Four months later, about 60 of the girls have managed to escape and the rest remain missing. The world has mostly moved on, distracted by such events as wars in Gaza and Ukraine, the shoot down of a Malaysian jetliner and the immigration crisis at the U.S. border.
But amid all the horrors that regularly compete for the world's attention, this one shouldn't be forgotten.
For one thing, the teenage captives are symbols of the importance of educating girls. They were all seized after returning to school in a dangerous area to take their final exams. Among them are future lawyers, doctors and teachers -- women who could someday help lead their country.
For another, there's evidence that the international uproar might have helped raise the cost of harming the girls too high even for Boko Haram, an extremist group that regularly kidnaps and kills in its quest to bring a brutal form of fundamentalist Islam to parts of Africa.
The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that U.S. surveillance flights spotted large groups of girls, suspected of being the captives, in remote parts of Nigeria. That dovetails with reports that Boko Haram -- whose name means "Western education is forbidden" -- is treating at least some of the kidnapped girls with unusual care.
Leaders of the group, after first warning that the girls would be sold into slavery, later offered to trade them for Boko Haram prisoners held by the Nigerian government. The world's focus on the girls has made them both valuable pawns and risky victims.
The response of the Nigerian government, which has often seemed overmatched in its five-year struggle with Boko Haram, doesn't inspire much confidence. President Goodluck Jonathan at first largely ignored the incident, then claimed activists invented it, and finally yielded to pressure to accept international assistance.
Jonathan, in Washington this week for a U.S.-Africa summit, says his government is making every effort to find the girls. But he offers no evidence, is dismissive of the foreign help and argues that divulging any details could compromise the mission.
Jonathan has said repeatedly that a military operation to free the girls would probably result in the deaths of many, all but ruling it out. In the place of military action is bargaining, and Nigerian leaders have sent ambiguous signals about who is negotiating and what's on the table.
The challenge of fighting militants who casually sacrifice civilian lives in the name of religion isn't confined to Nigeria. American forces have struggled inconclusively with extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan for more than a decade.
The world's anger can sometimes seem a weak candle next to the flame of intolerance and murder, but in the case of the captive Nigerian schoolgirls, it's important to keep it burning.
The Guardian-Lagos
