Nigerian authorities recently postponed elections that had been scheduled for February, ostensibly to give them more time to fight , the militant Islamist extremist group with ties to the and . The delay heightens the already intense levels of fear and instability in the country. Of particular concern is the safety of ’s women and girls, who are increasingly becoming targets — and tools — of violence.

“I really fear for this country in the sense that I think that Boko Haram will escalate the violence — and women and girls are instruments in this battle,” says Udy Okon, the executive director of the Youth Alive Foundation, a nonprofit focused on youth empowerment and advocacy, especially for girls and young women. “They’ve been used to set off bombs, they’ve been kidnapped, they’ve been raped. I think Boko Haram now knows that when they attack women and girls, they get attention. They get the world to notice.”

In recent months, Boko Haram has reportedly engaged in widespread rape and used girls as as 10 years old as suicide bombers.

“What does a 10-year-old girl know about throwing a bomb somewhere? She doesn’t even know whose side she’s on,” says Christiana Okechukwu, president and CEO of the Inwelle Study and Resource Center in Enugu, Nigeria, a Global Fund for Women grantee focused on girls’ education and using access to technology to empower girls. Okechukwu calls it “scary” that girls are being manipulated in these ways, and she says the increased violence in the country means that “girls’ vulnerability is heightened.”

Boko Haram has lately increased its attacks. In a brutal and deadly on January 12, terrorists invaded the town of Baga, launching grenades, pursuing residents on motorcycles before shooting them down and burning people in their homes. Many of the estimated 2,000 victims in Baga were women, children and the elderly who “could not run fast enough” from the assailants. Some survivors report that Boko Haram fighters have raped the women who remain in Baga.

“Boko Haram has been deliberate and opportunistic in their attacks against women’s freedom. Women and girls have remained vulnerable and exposed,” said Saudatu Mahdi, secretary general of WRAPA, which empowers women and is mobilizing them to vote in this election. “They are either left behind by fleeing family heads or deliberately taken away as spoils of the attacks of the insurgents.”

In response to the uptick in attacks, authorities announced that the election, originally planned for February 14, would be  six weeks to March 28, in order to give the military time to make polls safer for voters. However, many Nigerians doubt that this was the real reason for the delay. Some speculate that the incumbent, President , wanted more time to campaign.

“People are not happy about it — they feel that the reasons given are not the real reasons,” says Okon. “If we’ve been trying to do something about Boko Haram for so long, what’s going to be different in six weeks?”

Boko Haram’s attacks will certainly affect Nigerian’s ability to vote. The violence has displaced about 1.5 million , many of whom will not be able to vote. In large parts of the country’s northeast, violence by Boko Haram may impede .

Nigeria / Flickr

Beyond Boko Haram, the election could bring additional acts of violence. The previous election in 2011 resulted in unprecedented , with more than 800 people  as long-standing ethnic and religious tensions came to a head.

“People have concerns that this postponement might actually increase violence — the tension is higher now,” Okon adds. “We’re trying to amplify the message [to young people] to abstain from violence. We really don’t want the country to descend into chaos.”

Bring Back Our Girls

Activists say that no matter the outcome of the election, the government must place a greater emphasis on the security of women and girls, who are increasingly the targets of Boko Haram.

Although last year’s #BringBackOurGirls social media campaign calling for the release of the 273 schoolgirls that militants  from a classroom briefly shone a spotlight on the issue, most of the girls are still being held in captivity. And many Nigerians feel the government has not done enough to rescue them.

“The abduction of the Chibok girls really put the matter of security of lives of women in very sharp focus for everyone in the country so that the whole issue of security has become — whether explicitly acknowledged or not — an election issue,” said Oby Ezekwesili, who co-founded the Bring Back Our Girls movement in Nigeria to demand government action for the kidnapped schoolgirls. “The [newly elected officials] are going to have to hit the ground running trying to prove to Nigerians that the security of all citizens — especially women — matters to them.”

Some of the candidates have expressed similar concerns. “We believe that there is faulty intelligence and analysis,” the leading challenger for the Nigerian presidency, Muhammad Buhari,  about the government of President Jonathan. “They ought to know [the location of] the Chibok girls, who have been abducted for more than ten months now.”

In Nigeria, as in many countries, women’s rights groups provide an early warning system for systematic violations of women’s and girls’ human rights. “Women’s groups in Nigeria were reporting on increased kidnappings and the need to invest more in safety and security for women and girls more than a year before kidnapping of the schoolgirls in Chibok,” says Jane Sloane, Global Fund for Women’s vice president of programs.

Okechukwu emphasized the need to bridge ethnic divides once and for all in order to drive the country forward. “More people must forget about personal interests and come together for the sake of girls and women,” she says, adding that the elected leader must be ready to bring people together at this critical time. She concluded that Nigerian voters need to ask themselves: “Who is going to make Nigeria the great country it should be?”

*[A version of this article was originally published by .]

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The deadliest Ebola outbreak on record is sweeping West Africa, with over 3,400 lives claimed already. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 20,000 additional will be reported by November. And women are being affected most severely. In fact, 75% of those who have from Ebola are women.

“Women have been affected in so many, many ways. Even though the disease of course affects both men and women, women are at a disadvantage — period,” says Marpue Speare, executive director of the Women’s NGO Secretariat of Liberia (WONGOSOL). “Women are on the front lines. They are the caregivers. Protective gear can be used to help, but women are dying from simple things that can be prevented.”

The need for caretakers is especially acute in rural communities where there are few health clinics, leaving women to feed, wash and care for Ebola victims without even basic protections such as gloves, goggles or masks, making them extremely vulnerable to contracting the virus. Women also participate in burial rites that require handling infected bodies.

Global Fund for Women is acting quickly to provide crisis support to some of our long-standing grantee partners in Ebola-hit communities in Liberia. Through these groups, we learn how women are being disproportionately by the outbreak.

Local Organizations Pick Up the Slack

“The crisis is the worst in the Liberia’s history after the civil upheaval that lasted for 14 years,” says Zaye Fanyean Zarweah of Give Them Hope, Inc., a Global Fund for Women grantee partner. “Everyone lives in fear not knowing who the next victim will be to this deadly virus. Some health workers describe an infected community or region as living near the gate of hell.”

Infection are rising, in part because of a widespread lack of basic knowledge about the causes of the disease and how it is spread, as well as the reluctance of many to seek treatment, often out of fear. For this reason, trusted community-led organizations that already have roots in affected areas play an especially important role. “[WONGOSOL] is working through our network members to tap into their own communities so that you don’t have to bring in people from the outside,” says Speare. “It works better because they have those relationships within the community. They know if a case is not yet reported, they know the right people to give them the right help. They respond better because they know one another — they are like family.”

Even women who do not contract Ebola are at risk, as the current crisis has pushed Liberia’s health system to the brink.

With hospitals overwhelmed with Ebola patients, local organizations must pick up the slack, especially in rural communities. For example, WONGOSOL is setting up hand-washing stations in various communities that have been quarantined, and providing access to basic hygiene to families who cannot afford chlorine, soap and sanitizer to prevent the spread of the virus.

Another Global Fund for Women grantee partner, the West Point Women for Health and Development Organization (WPWHDO), works in the urban community of West Point in the capital of Monrovia. The WPWHDO has opened a mini care center that will meet the health care needs of people presenting symptoms but who have to wait days to be taken to the nearest hospital, a symptom of Liberia’s long-standing infrastructure problems.

“The country is still emerging out of war even though the war ended in 2003. There are extremely limited health facilities,” says Muadi Mukenge, the Global Fund for Women’s program director for sub-Saharan Africa. “Women are not able to reach facilities, particularly women living in rural communities. There aren’t that many facilities to begin with, so you often have to go to another district or another province. More than 80% of the population lives under the poverty line, so money for transport is scarce. The health system itself is particularly weak and women are feeling the brunt of that.”

No Room for Maternal Health Care

Even women who do not contract Ebola are at risk, as the current crisis has pushed Liberia’s health system to the brink. “Most hospitals and clinics across the country are closed for lack of protective materials and drugs,” says Zarweah of Give Them Hope, which works with women in rural Upper Nimba County, improving maternal health services through a health clinic it operates, and offering skill-based training and education to develop more women leaders in the community.

Maternal health are especially important in the wake of the Ebola outbreak. With the already-insufficient health care facilities stretched even thinner as they try to care for the many infected Ebola patients, pregnant women are not able to access the care they need.

“As we speak, pregnant women and babies are very vulnerable, as no health worker is willing to touch patients, especially in the rural area in Nimba where we serve,” says Zarweah. “Pregnant women are left on their own to deliver themselves on bare roads on the street. Hundreds of people have died of the virus and many pregnant women and children have died for lack of attention and intervention.”

Survivors Left Behind

Global Fund for Women allies on the ground say Ebola is also taking a serious toll on survivors. “Ebola survivors are being stigmatized. If a family suffers from Ebola and they lost their loved ones because of the virus, people don’t want to associate with them,” says Speare.

Children orphaned by the disease are also stigmatized. Current estimate that 3,700 children have lost one or both parents so far due to Ebola. “People don’t want to associate with [the orphans] because their parents have died, and they are afraid the children have the disease,” Speare adds. “The children are also being isolated [by health workers] to make sure they are not infected. It is traumatizing for them.”

“Telling the community how to receive these people and accept them back into the community is a major issue,” says Speare. “With a situation like that they have lost everything. There is absolutely nothing when they get back home — no community and no support.”

How to Move Forward

The impact of the current Ebola epidemic on Liberians will be long-term. “In Monrovia, ambulances collect bodies every day from different communities. If you are here, you can see when people hear the sirens and see the ambulance go by, people on the sidewalk get very quiet and are very sad,” says Speare. “People who have survived have been neglected and they are traumatized. Counseling needs to be taken seriously. Children who have lost their parents need to be supported. We need to look at women, specifically pregnant women, and caretaker women who need protective gear.”

In order to help women on the road to recovery after the crisis — and to prevent backsliding when the next crisis hits — experts say investments need to be made in women and girls’ health, education and empowerment on a continual basis.

“The fragility of health services in Liberia is reflected in the fact that only 7% of the national budget is allocated to health, which translates to about $10 per person,” says Mukenge. “Liberia continues to count on donor aid for a large part of its health budget and services. Going forward, there is political will to improve the health sector, particularly in rural counties where the majority of poor women live, where there are proposed programs to train an adequate amount of health workers.”

Moving forward, outside funders and health organizations need to focus on strengthening local institutions over the long-term, instead of just focusing on short-term solutions. Mukenge says: “As long as we have these issues — lack of infrastructure, lack of education, lack of access to health care, lack of gender equality and the reality of foreign-imposed restrictions — then there is going to be another crisis further down the road. And once again it will be women who will suffer the most.”

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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