About the Speaker
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Toufah
Jallow
Gambian anti-rape activist and founder of the Toufah Foundation
Fatou “Toufah” Jallow is a former beauty pageant queen, sexual assault survivor, and women’s rights and anti-rape activist from The Gambia. Jallow was 18 when she won a beauty pageant sponsored by Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh with the promise of a scholarship to continue her studies. Instead, Jammeh raped her. In June 2019, she was the first person to publicly accuse the now-exiled former dictator of sexual assault, breaking the culture of silence around sexual violence in her country and inspiring the #IamToufah movement, which has been called The Gambia’s #MeToo.