This week, scores of African leaders will convene in Washington at the behest of the State Department for its Africa Leaders Summit. The summit’s purpose is to strengthen U.S.-Africa ties on various local and global issues.

While this summit represents a fantastic opportunity for African leaders to voice their needs, concerns and hopes for the continent, as well as rub shoulders with American and international political and policy leaders, we call on the summit not to forget the interests of Africans who will not have a voice there, especially the Biafran community in Nigeria.

In particular, we wish to shine a spotlight on the ongoing and relentless persecution of Biafrans that is being purposely overlooked at best, and supported at worst, by the Nigerian government; on the presence at the Africa Leaders Summit of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, whose human rights record is atrocious; and finally on the case of Biafran leader Nnamdi Kanu, whose rights have been violated, and who wallows in a prison cell simply for calling for a referendum on Biafran independence and freedom.

Recognized in 19th-century treaties with the British, Biafran sovereignty was extinguished in 1914 under the threat of British machine guns enforcing the colonial policy of divide and conquer. A short-lived republic in the late 1960s, Biafra was conquered by the Nigerian government in violation of decolonization obligations, as enshrined in the United Nations Decolonization Treaty of 1960, for Asian and African nations.