By RICK GLADSTONE
MAY 7, 2014
When the leader of the Boko Haram extremist groupthreatened to sell hundreds of kidnapped Nigerian girls “in the market” in a rambling online video posted this week, he was not necessarily making an irrational boast.
Doing just that is entirely possible in parts of Nigeria and elsewhere in the developing world, human rights investigators and researchers of child trafficking, sexual slavery and forced marriage said. However egregious it may sound, in some areas the buying and selling of women and children, particularly young girls, has long been an underlying problem.
