaos and trauma in their schools.

It is impossible to group kidnappings as “Nigeria’s security crisis” or the Iranian schoolgirls as “collateral damage.” Creating groupings and excuses to make sense of these horrific threats to education obscures the fact that schoolgirls are often the targets of violence and almost never the perpetrators of it. Schoolgirls do not deserve this. Schoolgirls deserve to be safe.

As a researcher specializing in girls’ education in East Africa, a product of an all-girls’ school, and a current board member of a girls’ school, I know what these schools mean to families who sacrifice everything to send their daughters to school. And I’ve documented the courage it takes for girls to pursue education when doing so can be difficult, dangerous, and socially isolating.

When I imagine who those little Minab girls might have been before they were murdered, I remember the bubbly personalities, curious questions, quiet wonderings, and joyful, innocent smiles of little girls in California where I used to work. Bringing some humanity from my own lived experience solidifies in my mind what I already knew in my heart – that the Minab girls were just as precious as any little girl I’ve known, and that little moment of reflection has helped make those girls real to me and not just a headline.

The Chibok and St. Mary’s girls remind me of the African girls and women I met on my own research journey. They’re Christian and Muslim. They’re daughters, sisters, and friends who wake up early every day in their dormitories, pray, and dedicate themselves to school. They live and breathe their education because they believe education will improve not just their own lives, but support their families, their communities, their nations.

There is no neutral position here. When children are abused, injured, harmed, or murdered in school, it is wrong. Period. In any place, under any government, on any continent.

So are we passive or just exhausted? Are we desensitized or in complete despair? I don’t know. A good answer is usually “both and.” And so this little writing is one attempt to not be desensitized, to not be numb. This little post is actually an attempt in myself and an invitation to you let your feelings of sadness, and depression overwhelm and envelope you. Sit with these horrifying discomfort and reflect. For me, by doing so, by turning up my empathy, I can usually come out of these stoopers with more resolve and motivation to do what I can.

And coming out of one of my stoopers I was able to analyze and write up my research. And my research reveals what is at stake beyond the hundreds of schoolgirls and teachers who are still missing or murdered. Families who value girls’ education, even those experiencing financial hardship, will sacrifice all they have to send their daughters, nieces, and sisters to school. Families want safe schools and they deserve them.

Since COVID, African girls’ school enrollment has decreased. When we allow kidnappings and murders to fade from the headlines and from our minds without consequence, we send a clear message to every family weighing whether education is worth the danger – the world won’t notice and won’t help if your daughter disappears.

So what needs to happen now? Sit in your sadness and then get moving. Watch this video of Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner who encourages us to “be the hummingbird.” Pay no mind to anyone telling you to not be sad, to get over, to move on when terrible things happen to little girls.

Be the hummingbird and do something.

Call on organizations that champion girls’ education to speak up as loudly as you did in 2014 and demand action to bring the girls home or bring justice to those who murder them. To anyone who posted #BringBackOurGirls, your work is not yet done. Chibok girls are still missing. St. Mary’s girls remain in captivity. Minab girls deserve justice.

Global religious leaders need to stand tall and speak clearly. Pope Leo XIV, last Sunday, reminded us that peace and stability can only be achieved through “reasonable, sincere, and responsible dialogue.” That is what I’m trying to do here taking a moment to consider the humanity of the children affected by violence in their schools. Not just the collective, but using my empathy to try to put myself into individual little girls’ shoes and imagine how they feel and have felt.

Educational research shows that schools can be places of empowerment and societal change. Economies grow, communities prosper, families have enough food, and women have control of their bodies and lives when they are educated. In my own research, I have documented the profound and life-changing capability development of women when their school prioritized spiritual development and a relationship with God. I have witnessed first-hand that when schools prioritize spiritual growth, girls gain confidence, resilience, and a logic-defying ability to overcome the steepest of obstacles.

Let us hope that the girls of St. Mary’s, and Chibok, do not have to rely on their relationship with God to merely survive unspeakable captivity, torture, and sexual slavery. Let us sit in our despair that the Minab girls went to God too soon. And then let’s find a way to action. The world needs more voices of moral clarity, courage, and pressure so leaders act decisively to protect schoolgirls and schoolboys.  

This is not just about Iran or Nigeria…Violence and the threat of violence targeting and affecting schoolgirls is sadly ubiquitous – wearing different sheep’s clothing across cultures and countries, but they are wolves, nonetheless. And the fact remains that girls pursuing education face violence designed to keep them uneducated, powerless. Warmongers and apologists will attempt to demote the Minab girls to “collateral damage” in war that has yet to be justified or even explained. Kidnapped Nigerian girls might fall into some vague “African problem” reinforcing negative stereotypes of the continent.

But do not be fooled by these sad excuses. When we forget or ignore these young girls, we give attackers tacit permission to continue stealing, abusing, oppressing, and murdering schoolgirls…and all of us really.

Isabelle Allende wrote, “People die only when we forget them.”

Let us do more than not forget them; let us act so young schoolgirls might have a chance to live.