A woman in Ivory Coast has been held without trial for over seven years after appealing her 20-year prison sentence in 2019, sparking renewed public debate about the country's justice system. The Ivorian justice minister acknowledged a "dysfunction" and referred the case to the prosecutor general, though Abidjan's Court of Appeal subsequently rejected a request for the woman's provisional release on procedural grounds. The case has drawn attention to a wider problem: according to the country's own justice ministry data from September 2024, 36% of prisoners were being held in pretrial detention, partly due to a severe shortage of judges — with only one magistrate per 30,000 inhabitants, roughly three times below the accepted international norm. Ivory Coast's National Assembly was scheduled on 14 April 2026 to examine a bill creating a national detention oversight body.