Chibok Schoolgirls

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

I was mightily relieved earlier when I did not have to follow the very moving speech by the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant)—that was a tough act to follow. I pay tribute to everyone who has spoken today, but particularly to the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and the whole International Development Committee for not forgetting about these parents and children. I have many Nigerian constituents and friends, and I know that it matters so much to them.

It is important to point out that although anyone watching might think that this is an empty Chamber, two debates are going on today and constituency work is also going on. We are not the only people who care about this issue. I have had incredible feedback from members of the Scottish National party group and other groups. I want us to put that message out there to anyone watching: this is just a tiny snapshot of all the people who care about this issue.

I am privileged to be able to contribute to this debate—indeed, to any debate in this place. I am privileged because I am one of an appallingly small number of women in the world to hold elected office. In fact, it is estimated that only 22% of all parliamentarians globally are women. As a woman, I am also, apparently, privileged to have benefited from education, and from higher education in particular. As we have heard, other women and girls across the world have not been so lucky.

The missing Chibok schoolgirls were brutally torn from their families and their lives for no worse crime than accessing the education that we all take for granted and have done all our lives. They were kidnapped by a group that prioritises the prevention of a secular education but particularly prioritises the prevention of any education at all for girls. That is in a country where opportunities for women to achieve a reasonable standard of living are already scarce.

Any reasonable person would find it difficult to comprehend the motivations of the men who commit such acts. Acts of barbarism struck sufficient terror into the heart of communities that schools were shut down lest their children be kidnapped or murdered. Such acts of terrorism, and this one in particular, would not easily be forgotten had they occurred in this country. Two years on, it is vital that we continue to remember these girls, that we work to ensure that this evil act remains on the news agenda and that Governments across the world continue to exert pressure to target this crime.

I welcome the support of the UK Government and others for the Nigerian military. I call upon the British Government to ask whether, in addition to what we have heard they are already doing—they are doing a lot to help—it is possible to do anything to increase the international pressure, provide assistance to the Nigerian Government and help bring back the girls. If it is, I urge them to do it.

I also ask the Government to consider supporting the Nigerian Government in re-establishing education for the millions of people displaced by terrorism in sub-Saharan Africa. I know they are doing some of that, and clearly the priority in this debate is the missing girls, but female education has become almost non-existent in the areas terrorised by Boko Haram. The thousands who have had to flee—both boys and girls—are also now without an education. But the large-scale displacements of people to areas not affected by Boko Haram mean that there is also the freedom to ensure that those displaced people are allowed to be educated. I wonder whether our Government could do anything more to support them to do that, until those people are safely returned home and can be educated in their own towns and villages.

There are 62 million girls around the world aged between six and 15 who are not in school. We know that educating girls does amazing things for the societies in which they live. It correlates with an increased GDP, it provides better outcomes for girls and women themselves and it leads to healthier children, because a mother who can read instructions on a medicine bottle, for instance, is a mother who is more able to protect the health of her child. It is clearly worthwhile for all Governments to work to support girls’ education across the globe as part of their efforts to promote development.

It goes without saying that the pain and anguish that a family go through when a child is missing must be unbearable. “Unimaginable” was the word used by my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron), and that is probably the best way to describe it, because I bet it is a million times worse than we imagine it to be. I cannot even begin to comprehend the suffering of parents who live every day not knowing whether their children are safe or in danger, dead or alive. It does not matter whether someone lives in a tiny village in rural Nigeria, a penthouse in Paris, a trailer park in the US or a mansion in rural England, everyone would feel the same unbearable pain. The powerful words of the mother mentioned in the moving speech by the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald could be the words of any parent anywhere.

However, I worry that Nigeria seems so far away, and the lifestyles of the families so far removed from our own, that we are in danger of allowing ourselves to forget what is happening and of putting it out of our minds because we do not relate to the parents in the way that we might relate to someone in Europe or the US. We all remember the terrible, tight knots of dread we had in our stomachs when the news broke of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance. When Sarah Payne was kidnapped and murdered in July 2000, our country was shaken with grief and anguish for her and her family. When it transpired that Jaycee Dugard had been kidnapped and held hostage for 18 years in California, shockwaves reverberated around the world—rightly and understandably so. But in this one incident in Chibok in Nigeria, those terrible crimes were repeated over and over and over again, and they continue to be so.

These Nigerian families sent their children to school because they hoped and believed that getting an education would allow their girls to get on in the world. Two hundred and seventy six girls were taken in total. As we have heard, 57 escaped the same day, and one managed to do so two years later. That leaves the families of more than 200 young people utterly devastated. Some of the girls are said to have died at the hands of their kidnappers or in bombing campaigns against Boko Haram, but nobody knows for sure. Despite not knowing where these girls are, we do know that some have been forced to change religion, some have been raped in forced so-called marriages and all have been forced to live transitory lives in forest regions far away from their homes, families and everything that is familiar to them. They are each somebody’s child, and they must be terrified. They must wonder whether their families have given up on them or are still looking for them, because who knows what their captors are telling them.

The nightmare goes on for all these people and their families. Let us resolve today to do everything we possibly can to help bring them back to their families and, in their honour, to support education for the displaced people in Nigeria and for girls right around the world.