Djeneba* ended up putting his research dissertation on hold. A few months ago, because she had fallen behind due to health problems, the foreign language student asked her teacher for a delay. The latter offered to talk about it in a hotel where he planned to spend the night, near a bus station. There he tried to touch her thighs. The young woman managed to flee, but the harassment continued. “He made advances to me, texted me,” she explains.

Some time later, on the pretext that her work had “shortcomings”, the teacher called her in. “I was under a lot of pressure, since I had fallen a lot behind,” Djeneba recalled. I got into his car and we arrived at a residence. He locked me in a room, started brutalizing me, tried to rape me, strangle me. I was struggling. To repel her attacker, the student pretends to have her period. The professor calms down, before starting again. “So I screamed,” she recalls. Guards knocked on the door. He opened it and I ran away. I didn’t tell anyone, I didn’t complain. I was like, ‘He has connections, he’s going to block my year, contact my family.’ The professor is still practicing and has not been worried.

Djeneba’s story is far from unique in the universities of Côte d’Ivoire, where women’s voices are still struggling to be heard. “80% remain silent in the face of sexual violence”, defined as any sexual act with or without contact committed against a person without their consent, according to lawyer and feminist activist Sylvia Apata, co-founder of the association Ivorian Citizens for the Promotion and Defense of the Rights of Children, Women and Minorities (CPDEFM), in a qualitative survey published in February.

Fesci singled out

In November 2022, the NGO collected the testimonies of around twenty heads of student associations. The investigation made it possible to “shed light on this violence which has remained hidden and taboo until now”, indicates CPDEFM, who asked about fifteen questions to the protagonists, mostly women, first online and then on the phone. The association asked the students if they had ever been directly or indirectly exposed to this violence, if they had suffered reprisals or if they felt that they benefited from support at the university.

According to these accounts, 69 cases of sexual harassment were recorded in 2022, including 42 at Félix-Houphouët-Boigny University in Abidjan, the country’s largest campus with nearly 65,000 students. According to the NGO, 80% of women and 10% of men are exposed to sexual harassment. The survey also points out that in its sample, 40% of violence is committed by members of the Student and School Federation of Côte d’Ivoire (Fesci) and 30% by teachers.

“We are surprised that there are few female doctors, but when you are a young student, there is already the fight for housing. At any time, you can be thrown out of your room for no reason, you are the victim of intimidation and subject to predators. A young woman who reaches the doctorate, it’s a feat when it should be normal ”, protests Sylvia Apata, who recounts having suffered insults and intimidation, especially on social networks, after the publication of the ‘study. “This one, Fesci will catch her and settle her fate. All she has to do is walk around with a bodyguard,” one Facebook user wrote.

Allah Saint-Clair, the secretary general of Fesci, reacted by saying he was “surprised” by the figures mentioned by CPDEFM, finding it “regrettable” that the association did not contact the union during its research. But several students interviewed by Le Monde confirm the elements presented in the study, explaining that some of their friends were forced to sleep with a member of Fesci to obtain housing.

“It’s really hard for the students to hold on, so some of them are into prostitution to make a living on campus. And the unions, which are supposed to protect them, come to drive the nail on this suffering, ”laments psychologist Nour Bakayoko, who offers discussion groups with students to encourage them to discuss these issues.

“Culture of impunity”

Listening to students is also the approach of the Ivorian NGO Indigo, which carried out a qualitative survey in the form of secure dialogue spaces on a population of 1,322 people (students, teachers and administrative staff) in three major universities, from March to September 2021. The report, entitled “The campus is a jungle”, has not yet been publicized but distributed in universities as a “basis for reflection to understand the determinants of the violence in academia,” says Joël Kouassi, a sociologist with the NGO.

Indigo points to “the law of silence and the culture of impunity” around gender-based violence (GBV), which mainly affects women. The researcher explains, for example, the “harassment strategy” of older students who take advantage of the first steps of new bachelors to guide them and then “manipulate students lacking benchmarks”. The sociologist notes that there is “a multiplicity of actors” involved: students, but also teaching staff and administrative and technical staff.

“Some students asked the police to react, but they were told that these student questions had to be managed between them”, continues Joël Kouassi, who does not hesitate to speak of “omerta”. “We are afraid of reprisals, of the gaze of comrades, so the students languish in silence, which leads to psychological injuries and abandonments”, he summarizes.

Since Sylvia Apata’s investigation, the atmosphere would have changed at the university. “Those who are singled out are looking for those who participated in this investigation, those who dared to reveal what is happening in the secrecy of the university space, observes Nour Bakayoko. They took it as a distrust and not as a lesson to be learned. »

To better take these issues into account, the Félix-Houphouët-Boigny University set up a listening and complaints management unit in March – complaints which, it promises, will be the subject of of surveys. The cell is slowly being put in place and will be led by Duni Sawadogo, full professor of pharmacy and biology, surrounded by a joint office of twelve members, including teachers specializing in psychology, sociology and law, and students. This service aims to be reachable via “a toll-free number, an email, an application, to allow anonymous complaints”, explains Duni Sawadogo.

A member of the university administration believes that this new service will succeed in “addressing the problem of aggression by teachers by training university deans on harassment issues and dealing with complaints”. According to him, “the management of the university will not hesitate to convene a disciplinary council and to launch legal proceedings”. Many are waiting for the official launch of this cell to judge, but for Joël Kouassi, “we must go beyond the complaints mechanism and work to break the culture of silence; and this will be done by raising the subject of GBV on campus as often as possible, so that everyone understands the phenomenon well and can denounce it. »