Seizing the Moment to Advance Women’s Rights

In 2004 a team from the Center for the Protection of Underprivileged Women in Cameroon paid a visit to Kondengui maximum-security prison in Yaoundé, the nation’s capital. Brought in to provide skills training to female inmates, its members were troubled by the conditions they found — including a rash of politically motivated arrests, lengthy pretrial detentions, severe overcrowding, and minimal health care.