By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
The Human Rights Defenders Network Sierra Leone (HRDN-SL) has called on the government to give more protection to girls in the country. The Executive Secretary of the HRDN-SL, Alphonso Gbanie made the call in a press conference on Monday.
The press conference was convened as part of commemoration of the African Human Rights Day, which is celebrated on 21st October. The day is mostly used to reflect on how much the continent has done regarding human rights issues.
“Despite efforts made by the government to protect women and girls in Sierra Leone, they remain to be more at RISK than a soldier in the battle filed. They are subjected to domestic violence, rape, marginalization and political exclusion,” Gbanie said.
“We know we have made progress but we still have a long way to go,” added Solomon Sogbandi, chairman of HRND.
In the last one year the most urgent problem girls in Sierra Leone have been faced with is rape. To curb the problem, the government has enacted a new Sexual Offences Act to protect women and girls.
Gbanie said while the new law showed progress, it is not enough.
“It is not about amending the law, it is about implementing it,” he said.
Protecting girls is not the only concern HRDN has. In a statement released by the human rights body on Monday, it highlighted three other concerns that government must address. These are ‘unlawful’ detention and harassment of human rights defenders, the closure of the civic space and the death penalty.
“As of 2011 we have gone from having 0 to having 64 people on the death row. 62 of them are women and 2 are women,” Gbanie said.
Sogbandi added that these issues are tied down to a broader need to overhaul the country’s constitution.
“We need to reopen discussions around the CRC (Constitutional Review Committee),” she said.
Sierra Leone is a signatory to several international documents that seek to protect the human rights of various categories of its people, most notably the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights.
Sogbandi said having discussions on how to restart the constitutional review process will help “repealing laws like the 1965 Public Order Act (POA) which is against freedom of assembly.”
Despite their criticisms, Gbanie said they are working closely with government.
They also suggested several recommendations in line with some of the concerns they raised.
Some of the recommendations include, reviewing the POA and expunging restrictive laws, commute death row sentences to life imprisonment and popularize and demonstrate more commitment to the new Sexual Offences Act.
Sierra Leone’s human rights situation is up for review in 2020 under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) program. The review is done by the Human Rights Council of the United Nations on every member country, every four to five years.
Gbanie said Sierra Leone could go for the UPR review with 65% of the previous recommendation yet to be implemented.
“65% of the UPR recommendation hanged on the constitutional review process. Sierra Leone is due to be reviewed in 2020 and we could be going there with 65% of recommendations not done,” he said.
© 2019 Politico Online
