By Lamin Idriss Conteh (Cazorla)
The Executive Director of the Centre for Accountability and Rule of Law (CARL), Ibrahim Tommy, says perpetrators of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) must be brought to book and dealt with severely if found guilty, as a way of addressing the phenomenon. He made this statement at the Buxton Memorial Church Hall in Freetown during a conference held on Thursday 17th December.
Tommy said: “What we have been doing over the last four to five years is to make sure the laws that have been made in providing free medical examination and treatment for victims of sexual violence be maintained. But then, there is also access to justice and accountability. Accountability for us helps to bring a sense of inclusion to the victims but also has a deterrent effect. So, we have been working with different partners in making sure that they too give their support.”
The objective of the advocacy is for survivors of SGBV to be given free medical attention and for an increase in budgetary allocation for the Family Support Unit (FSU). Tommy said that CARL was helping FSU in investigating SGBV issues. He also stated that the FSU had been faced with a lot of challenges in handling matters of sexual violence.
The CARL boss said the government did not budget exclusively for victims of sexual violence but that with the help of their support, the campaign for providing victims with certain benefits was ongoing. He noted that the Ministry of Health had also been faced with serious challenges in providing medical attention for these survivors through the dialogue they had with them.
Tommy went on to say that sometimes these perpetrators got away with rape and other serious crimes against women and girls simply because the FSU had not been managed properly. He noted that focus should not only concentrate on the certificates or the reports the FSU was receiving from the medical practitioners, but that the Unit too must have its own data where they could collect and manage their evidences.
A representative from the FSU, Detective Inspector Audrey Rita Kamara, explained some of the challenges the sector was faced with in handling matters of sexual violence including the lack of vehicles. Most of the people involving in this menace stay far away, so they find it difficult to go after them, she said. She also suggested that special budget be allocated to the sector in discharging its functions efficiently.
According to Detective Inspector Kamara, they have been engaging in massive sensitisation in ensuring that sexual issues were tackled. She further stated that they had signed an MoU with different organizations like the Aberdeen Women’s Centre, Don Bosco Fambul, the Sierra Leone Police, to see how they too could join in the fight. She pleaded with the government to help them with some motor bikes, modern courts in all the six regions and a forensic lab.
The Project Coordinator for CARL-SL, Jeremy Ben Simbo, said that they had had some significant success in advocating for better services for SGBV survivors. He stressed that as an organization, they had been working with state actors to see that laws and policies were executed properly. He said there were strong institutions being erected for the operation and that government partners had also been playing their roles in making sure victims of SGBV got the benefits they deserved.
He went further to outline some of the challenges they had been faced with as an organisation including distorted data problem and poor management and inadequate funds. He also claimed that parents of sexual victims had been compromising with perpetrators.
The Media and Outreach Coordinator for the Rainbow Initiative, Alison French, said her institution had contributed immensely to the fight against SGBV by helping survivors in the area of medical attention. She lamented that SGBV cases were constantly increasing. In 2018, she recalled, there were 3,137 reported sexual based violence cases, while in 2019 it was 3,897, and for January to October this year 2,978, from which 2,797 are sexual assault related.
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