In a country of 6 million people, the over half who live in poverty are the backbones of the society: the most abused, the most neglected, the most discriminated against, yet, the hardest workers. These women bear the cost of bad governance at all levels. From the difficult conditions in which they deliver their babies on the floor in public hospitals that lack the bare minimum including beds, to working long hours at farms or in the markets just to make enough money so they can school their children that the government has abandoned, to supporting their jobless husbands who officially are the bread winners but are still awaiting a call for an office job at one of the zillion companies they have applied to, these strong, resilient and powerful ladies are the women of Togo.
In August , they made history and received the long-sought attention on the abuse they have been going through with a 5 decades old regime that only operates through brutality. After protesting every week for 2 consecutive years without having an iota of attention from international medias and institutions to look into the severe human rights abuses that they and their families had been facing, these ladies decided to take action.
Who does that? Togolese women called for a sex strike on the 25th of August and it was the very first time in the history of my country that an article reporting an event happening in Togo was published on over news sites in over 80 countries from Australia to Japan, from the United States to Ecuador.
It took a while but I did count every single one of them on Google News. For the first time, the world paid attention to us.
The world listened and questioned the motive behind such an uncommon political action. As a young 22 years old activist who has been involved in the struggle for democracy in my country from a very tender age, for me that was a victory.
