OP-ED: Happy March 8th: Women languish in abusive lengthy pre-trial detention in Madagascar By Tamara Leger
When Onorine’s husband died, she decided she wanted to take care of his four children from another marriage. Onorine, who is 56 and from Antsirabe in Madagascar, took their birth certificates to court to make things official. But when she arrived there, police officers told her the certificates were fake, and arrested her.
Since visiting Madagascar’s prisons I have found it difficult to get the stories from women I met there out of my head. In October 2017, out of the total 994 women prisoners in Madagascar, 696 were pre-trial detainees. This means that 70% of the total female prison population had not been charged with any crime. The scale of this injustice is staggering.
In a well-functioning criminal justice system, people accused of committing crimes are detained only when absolutely necessary. They are given access to a lawyer, free of charge, if they cannot afford to pay, and granted a prompt trial. And, in decisions that affect children, those children’s best interests must be the primary consideration.
Most of the women I met in Madagascar had been arrested for petty offences like stealing chickens; others were in prison just because their husbands or relatives were suspected of crimes. As Onorine noted, pre-trial detention particularly affects people living in poverty and exacerbates societal inequalities. Women in detention lose their source of income and may risk long-term unemployment due to social stigma and lost opportunities, which has a knock-on effect on their families.
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