Malala Yousafzai, the girls' education rights activist who was shot in the head by the Taliban after daring to go to school when she was just 14, has visited Nigeria to meet with 12 families of the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram to draw attention to the fact that over 100 girls are still missing.
It's been three months since the schoolgirls were kidnapped from their boarding school in Chibok, north-west Nigeria, by members of the terrorist group. Apart from five who escaped, none of them have been returned to their families. Malala, who has just turned 17 after finishing her GCSEs in Birmingham, where she now lives, insisted: 'I am going to stand up for them.'
Today marks Malala Day, a date designated by the United Nations 'for all children everywhere to raise their voices and be heard. It is a day to stand up for education and say to world that we are stronger than the enemies of education.'
And Malala raised her voice for the missing girls and their families – who say that not enough is being done to bring them back, or investigate their disappearance.
Malla Abu, a father of one of the missing girls, asked: 'Is it because we're poor country people that the government isn't doing anything?' reports the BBC: 'Suppose these were the daughters of someone important; would they still be in the forest after 90 days?'
Rebecca Samwell, whose daughter is the same age as Malala, said: 'We simply aren't told what the truth is.'
Government officers insist that they're doing everything they can to return the girls, but in truth, the relationship between them and Boko Haram – who have committed many other atrocities, such as car bombs in major Nigerian cities – is tense. According to the BBC, the five girls who managed to escape Boko Haram following the kidnap told Malala that the army have not questioned them about their kidnap in order to find clues as to the rest of the girls' whereabouts.
Earlier this year, representatives of Boko Haram said that the girls would be used as child brides for jihadists, or sold into sex slavery.
Malala's father, who travels the world with her to speak at conferences and events, ended their meeting with the families of the missing girls with a prayer: 'O God, accept our tears, accept the tears of these fathers and mothers. O God, empower us to bring the girls back'
The parents, Christian or, like Malala and her father, Muslim, all 'Amen-ed.'
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Picture: PA
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.