Dionne Searcy On Young Girls In Nigeria

American journalist Dionne Searcey published two articles in the New York Times on October 25th, 2017 describing the lives of young girls in Nigeria. These girls are constantly surrounded by warfare and violence and it is nearly impossible for it to not interfere with their daily lives. The terrorist group Boko Haram has been using these girls along with other women and children to harm their own people via suicide bombs. After torturing or killing their family members, members of Boko Haram will strap bombs onto children and instruct them to walk into crowds and detonate the bombs, or else they will be killed. Some of these girls refused to take other people’s lives and survived, and Searcey tells their story. Searcey’s second article will

She shows how the girls defy stereotypes of women in the global south, all while still maintaining their cultural values and religion. Searcey describes how the girls were forced to wear suicide belts or had bombs shoved into their hands by Boko Haram militants, often after the girls reject one of their “marriage” proposals. She notes, “Most of the girls interviewed said… that they had been deployed as bombers after refusing to be married off to a fighter. For years Boko Haram fighters have forced girls into ‘marriage’, a euphemism for rape, sometimes impregnating them.” This shows how the girls were able to resist not just the suicide bombings, but were able to stand up for themselves and protect themselves from sexual assault or rape. In these cases, being forced to commit suicide by bomb is the consequence Boko Haram inflicts upon these girls when they don’t conform to traditional gender-roles. Instead of being treated as a sex object, the teenage girls stood up for themselves in response to this gender-based oppression and even overcame the consequences of not conforming to the gender-roles they were expected to

In one paragraph, she describes, “The humanitarian situation in the region is dire...some [people] living in famine-like conditions...many live in decaying buildings and thatched huts...one small group survives on roasted scraps of cow hide discarded by local tanneries.” Although Searcey did not victimize the girls, she victimized the entire region of Nigeria by focusing on these conditions that Western nations would believe indicates a less-civilized society. She also mentions “...Boko Haram’s hatred of Western education” in order to convince the audience that Boko Haram is the ultimate evil: Nonwestern. It is as if she believes that people won’t come to the conclusion that they are evil even after reading about the violence they’ve put these girls and the rest of their society through. She still feels the need to emphasize that Boko Haram hates the West in order to persuade readers to share her