ANALYSE CRIMINOLOGIQUE DES PRATIQUES DE SPOLIATION FONCIÈRE DES FEMMES EN MILIEU RURAL DANS LE DÉPARTEMENT DE TOULÉPLEU

ABSTRACT: In Toulépleu department, in the far west of Côte d’Ivoire, land remains the main source of wealth for rural families. Women provide most of the agricultural labour there without owning land. Marked by the crises of the 2000s and of 2010-2011, this region still experiences persistent land tensions that mainly affect widows and single women, particularly in the villages of Péhé, Pantrokin and Dénan. This study analyses, from a criminological perspective, the land dispossession practices experienced by rural women in Toulépleu. It identifies the forms this dispossession takes, the actors involved, and its consequences for victims. A qualitative approach was chosen: semi-structured interviews with women victims, customary chiefs and land officials in three villages of the Péhé sub-prefecture, supplemented by documentary analysis and field observation. Dispossession mainly takes two forms: inheritance confiscation affecting widows, and usurpation through fraudulent sale. These practices are carried out by actors close to the victims (brothers-in-law, paternal uncles, sometimes customary chiefs complicit through their silence) and rest on persistent patriarchal customary law and weak enforcement of the 1998 rural land law. They durably weaken victims economically, nutritionally and psychologically. Land dispossession of women in Toulépleu is a gendered, often invisible form of victimization that deepens rural poverty and women’s economic dependency. This study enriches Ivorian criminology, still in its early stages, through an original victimological reading of rural land conflicts, and suggests concrete avenues to better protect women’s land rights.