WASHINGTON – Mary*, whose daughter was kidnapped along with 275 other girls two years ago when Boko Haram terrorists raided the Chibok Government Secondary School, will speak out for the first time on June 9 at an event, “Nigeria: Fractured and Forgotten.”
Other speakers on the panel, co-hosted by the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative and the Heritage Foundation, include U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Religious Freedom David Saperstein, former Congressman Frank Wolf, Becky Gadzama, Co-Founder of Education Must Continue Initiative in Nigeria, Elijah Brown, Executive VP, 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, and Joshua Meservey, Africa and Middle East Policy Analyst at the Heritage Foundation.
In addition to Mary’s riveting story, this timely discussion will focus on the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative’s new, in-depth report detailing the urgent challenges to religious freedom in Nigeria. It also offers strategic policy guidance to help the United States stand with Nigeria at this critical hour.
Communities of faith in northern and central Nigeria face discrimination, deadly security threats from Boko Haram violence, and accelerating aggression by Fulani militants in the Middle Belt. With five million people indefinitely displaced, Nigeria faces one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Nigeria: Fractured and Forgotten
June 9, 2016
10:00-11:30 am Panel; 11:30-12:00 noon Press Conference
The Heritage Foundation, 214 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC
The event will be live-streamed and this link will be active on June 9:
http://www.heritage.org/events/2016/06/nigeria#rsvpInPerson
The full report with recommendations can be accessed at www.standwithnigeria.org
*Name changed for security reasons
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