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NIGERIA

Women who fled to St. James’s Church, Yola, when Boko Haram attacked their village.

is accompanied by coercion to convert to Islam and to enter into sexual relations. While forced marriage is by no means restricted to Christian females, they have been extensively targeted 95 and, according to the Christian Association of Nigeria, Christians make up 95 percent of those being held by the Islamic extremists. 96 Indeed, Boko Haram began its abduction campaign by speciÀcally seizing Christian women and children in 2013 in retaliation for the long-term detention of Boko Haram family members by authorities. 97 It has been suggested that such practices, which reÁect the behaviour of rebel groups in other sub-Saharan conÁict zones, have two drivers. Firstly, women are seen as assets, productive as well as reproductive, providing services such as cooking and cleaning. Indeed, not all those seized are forced into marriage: UN nurse Alice Ngaddeh has been described as a “slave” by the

Most of the women and girls who are abducted and abused are seized by extremist groups like Boko Haram; however there is a smaller but signiÀcant number of Christian girls taken in what are sometimes referred to as ‘community kidnappings’. The Boko Haram insurgency in northern Nigeria has involved innumerable atrocities including mass abductions, as it attempts to seize territory with the goal of founding an Islamist state. In 2020, there were 210 documented cases of conÁict-related sexual violence, including rape and forced marriage, affecting 94 girls, 86 women and 30 boys. The UN noted such crimes are chronically under-reported because of social stigma . 93 Both factions of Boko Haram 94 have abducted girls and young women, often forcing them to marry their members. The forced marriage of Christians

26 | HEAR HER CRIES