a series of feminicides stirs up public debate

a series of feminicides stirs up public debate

For several years, women’s rights associations have been calling for better involvement from the authorities to identify the number of cases of femicide and improve prevention policies.

1 min

With our correspondent in Abidjan, François Hume-Ferkatadji

On April 10, a public holiday due to the celebration of Eid el-Fitr, a soldier on leave killed his wife in Bingerville, near Abidjan, with his service revolver, before killing himself.

On March 31, a woman’s throat was slit in the town of Maféré in the southwest of Côte d’Ivoire. Her husband, suspected of being the author of the murder, was arrested two days later in Ghana, after the Ivorian and Ghanaian police mounted a joint operation to put an end to his run.

In these two cases of femicide, those close to the families report a desire to break up on the part of the wives, which would have caused situations of violence and finally these assassinations.

At the beginning of March, the Movement to Fight Inequalities had already warned of the need for the government to quantify these assassinations against women in order to better combat this violence, which feminist organizations consider to be a social problem. The NGO CPDEFM conducted its own study in 2019-2020, and compiled 416 cases of femicide for the city of Abidjan alone.

The Ivorian League for Women’s Rights believes that “ femicide not only takes a life, but also destroys families,” and forces “society to confront this senseless violence. »

Read alsoIvory Coast: how widespread are feminicides and domestic violence?

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