|BOKO HARAM - No 1|

|Boko Haram - Toy Soldiers|
|:------:|
|**The 10,000 Kidnapped Boys of Boko Haram**
|The militant group has forced thousands to become child jihadists. As many escape, Nigeria wonders what to do with them.|
|*[Wall St Journal - Aug. 12, 2016 - Archive - No Paywall](https://archive.is/WDZpA)*|
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|**Boko Haram kidnapped 10,000 boys and the world remained silent**|
|The Wall Street Journal published an article detailing the extent of Boko Haram’s cruelty against boys. I [previously wrote](https://toysoldier.wordpress.com/2014/05/07/the-other-side-of-boko-haram/) about how the terrorist group spent the better part of 2013 murdering hundreds of men and boys in Nigeria.These acts made some international news, but it was only when Boko Haram kidnapped 197 girls that the world took major notice of the group.|
|The mothers of some of the girls created the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, which went viral. First Lady Michelle Obama famously tweeted a picture of herself holding a sign with the hashtag written on it. Yet during that time Boko Haram continued to murder scores of men and boys. Shortly before and after kidnapping the girls, the group when on a killing spree, the latter of which resulted in [about 400 men and boys, including infants](https://toysoldier.wordpress.com/2014/06/07/boko-haram-kills-hundred-of-men-and-boys-in-village-raids-and-theworldremainssilent/), being slaughtered.|
|This received limited news coverage, yet nowhere near the amount of social media attention that the kidnapping of 200 girls received. What does our apathy buy us? What comes of this level of utter indifference to boys’ suffering?|
|The irony writes itself. When the girls were kidnapped, I and many others noted that hundreds of boys had been killed and yet there was no hashtag campaign about them. The response, largely from progressives, was that it was bad the boys were killed, but they were already dead and the girls were still alive. Now, there are thousands of kidnapped boys we know of, yet the majority of the media coverage is on the unspecified number of injured and dead girls (who could have been injured and killed by Boko Haram).|
|**Nothing better illustrates how little we care about boys this situation. When the boys are dead we do not care, and when they are alive we do not care.**|
|*Jacob Taylor - Toy Soldiers, For the forgotten men and boys who suffer in silence, August 16, 2016,* ***[Boko Haram kidnapped 10,000 boys and the world remained silent](https://toysoldier.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/boko-haram-kidnapped-10000-boys-and-the-world-remained-silent/)***|