Victims or vanguards of terror: Use of girls as suicide bombers by Boko Haram

Abstract

Boko Haram gained international notoriety as a terrorist group in 2014 with the abduction of more than 200 students in Chibok, North-Eastern Nigeria. This group has perfected a system of using young girls as tools of terror and considering the devastating effectiveness of Boko Haram’s strategy of feminisation of terror, there is a wide negative perception about the complicity of these young girls in terrorism. Using criminal culpability as a framework of analysis, the paper undertakes a review of the strategies of Boko Haram, reviewing public perception of young female suicide bombers in Nigeria and the operational response of the security services to the roles of these girls in terrorism. It also evaluates the adequacy, or otherwise, of Nigeria’s counter-terrorism strategy from a human rights-based perspective as it relates to the gender-sensitive handling of potential suicide bombers. It further examines the legal culpability of these girls in light of Nigeria’s criminal law regime and international and regional human rights frameworks. The paper finds that the girls are largely victims of Islamic fundamentalism and the failures of the Nigerian state.