By Alpha Abu & Mohamed Foday Conteh
Members of two Parliamentary Committees, on Health and Sanitation and on Gender and Children’s Affairs, as well as representatives from the Female Caucus have held exhaustive training on the challenges women and girls are exposed to.
Challenges such as sexually induced violence, and the role lawmakers in particular could play in influencing far reaching positive changes in their communities against the social malaise. The training by Rainbo Initiative was part of activities contained in a 3 year project from 2020 -2023 being supported by UK based organisation Comic Relief.
Former Parliamentary Minority leader, Dr. Bernadette Lahai as one of the facilitators at the event, urged the MPs and other participants to engage their communities through awareness raising activities on sexual assault. She highlighted the difficulties, ignorance and disadvantages women and girls in rural settlements encounter in reporting rape and other forms of abuse. Dr. Lahai therefore urged the MPs to utilize the very useful data on Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) provided by the organisation to address the numerous associated problems in communities.
The Advocacy and Communications Coordinator Rainbo Initiative, Alison French speaking on the Shifting Norms and Empowering the Girl Child Project that principally targets children from age 6 to 12 acknowledged the important role parents and teachers can play in effecting positive change. She mentioned that the project is targeting 8 communities in two regions of the country.
“We found out that Freetown and Kenema recorded the highest number of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV),” said Alison French. She further acknowledged that areas in the Western Region with the highest cases reported are Kamayema, Tombo, Grafton and Rokel. Hanga Town and Blama in Kenema district are among towns with highest reported cases of SGBV upcountry.
French revealed that other related organisations like the Family Support Unit of the Sierra Leone Police will be included in subsequent programmes.
Speaking to Politico, the Chair of the Gender Committee in Parliament, Catherine Zainab Tarawally of Constituency 037 in Makeni City said the collaboration between Parliamentarians and the Rainbo Iniative is of great significance in ensuring that cases related to SGBV are tried speedily. While speaking on collaboration with other organisations, she mentioned that they have been working with the Ministry of Gender and Children’s Affairs to examine One Stop Centres.
“We are grateful to Honourable Bernadette Lahai for synchronizing the Sexual Offences Act into sections and into amended versions that are very good for MPs to cascade to communities and their constituents,” she noted. She said that talk shows will be organised to ensure that people are educated on the parameters of the Sexual Offences Act of 2019 especially the 7 offences that were added into the new amended act.
The Director of the Centre for Research and Parliamentary Studies, Mohamed Alpha Jalloh emphasized that the data provided by Rainbo Initiative will better equip parliamentarians in pitching their arguments on SGBV issues. He also believed the data and other information presented to the parliamentarians will be transformed into a document. A follow up evaluation will be done to help understand how the parliamentarians would have utilized the training in the discharge of their duties and responsibilities, he pointed out.
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