Togo: State Must Respect Women’s Rights

FIAN International, a human rights organization working for the right to food, calls on the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to recommend the Togo State to adopt all necessary measures to correct these practices and respect the women’s rights. In Togo, 4.8 percent of people suffer from acute malnutrition and, in some areas of the country, as many as 11.4 percent are severely food insecure.  “Many in Togo rely on agriculture as their main productive activity. Over the last several years, this reliance on land has been severely threatened by Togo’s phosphate mining industry,” said Claire Améyo Quenum, of the Togolese women’s rights NGO FLORAISON. “In the community of Gnita, agricultural land has been reduced from 3000 hectares in 1980 to less than 1200 hectares in 2007 due to land grabbing by the phosphate industry and soil degradation resulting from mining activities.”

As a result of prevailing traditional gender roles, lack of access to education for women, lack of access to healthcare and gender disparities with regard to access to land, property and other means of production, rural women are the main victims of food insecurity and land grabbing in Togo. This threat to women’s right to adequate food in Gnita often results in women’s desperate migration to nearby cities, such as Lomé, in search of a better life for their families.

“Once in the city, women’s right to adequate food continues to be threatened by their reliance on exploitative labor for a living, the disruption of their household structure and the illnesses to which they are exposed as a result of the dire conditions in which they live and work,” explained Quenum.

Quenum will take part in a 3-weeks tour of Europe calling attention to these violations of human rights in Togo. On October 4, in Geneva, she will make an oral statement before the UN CEDAW Committee regarding land grabbing by the phosphate industry and violations of women’s right to adequate food.

Based on information obtained from focus group discussions, interviews and surveys conducted with rural women from the village of Gnita, Togo, organisations working on behalf of local communities and women in Togo for over 15 years compiled a report discussing the obstacles Togolese rural women face in the realization of their right to adequate food.

In September, FIAN International together with Togo NGOs FLORAISON, GRADSE, and RAPDA-Togo, submitted the report to the UN CEDAW Committee, asking the Committee to consider its findings when reviewing Togo during its upcoming 53rd Session in October.

“FIAN International looks forward to the CEDAW Committee’s Concluding Observations to the Togo State later this month and hopes the Committee takes into account our suggested recommendations in regards to women’s right to adequate food,” said Ana Maria Suarez Franco, permanent representative of FIAN in Geneva.

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Read the written submission to CEDAW

Read the oral statement to CEDAW (in French)