Sexual assault and rape have been problematic for years in many African societies. It is noticed that perpetrators commit sexual assault and rape to dominate, exert power over, and hurt victims. In fact, Yayah Jammeh, former president of The Gambia currently in Equatorial Guinea, left power under constraints of a popular revolution (#Gambiahasdecided). He is accused of many crimes against humanity under his dictatorship but someone that is rarely spoken about involves the July 22nd Beauty Pageant that President Jammeh introduced in 2007. Contestants for the Pageant were drawn from different schools and communities, and the President gave scholarships to the winners of the competition as a form of motivation and empowerment. In June 2019, a courageous young woman, Toufah Jallow, the winner of the Beauty Pageant in July 2014, came forward to accuse President Jammeh of raping her on the eve of Ramadan at the State House instead of giving her the scholarship she won in the competition. He used state apparatus, including the Ministry of Education, to select girls for the contest based on their beauty, intelligence, entrepreneurship, expression, and so on. Among these selected girls, he was able to choose his rape victims.
Africans Rising stands in solidarity with Toufah Jallow and with all the women’s movements against rape and violence against women (VAW). Not only do we choose to believe her, but also to work with her to expose several people, who rape young women and girls in The Gambia. To address the scourge, Africans Rising, jointly with The Toufah Foundation, plans to organise a convention of women against rape in Banjul. The convention is an opportunity to Panfricanise the fight against rape and sexual assault across Africa and in the Diaspora through raising awareness about this plague and advancing strategies to advocate and take actions against this scourge. The convention will also be an occasion to celebrate women from the region who work tirelessly in their communities to uplift women and girls. This event will be held in conjunction with the “Invisible Giants”, a celebration of women’s efforts for women’s liberation and representation. The expected outcomes are to: identify and promote a comprehensive understanding of the current Gambian laws on violence, and to provide policy options to plug loopholes and implementation obstacles. The convention aims to compare different countries’ situations and laws against rape and violence against women, give visibility to the movements against violence against women and strengthen solidarity among them, concretize an action point to map out vulnerable regions to conduct community outreach programs, and develop language committees tasked with engaging linguistic experts from various.
