A capsizing of a canoe in the Saint-Louis breach in Senegal occurred on Wednesday, July 12, 2023. The preliminary report shows six dead bodies and four survivors. The crew is missing.

The victims were sent to the Saint-Louis regional hospital. The same source of information that firefighters are currently on the scene. And the search continues.

It should be noted that the boat carried more than sixty people, candidates for irregular migration.

As a reminder, according to the migrant aid association Walking Borders, at least 300 migrants aboard three boats that had left Senegal for the Canary Islands disappeared at sea.

Interviewed by Reuters, Helena Maleno of Walking Borders said that the two boats carrying more than 100 people have been missing for 15 days trying to reach Spain.

The third boat had about 200 people on board and had left Senegal on 27 June, said Helena Maleno. “The three boats left Kafountine, in southern Senegal, about 1,700 kilometres from Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands,” she added. Families are very concerned. There are about 300 people from the same region of Senegal. They left because of the instability in Senegal”.

At least 559 people, including 22 children, died in 2022 while trying to reach the Canary Islands, according to data from the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The dead bodies of five people were found Tuesday, July 11, 2023 under the rubble of two buildings under construction that collapsed the day before in a southern commune the Guinean capital Conakry, announced the government.

The two buildings collapsed “in the commune of Matoto in Conakry on Monday, July 10, 2023 around 5:00 pm”, said the government spokesman in a statement, stating that “five bodies” were cleared.

Earlier, a first assessment made by a municipal official and a worker present at the scene mentioned “five workers and (one) child under the rubble”, that is, six people wanted.

The Ministry of Justice ordered judicial inquiries, according to the government, which added that the tragedy occurred “on the site of a private developer” who was building social housing.

“It is therefore not the social housing constructions of the State (…) that are concerned by the accident,” explained the government.

The building that collapsed first “was part of a social housing project launched by the Guinean government to house public sector workers,” a local official said earlier.

“The workers had already finished the fifth slab and were starting the construction of the sixth slab when everything collapsed,” said a worker working on the site.

The first collapsed building, which was adjacent to the second, was in a quiet area of the Matoto commune, among other residential and office buildings, according to an AFP correspondent.

An impressive security system made up of police and gendarmes was deployed on the site, where civil protection officers and first responders were working to try to find any survivors under the rubble.

The construction work was carried out by the company MAK BTP, in charge of the construction of social housing in this suburb of Conakry.

Multiple construction companies have been created in recent years in Guinea by relatives of senior officials in the public administration. Every year, buildings under construction collapse in Conakry.

The sector suffers in particular from a lack of control of the works by the services of the Ministry of Urban Planning and Habitat, suspected of corruption by some owners of sites.

Although there are more than 258 million widows in the world, they have always been invisible, unsupported and unaccounted for in societies. Widowhood often forces women to leave family and social structures, making them particularly vulnerable to isolation, violence and poverty. According to the data, between 2009 and 2013, nearly one in ten widows lived in extreme poverty.

Many women are forced to participate in degrading, harmful and even threatening practices as part of their partner’s burial or mourning rituals. In a number of countries, for example, widows are forced to drink the water in which their husband’s body has been washed.

Globally, women are less likely to have access to old age pensions than men, so the death of a spouse can lead to the total deprivation of these elderly women.

In addition, in areas of armed conflict, displacement and migration, in addition to the Covid-19 pandemic, tens of thousands of women, who have lost their partners, and many others whose partners have disappeared, found themselves speechless in society.

The International Day of Widows, celebrated every June 23, aims to end ostracization and better educate communities about the needs of vulnerable women such as widows.

When their husbands die, women may have difficulty accessing bank accounts and pensions to pay for health care or to support themselves. single-parent families and single senior women are already particularly vulnerable to poverty.

In addition, limited or no access to credit and other financial resources worsens their economic situation. Indeed, in many traditional societies, they are deprived of the right to inherit property, including land rights.

In Africa and Asia, widows find themselves victims of physical and mental violence (including sexual abuse) related to succession, land and property disputes. In some cases, they have to repay the debts incurred by their deceased husband.

Without the right to inherit, widows fall into a precarious situation, even into poverty, and become dependent on the charity of their husband’s family.

In some countries where widowhood is considered a very low social status, thousands of widows are denied by family members and deprived of housing.

This forces them to look for low-paying jobs, such as cleaning or begging or prostitution.