April Petillo Abstract

April Petillo Abstract

  

April Petillo
  Ph.D. Candidate (Graduated 06/04/2015)
  American Indian Studies, GIDP

  Law & Society Association's Annual Meeting
  Law's Promise and Law's Pathos in the Global North and Global South

  Seattle, Washinton
  May 28-31, 2015

ABSTRACT

The world was stunned when Islamist fundamentalists co-opted the lives of innocent school girls as a battle-ground for insurgency. While the abduction of the Chibok girls culminated in a global "Bring Back our Girls" campaign, it took the interventions of international rights advocates such as Malala to prevail on the President of the country to grant audience to the parents of the missing girls. Popular news media recently reported Nigeria's military ceasefire agreement with the Islamist militants Boko Haram and impending release of the schoolgirls kidnapped by the group. A couple of weeks earlier, the media featured accolades the Nigeria government received from several international agencies for its effective containment of the outbreak of the Ebola Virus Disease in the country. Our paper will draw on both the ceasefire and the containment as apt demonstrations of the pivotal significance of political will in a democratic enterprise to evaluate the failures of the Nigerian state in its response to abduction of the girls as well as to illuminate the countervailing role of civil society as a bulwark for gender justice.