From November 27 to 30, Equipop brought together 28 feminist activists from eight West African countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal) in Ouagadougou. This meeting was designed as a space for expression, exchange, and the development of joint actions to ensure that their voices and demands are better heard at the regional and international levels. Common positions and actions were identified to influence the 2019 G7 summit and other institutional processes.
In recent years, new creative energies have been emerging in French-speaking West Africa. Active within communities and on social media, denouncing the ravages of gender-based violence, intervening to prevent the marriage or excision of girls who are still children, training young people in leadership and facilitating access for teenage girls to information on sexual and reproductive rights and health... Young feminists are on all fronts to bring about change.
Through these four days of sharing and exchanging ideas, several common messages emerged:
– We, as young feminists, want the right to freely control one's own body to be promoted.
– We, as young feminists, want women's power of knowledge to be promoted.
– We, as young feminists, want women's economic power to be promoted (valuing women's work and equal pay).
– We, as young feminists, want to see women's economic power promoted (sufficient budget allocation to promote egalitarian societies).
– We, as young feminists, want women's political power and participation in decision-making to be promoted.
In order to bring these messages to regional and international stages, particularly at the 2019 G7 summit, young feminists have developed various innovative actions aimed at maximizing the impact of social networks and the media to amplify their voices!
