By Nasratu Kargbo
Defense for Children International (DCI) and partners have called on the government of Sierra Leone to put more mechanisms in place in addition to the existing ones to ensure the safety and protection of the girl- child.
In a joint statement by DCI, Equality Now, Child Welfare Society, the group recognized the strides by the government in that regard but said in their statement that it has been more than a year now since the announcement of a plan to promulgate two policies to address the underlying drivers of adolescent pregnancies and sexual violation of girls.
The joint team says “unfortunately, the status of our audit of the rights of girls shows a report that is wanting. Besides the continued threats and lived reality of sexual violence adolescent girls in Sierra Leone are also forced to endure the threat of child marriage, female genital mutilation and sexual exploitations. We are also seeing an emerging trend of increased online sexual abuse and violence targeting many adolescent girls in our country”.
Attention was also drawn to institutions that are tasked with the responsibility of providing justice for survivors of sexual violence in the country a including the Family Support Unit of Sierra Leone Police, that are under resourced.
They recommended that the government replicate the sexual violence model court at district level, strengthen the capacity of the family support unit (FSU) with provide more logistics and training of personnel and providing safeguarding measures in schools.
The statement also made reference to the recent probe by the United Nation’s Universal Periodic Review of Sierra Leone’s human rights record which states that even though government has implemented 92% of their previous recommendations, there was need for more to be done.
They therefore applauded the countries that have made new recommendations that talked about girls, boys and adults and the civil society organisations.
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