April is Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month. Last year, we commemorated the month through a series of posts remembering the devastation and lives lost to genocide and mass atrocities in the past. This year, we commemorated Genocide Prevention and Awareness Month by highlighting current conflicts where the ongoing atrocities urgently demand an effective U.S. government response.
Background
In 2002, Boko Haram was founded with aims to create an Islamic state within Nigeria that would reject any Western influences, including Western education. Initially, the group planned to withdraw from what they saw as an illegitimate government and society. However, after suffering harsh treatment and brutality from the government, the group radicalized and implemented a strategy of overthrowing the government. Since 2009, the violence in northeast Nigeria inflicted by Boko Haram, as well as the government’s response and resulting clashes between other armed groups, has killed, displaced, and terrorized millions of people. Boko Haram has waged a war of indiscriminate violence upon Nigerian civilians for over eight years, conducting deadly bombings, shootings, mass kidnappings, including the kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls, and village raids that have left communities completely destroyed and the region destabilized. The violence has contributed to an overwhelming humanitarian crisis, leaving the population in desperate need of food, clean water, health services, shelter and protection.
The United States government has engaged in this conflict by providing military assistance to the Nigerian government in order to fight Boko Haram. The Nigerian military, however, has been accused of widespread corruption and violence against innocent civilians throughout the conflict, including extrajudicial killings and torture. Additionally, there is evidence that the Nigerian government has bombed and killed hundreds of innocent civilians, including a recent bombing of a camp where civilians had sought refuge from Boko Haram’s violence. Despite this, the Trump administration is moving forward with selling fighter planes to the Nigerian government. The U.S. government’s readiness to provide military assistance to a government accused of human rights violations, while also proposing massive budget proposal to cut humanitarian and development assistance, illuminates a strategy that fails to prioritize or protect civilian lives.
The Human Cost
More than 20,000 people have been killed.
1.8 million people are internally displaced.
Over 14 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance.
Hundreds of women and girls have been kidnapped.
Half a million children are facing starvation and the country at large is facing famine.
Take Action
As we close Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month, we are reminded of our promise “Never Again.” Yet promising “Never Again” requires a commitment to invest in the resources, funding, and structures that better enable our government to prevent and respond to mass atrocities. Despite the overwhelming number of crises occurring around the world that demand U.S. government attention and resources, President Trump’s budget proposal makes massive, disproportionate cuts to the Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development.
These cuts would dramatically undermine the U.S. government’s ability to respond to current crises, as well as decimate our ability to prevent future conflicts. This short-sighted decision – coupled with dramatic increases in military spending – serve to further entrench cycles of violence that are costly, threaten national security interests, and endanger human lives.
