This trending tag on Twitter, taken up by famous individuals such as Michelle Obama and Emma Watson, represents a heartbreaking situation being experienced right now by hundreds of Nigerian mothers and fathers, and more hauntingly, 234 Nigerian girls between the ages of 15 and 18.

On April 14th, dozens of heavily armed terrorists invaded the quiet rural Nigerian town of Chibok with a convoy of trucks and vans. The girls in the local school woke up to the sound of gunfire, and were herded outside and forced into vehicles by the attackers. The terrorists then set fire to the school. An estimated 276 girls were abducted by the fundamentalist Islamic group Boko Haram. 40 girls managed to escape their captors in the chaos as the girls were driven through a thick forest near the border of the country.

Boko Haram is a terrorist organization whose name can be roughly translated to “Western education is sin.” They operate in northern Nigeria, where the influence of the more urban and democratic southern Nigeria is weak. On the day of the abduction, they also caused the worst-ever bombing on the capital, Abuja. Boko Haram has been responsible for the deaths of roughly 2,000 Nigerians this year, destabilizing parts of the largest and most developed country in West Africa.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau released a chilling video on May 5 that describes the organization’s involvement in the abduction and the group’s plans for the girls. He has suggested “selling [the girls] in the market” as “slaves” and also has offered the Nigerian government a deal: release militants who are prisoners of the government in return for some of the girls, or have them all scattered across West Africa. In the most horrific portion of the video, about 100 of the girls are seen reciting a passage of the Quran while one girl stands and says that they are unharmed. The girls are clearly terrified, chanting slowly and quietly. The girls are mostly Christian, although Shekau claims to have forcibly converted all of them to Islam. At present the fate of the girls is unknown, the harsh reality, however, is that they may all be sold as sex slaves or auctioned off, never to be returned to their families.

While this horror has touched many people from outside Nigeria, it is in large cities, such as Lagos or Abuja, where the outrage is the most present. Mass protests against the government’s ineffectual response to the abduction have spelled trouble for the democratically elected president Goodluck Jonathan, who is under pressure to rescue the girls in a rapidly decreasing window. Governments including those of the U.S., Israel, France, and China have all offered their help in the form of intelligence or special forces to assist in the effort to save these girls before they are split into groups too small to track. Time is running out for the girls, and the Nigerian government is left in a lose-lose position: negotiate with terrorists and release war criminals, or possibly lose the only chance to save the girls.