School Girls Stolen: Slavery in the Headlines

“I abducted your girls,” announced Abubakar Shekau of the Boko Haram extremist group in Nigeria, without any thought of wrongdoing, “I will sell them on the market….”  Whether interpreted as a primitive view of women as objects to be owned or the purely capitalist mindset of a sociopath, this type of thinking is thoroughly alien to the fast majority of those living in the modern world.  With over 20 million people living in slavery today, including inside developed countries like the United States, it is, however, clear the way of thinking that supports the practice of slavery is still endemic in our global society.  It also demonstrates the need to recognize slavery is a major social issue that must be addressed. 

This thinking stems from a failure of the powerful, the privileged, and the global Middle Class to truly concern themselves with the welfare of the most vulnerable and most victimized of our society.  When we fail to balance the interests of others with our own, it is these types of abusive practices that are propagated throughout our world.  Although the International Community and the Nigerian government need to do everything they can to save the 276 schools from the nightmare of being abducted and sold into “marriage,” the magnitude of this single incident and the outraged sparked by the failure of the Nigerian government to protect these children could serve as a catalyst for greater action.