The cultural and social consequences and effect on families of women's involvement in drug trafficking in Cameroon: crime and imprisonment.

The aim of the Idolé Foundation which was established in June 1993, is to help women discharged from prison. To achieve that aim, it has opened a centre where women are provided with free accommodation and training of various kinds, including sewing, dyeing, embroidery, soap-making, cooking and sex education. It has been observed that 30 per cent of these former prisoners were drug dependent and another 30 per cent had had contact with drugs without becoming dependent. These women continue to consume drugs while in prison, where they resort to a number of strategies to satisfy their craving and, on release, their addiction forces them into violent milieux, where they are subjected to sexual slavery. Forced to share their earnings with procurers, they are obliged, in order to continue their drug habit, to change partners and submit to increasingly depraved demands, including the introduction of sometimes very dangerous substances into their genital organs.