The latest edition of the Humanitarian Leader features a new commentary. In ‘They came for the children first’, Semoy Enakele challenges humanitarian leaders to abandon the reflex of reactive charity and confront what the Nigerian kidnapping crisis actually is: a systemic collapse of governance that has industrialised the abduction of children.
"Kidnappings are no longer episodic crises that flare and fade with headlines. They have become a defining feature of daily life; an entrenched pathology of state fragility that exposes children to extreme violence while hollowing out the country's social, economic, and moral foundations."
By exposing the parallel criminal economy sustained by ransom normalisation, Enakele reframes kidnapping not as a series of emergencies to manage, but as a political economy of violence to dismantle. The hollowing out of education, the permanent exclusion of girls, and the pipeline from poverty to armed recruitment demand structural intervention, not aid cycles. Drawing on Colombia and the Philippines, the article urges leaders to pressure states into treating this as the existential threat it is, and to build partnerships defined by long-term stability rather than fundable short-term fixes.
