NIGER-NIGERIA-UNREST-KIDNAP-WOMEN-VIOLENCE

Women sit as they gather on May 8, 2014 during a meeting called by Congafen (the Coordination of the NGOs and Nigerien women associations) at the Youth house in Niamey, western Niger, to ask the United Nations (UN) to pursue in justice Boko Haram Islamists who are responsible for the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls. Nigeria's president said today that Boko Haram's mass abduction of the schoolgirls in Nigeria would mark a turning point in the battle against the Islamists, as world powers joined the search to rescue the hostages. A few days before Boko Haram chief Abubakar Shekau claimed responsibility in a video, saying his extreme Islamist group was holding the schoolgirls as "slaves" and threatening to "sell them in the market". AFP PHOTO / BOUREIMA HAMA (Photo credit should read BOUREIMA HAMA/AFP via Getty Images)