In Côte d'Ivoire, period poverty means double punishment for women in prison (2024)

Two fingers raised to form the "V" for victory. But two fingers with red tips, the color of menstrual blood. The poster for "Menstrues libres," West Africa's first festival dedicated to menstrual hygiene, organized by the NGOs Actu'Elles and Gouttes Rouges in Abidjan on May 27 and May 28, was sure to raise eyebrows. During the event, an awareness-raising panel was dedicated to the specific problems of menstrual health in prisons, largely neglected by the Ivorian public authorities.

"When you arrive in prison, you have nothing," testified Viviane L. W., a tall woman in her forties with two stints in prison behind her, in 2007 and 2018. "No toothbrush, no sanitary towels, no underwear, just the clothes you were wearing when you were arrested. There's no store in prison, no one to go and buy these things for you." For inmates like Viviane, it's all about making do.

They have to improvise with a torn cloth or an old rag. Makeshift protection that is difficult to clean and dry properly in the cramped cells, where space and cleaning products are in short supply. Overcrowding, coupled with poor hygiene conditions, frequently leads to infections, which can have serious consequences.

'Until blood is drawn'

The risk is not just to health: The taboo about menstruation persists even in the cells. It is the cause of frequent fights. All it takes is for a period rag to touch a fellow inmate's loincloth on the dryer for tempers to flare. "In there, there are no small fights," said Madoussou Touré, president of the NGO SMED-CI, Soutien aux Mères et aux Enfants en Détresse de Côte d'Ivoire (Support for mothers and children in distress in Côte d'Ivoire). "When the first blow is struck, it continues until blood is drawn."

Menstrual hygiene in prisons is the hobbyhorse of this association, which the young woman, a lawyer by profession, is a strong advocate for. "There's already the issue of period poverty when you're a woman in Côte d'Ivoire. So can you imagine what it's like when you're behind bars?" Always well-dressed, softly-spoken, Touré has been tirelessly collecting batches of sanitary towels from private donors since 2021. She then ships them to Ivorian prisons, where the female prison population is largely invisible.

Firstly, there's an explanation linked to the scarce statistics on the situation. In the latest survey carried out by the Conseil National des Droits de l’Homme in early 2021, some 448 women were incarcerated in Côte d'Ivoire (CNDH), half of them awaiting trial. The Maison d'Arrêt et de Correction d'Abidjan (MACA), the country's largest prison, built in 1980 in the commune of Yopougon, was originally designed for 1,500 prisoners but has over 10,000, including just 300 women, who live in separate quarters. Sanitary products are not provided. "The state of Côte d'Ivoire provides food and medicine but gender-specific needs are not taken into account," complained Touré. "Being in prison is punishment enough, but for women who have their periods there, it's double punishment."

In Ivorian society, the very existence of female criminals is another taboo. "Crime has no gender," said Touré, and the Ivorian authorities apply this popular saying to the letter. "The prison environment was not designed for women," confirmed another volunteer who works in prisons, Sister Emmanuelle from the NGO Ivoire et Sourire. From her small office in Bingerville, on the outskirts of Abidjan, the nun remembers seeing prisons adapt as best they could to the arrival of women behind bars. "There are still too many women for the space allocated to them," she said. At the prison in Aboisso, a town some 100 km from Abidjan, where Sister Emmanuelle works, 14 inmates share a single cell in the middle of the men's prison.

'They're not animals'

NGOs are not the only ones keen to draw attention to their situation. "We must come to the aid of our female detainees," insisted Ivorian lawyer Roselyne Aka-Serikpa. "Whatever offense they have committed, however serious it may have been, they are human beings, they are not animals." Having defended both men and women, she knows what happens to her clients in prison. "Detention is the ultimate punishment in criminal law," she emphasized. "But it's designed to teach the offender a lesson and help him or her to resocialize. The aim is not to punish for the sake of punishing."

The most sensitive issue is the resocialization of women prisoners. The associations' work is crucial, not least because many inmates receive neither sanitary protection nor food gifts from their families behind bars. Furthermore, they often do not even receive prison visits.

"The way people look at me has changed," confirmed a former inmate, who spent time in Abidjan prison in 2019 for possession of narcotics, and has since been monitored by the NGO Médecins du Monde. On the terrace of the association's office where she agreed to testify anonymously, the young woman keeps her frail figure upright, but can't stop her voice from trembling. Almost all her family have turned their backs on her, with the exception of her sister: "She's the only one who used to send me parcels, and who never stopped caring about me," she said, fighting back tears. "In Africa, being in prison is already a disgrace for the family. But a woman in prison? It's an abomination."