Ann is blogging from West Africa, posting new photos and stories each day for 16 days, starting November 25 — the kick-off of “16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence.”  You can catch her earlier posts here and sign up to get e-mail alerts about new posts at theIRC.org/join16days.

Yamoussoukro, Cote d’Ivoire In post-conflict Cote d’Ivoire, the IRC conducts a range of programs from three principal sites.  For the last three years, in Tabou and 15 surrounding villages near the Liberian border, IRC has provided primary health care for some 30,000 Liberian refugees as well as for the Cote d’Ivoirian community; and it now helps to resettle those refugees who have elected to stay in Cote d’Ivoire.  It also manages programs in environmental health (that’s hundreds of pumps providing clean water, and thousands of latrines), income generating agriculture, and child protection and education.

Another consequence of war: women lose access to health care and rates of maternal and
infant death rise sharply.  IRC addresses the problem in Cote d’Ivoire at health centers
like this busy one in Zatta village, where women and babies wait their turn. Photo: Ann Jones

At Man, in the western hills where much of the worst fighting took place, IRC runs programs in human rights and reintegration of people displaced by the war.  It fields a massive program in environmental health that reaches 600 communities.  It manages programs in child protection and education that have rehabilitated hundreds of child soldiers and reunited many with their families.

At Yamoussoukro, where I’m based, an important program of emergency obstetrical care works (in cooperation with the government Ministry of Health) at more than 40 sites to increase the numbers of women receiving professional pre- and post-natal care and to assure safe childbirth.  It is also launching a program to address barriers that obstruct access to health care—especially for women and minorities—including checkpoints on the roads, where women are often harassed or assaulted, and inflated pricing at health facilities that put care out of reach of many.

This woman has safely given birth in a village health center, with the help of
skilled professionals. Photo: Ta Lou Sylvie

The IRC hopes to encourage national reconciliation by working in three different areas, serving three different populations with different needs.  But what all three sites have in common is strong programs in “Violences Basees sur le Genre”—Gender-Based Violence.  Why?  The answer is painfully simple.  In any war, women and children are the principal victims.  Offer any humanitarian program to assist people violated, deprived, damaged, or displaced by war and you find yourself serving women and their children, all of whom, in one way or another, have been victims of the violence of war and of additional violence done to them as women.

Monika Topolska, GBV country coordinator for Cote d’Ivoire (top center), and
GBV field officer Karamoko Aminata (bottom right) help lead a meeting of
village women participating in the Global Crescendo project.  Photo: Ann Jones

 I would argue that all the IRC programs addressing environmental health, child protection, education, health (especially obstetrical care), and human rights address gender-based violence.  In the United States we usually think of “women’s rights” as civil and legal rights, but the United Nations recognizes the full range of women’s social, economic, environmental, political, and personal rights. Access to clean water and sanitation may be counted among the environmental rights of women, just as education and child protection may be considered among their social rights, and obstetrical care among their personal rights as women and as human beings.  All these rights are violated—violently—by conflict.  And all of them are addressed in part by IRC programs that seem to be about wells or school repairs or crops.

IRC’s GBV team in Cote d’Ivoire:  Ehouman Emmanuel, Tia Gbogen,
Bomisso Dramane, Country Coordinator Monika Topolska, Bedi Bienvenue,
Manager of GBV Yamoussoukro Tanou Virginie, and Karamoko Aminata. 
Missing from the photo is Gbozie Marie Chantal. Photo: Ann Jones

But in wartime and after, women are subject to extraordinary personal violence because they are women.  It’s that violence—based specifically and exclusively on gender—that IRC’s GBV program addresses.  It’s a strong program here in Cote d’Ivoire because the violence done to women was, and still is, extreme.  I’ll tell you about it next time.

Ann is blogging from West Africa, posting new photos and stories each day for 16 days starting Sunday, November 25 — the kick-off of “16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence.” Catch up on earlier posts here.

Let me refresh your memory about Cote d’Ivoire. (No offense, but if you’re anything like my highly intelligent and exceedingly well informed friends, you don’t have a clue where I am.) Cote d’Ivoire is one of the biggest countries in West Africa, just about the size of Germany. It lies on the Gulf of Guinea, sandwiched between Liberia and Guinea to the west, Ghana to the east, Mali and Burkina Faso to the north; and for decades it has drawn a large part of its population from its neighbors. In English, of course, it’s “Ivory Coast”—named for the treasure of its vanishing elephants.

The grass swallowing Cote d’Ivoire’s once fine highways is a sign of the country’s
hard times.The narrowing roadway is hazardous, especially for women and children
who travel on foot.Photo: Ann Jones

After gaining independence from France in 1960, Cote d’Ivoire became Africa’s rising star—one of the most prosperous countries on the continent. Beautiful, modern Abidjan became “the Paris of Africa.” And because President Houphouet-Boigny stressed agricultural (not industrial) development, the good times spread throughout the nation of small farmers. Then came worldwide recession in the early 1980s, accompanied in Cote d’Ivoire by drought. The economy went into decline only to be kicked further downstairs by IMF-imposed “structural adjustment.” Farm prices were cut in half, teachers and civil servants laid off, natural resources snatched away—almost half the virgin rainforest in a single decade thanks to an $80 million World Bank “environmental” loan, which in turn required more “adjustment” and more loans to pay the interest. By the time “the old man” Houphouet-Boigny died in 1993, Cote d’Ivoire was in hock for about $1.5 billion. The middle class morphed into poverty.

Village women who walk to markets and health clinics complain of extortion, harassment,
and rape at police and military checkpoints that still obstruct Cote d’Ivoire’s roads.
Photo: Ann Jones

The story since that time is all about political power plays—dodgy elections, coups and counter coups, successful and not, and ambitious politicians stirring ethnic conflicts where none existed before. Human Rights Watch reports that “politicians exploited ethnic divisions to oust political rivals in elections, using the state apparatus to repress opponents and incite hatred or fear among populations that had lived in relative harmony for decades.” The ultra-nationalist definition of pure “Ivoirite” became the wheel upon which immigrants and minorities were broken. Then there’s the widening breach between the Christian south, the seat of government, and the neglected, impoverished Muslim north.

Women with produce to transport to market complain that checkpoint soldiers
interfere with their right to make a living. Extortion cuts their earnings.
Fear of rape blocks their access to more profitable urban markets. Photo: Kasso Roseline

In September 2002, northern rebels tried, and failed, to overthrow President Laurent Gbagbo, and the country fell into war. French, African, and later U.N. peacekeepers stepped in, and a peace treaty of sorts was signed in 2003. More than 11,000 international peacekeepers monitored a buffer zone—the Zone of Confidence—running the width of the country east to west and separating the opposing forces. But the country had already been torn apart by violence such as peaceable, tolerant Cote d’Ivoirians had never known. Now, in the midst of continuing tension and rising poverty and a series of peace treaties—issued annually—it is still trying to put itself back together. It exists, as so many countries do these days, as a “post conflict” zone. It is neither at war, nor at peace.

Soldiers supposed to protect civilians can be very threatening, like these who tried to seize
my camera after I snapped this shot from an IRC vehicle.
Photo: Ann Jones

The fifth anniversary of the beginning of the conflict—September 19—passed without apparent incident. A day like any other. Here in Yamoussoukro, the administrative capital, it was hot, humid, overcast from time to time with clouds that gathered at dusk and rain that drenched citizens coming late from the markets. President Gbagbo was in New York, preparing to announce on September 25 on the floor of the UN General Assembly that the war is now well and truly over. But when is war “over”?

The IRC, having worked in Cote d’Ivoire from 1994 to 1996, returned in 2003 to respond to the humanitarian crisis caused by the influx of Liberian refugees fleeing civil war next door. It remained to work on the fallout of Cote d’Ivoire’s home-grown conflict. There is plenty of work to do, and much of it concerns women who have been the principal casualties of the violence. I’ll tell you more next time about what IRC is doing for them.

Sign up to get an e-mail alert when Ann posts a new blog. Go to: theIRC.org/join16days

- Melissa Winkler blogs a birthday party for three Iraqi refugee girls in Jordan

- George Rupp and Alyoscia D’Onofrio talk about the Congo crisis in an audio briefing

- Starting Sunday, Ann Jones blogs “16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence” from West Africa

- Starting next week in New York, a series of “16 Days” field briefings and film screenings

With digital cameras, women who have survived conflict, displacement, discrimination, sexual and domestic violence vividly document their own lives and make their voices heard.

Ann will be blogging from West Africa, posting these survivors’  photos and stories each day for 16 days, starting Sunday, Nov. 25 — the kick-off of “16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence.”

You can sign up here to get e-mail updates on her latest posts and the 16 Days campaign and catch up on any posts you missed here.

More about Ann from her Web site:

Ann has spent her life traveling the world and speaking up for people — especially women — whose voices are hard to hear. An activist for civil rights, women’s rights, and peace, she has written a series of books about women and violence. She also worked at day jobs she loved, sometimes teaching writing and women’s studies as a university professor, and sometimes traveling as an international journalist and photographer. Her work has appeared in National Geographic Traveler, Outside, The Nation, and the New York Times. 

After 9/11 she went to Afghanistan as a volunteer to teach Afghan high school English teachers and to work on behalf of women. She wrote about her experiences there in Kabul in Winter.

UPDATE, Jan 7 - Check out Ann’s latest posts from Liberia. She’ll be blogging each Monday and Thursday into February.