Critics have bashed President Obama for his hashtag diplomacy to “Bring Back Our Girls” in Nigeria, but Washington’s failure to find the girls and do anything to contain Boko Haram has morphed into neglect as the country faces a humanitarian crisis, human rights activists argue.
As the body count rises in Nigeria and a refugee crisis poses new terrorist threats to Europe, former Rep. Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican known for championing human rights around the world, is pressing the Senate to confirm an ambassador to Nigeria and Obama to appoint a special envoy to handle the escalating crisis in the country.
“We need an ambassador there and the administration needs to appoint a special envoy — someone who can deal with the issues of terrorism, famine and refugees,” Wolf told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday.
To make matters worse, the State Department has failed to appoint a deputy chief of mission to its embassy there, according to Wolf, who now serves as a senior fellow at the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, a human rights organization, and who visited Nigeria in February to witness the crisis.
“You have thousands in camps dying and the No. 1 deadliest terrorist group in the world is now Boko Haram. They have pledged allegiance to ISIS, and Christians and Muslims are being killed” at an alarming rate, he said.
“And we don’t even have an ambassador there right now” and no deputy chief of mission at the embassy, he said.
Wolf also said he’s been “begging” the administration to appoint a special envoy to respond to the crisis and has pointed to the example set by President George W. Bush when he selected former Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo., as a special envoy to respond to the crisis in Sudan in 2001. Danforth eventually brokered a peace deal officially ending the civil war in the South.
Danforth, he said, was able to cut through the federal government’s bureaucracy and “pick up the phone and talk to [then-Secretary of State] Colin Powell.”
“You need someone like that now. The United Nations has acknowledged that the refugee camps are facing some of the worst conditions they’ve ever seen,” he said.
Wolf acknowledges that it’s rare for a president to make “bold” appointments in his final months in office, but the people of Nigeria cannot wait for a new administration.
“We need one now. These kids are dying every day,” he said.
Referencing the flood of Syrian refugees to Europe and the international crisis it’s causing, Wolf argues the Nigerian wave of refugees could be more dangerous, considering the country’s population of 180 million people compared to Syria’s 25 million.
Quoting U2 frontman and fellow human rights activist Bono, he said the “unraveling of Nigeria is an existential threat to Europe.”
As Obama devotes more time to confronting the Islamic State, Boko Haram’s reign of terror in Nigeria has become only a passing reference, and international and Nigerian authorities are no closer to finding the kidnapped girls than they were two years ago.
In the intervening years, an unchecked Boko Haram has become the world’s deadliest terrorist group, according to the Global Terrorism Index, disrupting trade and farming to create a devastating famine where children are dying of starvation in refugee camps in areas too dangerous for most aid workers to access.
In late August, Wolf sent a letter to senators asking them to confirm a new U.S. ambassador to Nigeria “as quickly as possible in order to ensure sustained U.S. engagement and leadership in the region.”
“Whole areas in the northeast have been cleansed of Christians, and now Boko Haram is killing Muslims who do not hold to their extreme interpretation,” he wrote.
“The U.N. has called the situation in Nigeria the most neglected humanitarian crisis in the world. … UNICEF recently released a report indicating that 50,000 children are at risk of starving to death, with dozens dying daily,” he said. “The camps I toured while in Nigeria are some of the worst I have ever seen.”
