A new prime minister forms a new cabinet. It was thought that Touré would
have the cabinet by the end of the week. She had it by
Monday evening. That's how Mimi Touré, as she is called, works.
Touré is known as the Iron Lady. Every woman who rises to a certain level of government becomes an Iron Lady in the press. The men are, well, just guys.
Whichever mineral flows through the veins of Aminata Touré, she has spent
all of her adult life working as a human rights and women's rights activist,
who has worked in Senegal and around the world on women's issues and, more
generally, at the intersection of social and economic justice struggles.
Until Sunday's appointment,
Touré was Senegal's justice minister. In that role she became well known, and largely
popular, for far-reaching anti-corruption campaigns that reached deep, far,
wide and high into the previous government's ranks. She brought Karim
Wade, son of the previous president, to trial and then to prison. She
oversaw the arrest of Chad's former president Hissène Habré and made sure
the subsequent trial wouldn't be delayed for decades.
Since adolescence, Touré has been an activist, a militante, and a footballeuse who played for the Dakar Gazelles. At university, Touré worked with the Communist Workers' League. Since then, her militancy has turned to family planning, both in Senegal, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, and around the world, working most recently with the United Nations Population Fund. At the UNFPA, Touré was chief of the gender, human rights and culture branch. There, she pushed and pulled to get all sorts of people, agencies, governments to begin to think and act more seriously about "gender mainstreaming". Touré understood that, from the state perspective as well as from an analytical point of view, women's reproductive rights are part of the governmental budget process, and so the two have to be synthesised. She has argued that women's empowerment and gender equality are key to any kind of health programme. She has said that access to health is a human right, and that that human right is first and foremost a women's right. Repeatedly, she has shown the world that, if not another world, then a better world is possible … now.
And she has worked to make the now happen … now. And she has often
succeeded.
In her new cabinet, Touré appointed
Sidiki Kaba as the new justice minister. Kaba is the former head of the
International Federation of Human Rights. His
appointment has already come under attack because of his support for
decriminalisation of homosexuality. So, he's got something going in his favour.
While Senegalese women's groups have hailed Touré's promotion, they also note with some dismay the mathematics of her cabinet: four women, 28 men.
It's an important and newsworthy moment for Senegal and beyond, unless of
course you rely on the Anglophone press. There, in the land of all the news
that fits to print, nothing happened in Senegal.
But something is happening. A feminist, women's rights, reproductive rights, human rights activist with a history of accomplishments has become prime minister: Aminata Touré.