The Suicide Bombing Women of Boko Haram: Re-Thinking Culpability

The current structure of the law and the penal system in Nigeria typically renders Boko Haram’s female suicide bombers legally invisible, such that they are caught between national, regional, and international criminal justice frameworks that are inherently predisposed to gender stereotypes and the excessive criminalisation of Nigeria’s terrorism prosecution framework. A complex victim–perpetrator response of collective norms that seek to criminalise Boko Haram’s female bombers for what are considered heinous and aberrant crimes while simultaneously acknowledging the protected status of women and children in conflict consigns these female suicide bombers specifically to a legal grey zone. Consequently, they are neither charged nor released but remain arbitrarily incarcerated indefinitely despite preliminary investigative reviews recommending their prosecution, release, and/or de-radicalisation. Accordingly, this thesis aimed to develop a framework of culpability to support the application of the law to Boko Haram’s female suicide bombers. The complexity that surrounds the moral responsibility of female suicide bombers and current legislation relevant to complicity and terrorism requires that this thesis triangulate findings from literature reviews, interviews, document analysis, and theory analysis within a multi-axis framework. Accordingly, the case studies of seven failed Boko Haram suicide bombers were mapped against the ensuing data to develop a culpability framework that provides a non-arbitrary, systematic, logical, and ethico-legal tool to approach the fault attribution and sanction of individual female suicide bombers. This thesis’s culpability framework derives its standard of responsibility from the paradigmatic application of a moral responsibility threshold, a complicity hierarchy, and a differentiated approach to terrorism laws. By providing a framework for evaluating responsibility, both moral and legal, and by confirming that Boko Haram’s female suicide bombers lie on a spectrum ranging from innocent to accountable, the findings from this thesis could potentially confront and alter the responsibility threshold for women’s engagement in suicide terrorism.