Quick summary:

• Around 230 female students kidnapped on April 14
• 43 escaped, around 190 still missing
• Between 16-20 years old and predominantly Christian
• Kidnapped at night and driven deep into a nearby forest
• Kidnappers suspected to be part of Islamist group Boko Haram
• Boko Haram means “Western education is sinful”
• Girls still missing
• Some exasperated parents drove 60km into the forest before turning back in fear

It’s been two weeks since around 230 teenage girls were kidnapped from their boarding school dorms by men dressed as soldiers the night before their final exam.

Taken by the gunmen into the nearby Sambisa Forest, it’s reported that around 43 of the girls packed onto trucks managed to escape, but around 190 are still missing.

Prayer meeting in Nigera, Feb 2014.

Nigerian Islamic jihadist group Boko Haram has yet to claim responsibility for the kidnapping, but it’s suspected they’re behind the attack.

Boko Haram means “western education is sinful” and the group is responsible for raiding schools, churches, government offices and security posts in their effort to stop Westernisation and establish a pure Islamic state.

The town of Chibok where the girls were kidnapped is a mixed Christian area and Muslim area in a predominantly Muslim state of north-eastern Nigeria. World Watch Monitor says a large number of the affected families are from the EYN Church (Church of the Brethren).

Leaders of the Christian Association of Nigeria held a day of prayer and fasting last week are calling on the world to pray for the girls’ release.

The state government is offering a reward for any information leading to the rescue of the girls, and the Federal Government is putting pressure on state leaders to do what they can, but parents are concerned not enough is being done.

The grieving father of one missing girl told World Watch Monitor the parents “feel neglected”.

“I am convinced that if these abducted girls were their own daughters, they would have done something,” he said.

It’s not known whether the girls are alive, or dead, whether they’ve been raped, or will be kept as sex and domestic slaves.

At the same time, a piece of research has been released about the motivations behind Boko Haram’s Gender-based violence against Christian women and children in North-eastern Nigeria since 1999. Published by a local Research Network, the report entitled “Our Bodies, Their Battleground” can be found online.

It looks at why young Christian women are targeted by the jihadist group, exploring the hypothesis that Boko Haram believe Christian women influence their children away from Islam and see them as tied up with transmitting values and beliefs in society.

Another theory is that the rape of non-Muslim women is considered a kind of sexual payment of the Jizya–a tax that’s traditionally demanded by conservative Islamic rulers from non-Muslims.

The full report can be accessed here.