In late spring Liberian journalist Charles Yates got a tip that that runoff from a rubber plantation was creating severe toxic pollution in North East Liberia. As a result of the training he received from jhr (Journalists for Human Rights) he realized that many people’s rights were being violated, particularly their right to a clean and healthy environment, and that a story might be able to apply pressure on the right authorities.

While researching his story Charles discovered that pollution from the Firestone Rubber Plantation had caused outbreaks of skin disease, had polluted drinking water, had made fish unsafe for consumption and that there were at least two reports of death directly linked to the pollution.

Yates had his story published in The Inquirer, one of Liberia’s primary newspapers. Soon after, Radio UNMIL, the United Nations Monrovia based radio station, picked up and broadcasted the story. The story then reached Liberia’s president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who consequently ordered audits to be conducted throughout the plantation.

Read the full original article below.

Firestone Pollutes Six Villages In Margibi District

EPA Tights Lipped On The Issue While Advocacy Group Warns of Danger

Water severely polutted from a rubber plantation in North East Liberia.

Six villages within district # 3 in lower Margibi County are experiencing severe toxic pollution as the result of wastes flowing from the Firestone Liberia plantation. They have lost their rights to a clean and healthy environment, and describe the great health hazard this has brought to their community.

The villages are now experiencing an outbreak of skin diseases, polluted drinking water and a lack of fish safe for human consumption. One baby was recently born with a missing arm, and there are at least two reports of death directly linked to the pollution. The affected areas are not in the range of Firestone Concession Agreement area, the village elders disclosed, but instead just downstream.

One town directly hit by this unfriendly environmental practice is the Kparyah Town. It sits just downstream from the source of the pollution – several cracks in a large pipe belonging to Firestone. The pipe pours constantly into a marsh that is now black from the pollution. A smell rising off the wetland makes it barely possible to stand in the terrain for five minutes.

Wilfred B. David, head elder of Kparyah Town explained they do not eat any fish from the creek anymore and their crops also do not grow anymore because of the hazardous pollution leeching from Firestone. Villagers discovered and reported the pollution in 2002. Since then nothing had been done to correct the problem by government or Firestone.

“We have informed our county authorities about the situation and some of them have also come on the scene and have experienced this pollution for themselves but they have not taken any steps against the Management of Firestone,” David lamented. Other villagers alleged that the wastes that are being dumped in the creek are taken from septic tanks, the factory as well as somehuman, and hospital wastes.

The villagers further disclosed that as the result of the constant toxic pollution into the creek fishes and marines are dying on a daily basis and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of Liberia is not doing anything to prevent the situation.

Villagers also described Firestone management regularly showing up to mock them by asking – with chide laughs – if the village has any fish for sale, before driving off. This has incensed residents.

Local youths have threatened to stage a demonstration if the government of Liberia does not take quick measures to curtail the ongoing situation. Youth leader, Sam S. Gaye promised that his youth group will set up road blocks and the protest will be violent if nothing is done to arrest the looming environmental crisis. “We can not continue to live in this kind of atmosphere anymore. Our children are dying and our food production is reducing greatly,” he stated.

Public Relations officer of Firestone Liberia , Mr. Rufus Karmoh, refused to comment on the related issue besides presenting a statement on Firestone Liberia’s Environmental Practices. In the statement, Firestone Liberia did not specifically reference the pollution allegation, but boasted that the company is practicing sound environmental stewardship that is positively impacting the lives of Liberians.

The statement explains that Firestone Liberia continuously communicates with its neighbors and with those in surrounding communities. “By gathering information and constantly reviewing its operations, the company is able to identify any environmental issues and address them in timely manner,” the release stated.

The release added that the company recently constructed a new state-of-the-art, multimillion-dollar water treatment facility that processes water from its factory through equalization and clarification tanks and into its constructed wetlands on the company’s property for natural, biological treatment. On site investigations could not establish where this ’state-of-the-art’ facility was, or how it applies to the pollution affecting Kparyah Town .

Other than acknowledging that receipt of information the pollution issue, EPA head Jerome Nyakan refused to comment on the matter but promised to respond to the issue in later date.

A different source at the EPA explained that the EPA received information on the issue as early as 2008, and dispatched a team of investigators on the scene. The source, who wished to remain unnamed due to restrictions in speaking to the press, said the investigators discovered that indeed the pollution was taking place and recommendation was made to the Firestone management. The source did not state what actually came out of said recommendation.

Liberia Environmental Watch’s Director, Morris T. Koffa has warned that if the government of Liberia does nothing to hold Firestone to the book, future consequences will be great and to the detriment of Liberians.

The environmental advocacy group boss, who is based in the United States of America, said that information emanating from Firestone must claim the attention of the national government and the lawmakers. Mr. Koffa said these wastes from the factory contain hazardous chemicals that can cause long time effect on the lives of the victims and the surrounding environment on which they depend.

He used the occasion to call on the Liberia Environmental Lawyers Association to join the victims in the fight to address the issue. Mr. Koffa said it is true that the victims are financially incapacitated to drag the Management of Firestone to court but with the help and support of the environmental lawyers their dream can come to reality. “This is a serious concern and the EPA must get involved,” Mr. Koffa angrily told this paper from his US-based residence via mobile phone.

The environmental expert warned that if the government of Liberia does not rush in to rescue its citizens from the degradation of the environment they depend on for a safe and healthy environment, the future consequences will be severe and the government will be held responsible for the damage.

Growing up in a community where there is the belief that a woman is not regarded
ideal unless she goes through genital circumcision, Matilda Ayripah could not
wait for her turn to be circumcised and be given all the respect due her. She saw her circumcision as one thing she ought to do before associating with men.

At age 18, Matilda ran away from her parents and voluntarily arrived at the compound of the circumciser in her village to become an “ideal women”. Girls who were not circumcised were insulted and ridiculed and she did not want to be the victim of her friend’s desultory comments.

During her turn, she recalls being given a concoction to drink. After she drank it she
was laid down and held firmly by a strong group of men. She became scared at the last minute, and struggled to rise and run away but it was too late, she says. She woke up three days later from a long sleep, restless and in great pain. Her parents sat beside her and gave her a broad smile to signify their pride in her braveness and understanding of tradition.

She was then given food and some herbal medicine, and was cautioned by the
circumciser not to touch or remove anything inside of her because she would become barren. After going through all this pain in the quest to be an ideal African woman, she couldn’t afford to become barren so she obliged. Later in the evening, the circumciser and some strong men held Matilda firmly to remove the large folded cotton which had been inserted into her to protect her womb before circumcision.

As she recounts her story, the look on her face betrays the pain Matilda felt during the removal of the cotton.

In fact, there are many painful memories she lives with every day, from the actual cutting to the post-natal infections. Matilda regrets her decision to be circumcised, but is resigned to the fact that it is too late to turn back time. She would, however, like to advise other girls thinking of going through with the procedure that the lifelong physical and emotional pain of FGM is not worth abiding by tradition. “I feel pain whenever I remember what happened to me, whenever I remember I call my children to encourage them to never go through with it”.

More and more people are coming to realize the disastrous effects FGM can have on a woman’s life, and although the practice is on the decrease, it is still happening in Ghana, says Rierselle Akanbong of the CHRAJ office in Navrango. “There is still cause for concern, I believe there are still pockets of this practice going on, and we must eradicate this heinous crime,” he says. “It is a violation of children’s rights. It inflicts pain on them when their entire clitoris is cut off with absolutely no anesthetic. The ceremony is degrading, and the child is not able to attend school for at least three months, while she heals.”

Akanbong, who comes from the region recalls witnessing FGM ceremonies in the mid nineties. “I saw it with my own eyes. it was horrible,” he says. “The girls were screaming and there was so much blood coming out, one girl even fainted.”

Back then, FGM was openly practiced and even encouraged. After years of advocacy against the practice, female circumcisers have become more secretive, but it is still going on in the remote villages of the upper east region, says Akanbong. “There will be drumming and dancing outside of a mud hut, disguising it as a marriage ceremony,” he says. But inside FGM is going on.

Although he doesn’t get any complaints of FGM, he believes it is because people still do not know that the practice is against the law. “When we embark on educational programmes most often the people become surprised when they hear that FGM is a criminal offense,” he says.

The paramount chief of the Bolga region, Ya Na, is trying to enforce the criminal code. Six years ago he created a law that holds the subchief of a district responsible before the circumciser. Since then he has seen a drastic reduction in the number of FGM cases in the region. He is pleased with the results and works hard to advocate the eradication of all forms of FGM in Ghana.

“When circumcised women menstruate, there are problems, when they want to have babies, there are problems. There is nothing good about FGM, either traditionally or medically,” he says.

Traditionally, the origins of female circumcision are not clear. There are theories, but they are speculative. Some of these suggest that women were circumcised to stop them from engaging in extra marital affairs, or to stop them from being too sexually demanding towards their husband who may have numerous wives to satisfy. Other theories suggest that it is more enjoyable for men to have sex with a circumcised woman. Matilda negates this idea, saying that her husband left her because he did not enjoy having sex with her because of her circumcision.

Matilda also had no pleasure or satisfaction any time she made love with her husband.
“In our tradition it was the duty of a wife to be submissive to her husband so I had
to do what he say and want to make him happy,” she says. “When you are circumcised you hardly enjoy sex with your husband, you just realize some few months later that your love-making yielded a good result with a pregnancy.”

Matilda is a mother of seven, now at age 44; she lives alone since her husband is
married to another woman who is not circumcised.

Medically, the most prevalent problems associated with FGM are post delivery infections, and pelvic inflammatory diseases, says a doctor with Rural Health Integrated, an NGO in Bolgatanga that does advocacy work to stop the practice of FGM.

Although he is pleased with the decrease in FGM in Ghana (between 1995 and 2000 the incidence had fallen from 14 per cent to 2.8 percent), he worries about women inserting herbs into their vaginas; something he says is still widely practiced in Ghana. “Women do it to make themselves tighter,” he says, “But what it is really doing is reducing the elasticity of the walls of the vagina, and causing ulcers which are then transmitted to the their partners.”

Like FGM, it is a practice that is intended to increase the pleasure for a man, but in reality is harmful for both the woman and her sexual partner. It is part of a tradition with no clear origin, and no measurable benefits, the kind of practice that should be abandoned, says the chief of Bolgatanga. “Obsolete customs and traditions should not be maintained, maintain the good ones, but we have to accept change.”

Photo Credit: Sarah Lee

What is happening to the principle of the rule of law?

Could it be said to be losing its core principles?

Many pundits have argued that instant killing of suspected criminals is a gross abuse of fundamental human rights.

Click here to listen.

Sellers and residents in the Mamba Point community have been forced to vacate the area, leaving many without homes or places to sell their wares. Yellow spray-paint bearing the Ministry of Public Work’s acronym, MPW, pointed out areas still needed to be either moved or torn down, though many had already been forced to leave the area.

The few still selling in the area spoke of the difficulties the evictions created. They noted surprise at the exercise and claimed the notice before the eviction was too short. Some of those not evicted in the area were told to cut the parts of their buildings that entered onto the street, without any compensation for their losses.

One resident, who wished to remain nameless, appreciated the president’s effort to develop the area but described the exercise as unfair since it only applied to local residents on one side of the road. “She is trying but the other people in the fence, the white people opposite our place are also on the main road but they didn’t even mark that place to remove them too. I don’t know why the government is giving we the poor people hard time. At least they should mark both sides since they are also on the road” the resident remarked.

However, craft vendors opposite the Mamba Point Hotel are being provided a new structure to sell African wares to tourists. Ibrahim Sherif, one of these vendors, repeatedly thanked the president for providing these new booths, expected to be completed by next week.

Just up from Mamba Point and Cape Hotel, another group of street vendors could not hide the expressions of frustration on their faces. These are vendors who claim they have been living and selling in that area for the past 15 to 20 years, but now must leave immediately. One of the women, Madam Marie Quails, is the single parent of three children and she sells to feed and keep them in school, and could not hold back her frustrated feelings as she narrated the difficulties she and her children are going through. She stated that now, after the eviction, and with no compensation, she has nowhere to go, and is sleeping on the street with her children.

Another such victim, Madam Mary Cooper, who once lived in the same building as Madam Quails, explained that about fifty people resided in the now demolished structure. When asked why they were not compensated she told the Daily Observer that Cape Hotel had supposedly provided money to be given to them, but they had not received the money. “They gave the money to MCC to give it to us and they take the money and ate without giving us one cent and break our houses down, how will manage, how will our children go to school?” she questioned.

According to her the land on which there were about eight houses (the demolished structures are directly opposite the Cape hotel) has been bought by the hotel. She further alleged that the hotel gave Monrovia City Cooperation some amount of money to be distributed among them before evicting them but they didn’t receive any money from anyone. One other vendor (name withheld) however said she did received USD $ 100 from the MCC. No one from the hotel responded to requests to comment on the story.

The vendors further stated that the demolishing of the house was done three days earlier than originally told. The women at Mamba Point described the MPW and the MCC actions as cruel and emphatically stressed that they and their children will continue to sleep on the streets until something is done to help their situation. They say they will remain there until the Women’s Colloquium begins in March so that female leaders will see how women are being treated in the country. “We’re feeling bad, president self do this thing to us what kind of feeling will we get for our own country,” Madam Quails remarked.

Photo Credit: Carissa MacLennan

At the corner of every major street in Monrovia you find blind Liberian citizens who must beg for money every day before meeting their daily needs despite all the organizations that are supposedly here to look after their needs.

Charles Russell, who has to be led by his eleven year old son, Obediah Russell two times every week in the streets, says he has no support and has to beg for money to look after his family.

“I have three children, I was born blind. I have high school education but have no job and I want to use my hands to work but can’t find some.”

“Obediah is my future, I feel for him when I bring him in the sun but if we don’t do it my sister, how will we survive?” he asked.

“We have been to the National commission on Disability. They told us to take them our action plan and we did. But [we] have not heard anything about it since we took it to them. If only government can come and say, ‘you disabled come and work in our offices’; even as sweepers it will be alright, but they are not doing it.

Come to our aid to help us help in the rebuilding process of our country. What the able people can do other blind people can also do it,” he pleaded with government.

“I have been blind for twenty-five years and have been to the John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital and the Mercy Ship where I was declare blind forever,” says Tarnue Korta, the father of little Amos Korta who walks miles under the burning sun to ensure that he and his father get enough money to feed their family everyday.

“I have six living children,” Tarnue says. “Amos is the oldest and he is ten years old and is in k-2. I don’t like bringing him in the street but I have to support them.”
He says he has never been to the Commission on Disabilities for help and is not getting assistance from the Christian Association of the Blind (CAB). Though he was offered schooling, he refused and claimed that only the big people in these group are getting the money.

“I don’t know how to read the Braille but I would like to learn,” he expressed.

Because of the civil conflict, a 1977 blind graduate of the Booker Washington Institute (BWI) who did secretariat science, Daniel Logan is now singing for his living at the corner of Carey and Warren Streets.

“The lack of sponsorship has turned me into the person I am today. I can read the Braille and type very well but I’m unable to find a job because we the disable are not earnest with each other. Beyan Kota [president of CAB] is pocketing the money for himself while the blind go on to suffer. Government provides US$500.000 for us every year but we don’t know where the money is going.”

“But the poor people can share with us and even other organizations,” he added. “We can’t stay home; if we stay home how will we survive?”

Daniel is appealing to government to build more institutions for the blind and organize training programs so they can make positive contributions to society.

But blind Olivia Cole a mother of three children, who got blind during the 92’ Octopus civil conflict and is a high school drop out, sings with Daniel on the same corner to support she and her three children.

Though all the blind beggars interview by this paper said they make between LD$200 to 500.00 ($ US 3–8) every day, they still have problems that need to be taken care of and want their children to be able to use education to progress.

The CAB’s Beyan Kota points out that many of the blind on the streets prefer the easy handout money to the working to learn a trade. “They are lazy and not disciplined enough to sit and do an honest day’s work. They are taking advantage of the sympathy of the Liberian society in order to get their daily bread,” he says of those begging.

Similarly, the Association for Disable Female International (ADFI) in Slipway community has expressed their disappointment over the attitudes of some of their colleagues for not wanting to do something for themselves. ADFI hopes that government will one day pass a law that will prohibit people from begging in the streets.

According to spokespeople for the ADFI, occasionally when they approach the physically challenged women to invite them to their offices to learn skills and trades, the women request to be paid or refuse blatantly because they are getting enough money from the streets to feed their children. However, they are also training 150 women with various disabilities to produce clothing, beads and other goods that they can sell to earn money instead of having to beg for it.

They believe that all disabled people – including the blind – have every right and ability to participate in society, provided they are given the proper training.

“It’s 8 o’clock in the morning and Rebecca Churchill is starting her rounds of the malarial ward here at the General Hospital in Accra. Churchill is a senior staff nurse and a midwife. She says hundred of people walk through the doors of the hospital each day. The most common problem they present is Malaria and she says the numbers are growing…”

Click on the link below to listen to the full broadcast:

Malaria taking toll on children. Joy FM (Ghana)

Photography credits:
Vivian

Kids wait to be reunited with relatives

The sun beats down on the small huts in the fishing village of Immuna in southern Ghana. A dozen men chant as they haul a wooden fishing boat onto the wide, sandy beach. Women in colourful dresses line one side of a dirt field, smiling and jostling each other. Men sit quietly under a canopy to the side.

About 90 children in white T-shirts sit under an orange tent on the other side of the field, listless and fidgeting. They’re as young as six, and up to 14 years old, and many are traumatized from years of hard labour and disease.

This is a family reunion of a different sort: children sent away to work in fishing communities across the country are being reunited with their relatives. Some were sold for about $200. The trafficking of children in Ghana is still not a crime.

Kwabena and his mother

Kwabena Mensah was given over to fishermen in Yeji, a town on the Volta River about 500 km away. The 14-year-old stands with his hands behind his back, eyes vacant. He’s already spent half his life working 15-hour days.

“Over there, the working conditions were terrible, even getting food to eat was a problem. It was very tough on us,” he says.

Now, the young man is being returned to the mother who let him go. Her name – Ama Eduaba – is tattooed on her arm. She’s illiterate. To make ends meet, the mother of five sells kenkey (fermented corn dough).

“I’m a widow so I’m financially disadvantaged,” she says. When my husband died, his family refused to support me. That was the reason why I gave my son away to work and bring home money. The people who came for him told me he’d return after two years. But he was gone for seven years.”

Eduaba adds that, in the end, she didn’t get any money. She’s not alone. For the past 60 years, families here have been selling their children for labour, seeking extra money to keep themselves afloat. Many people rely on fishing for income. But it’s seasonal work, so poverty is rampant.

The International Organization for Migration is orchestrating this reunion. It’s saved more than 500 children through the Yeji Trafficked Children Project. Fishermen receive training and micro-credits to help improve fishing techniques, or go into another field of work. School uniforms and supplies are given to the children, and their school fees are paid for. Families get vocational training and loans to support small businesses.

IOM’s Solomon Asare says they’re also educated about the rights of the child.

“They don’t see it being an offence or against the law, because sometimes they are taken away by family members to go and live with them. Sometimes they might be strangers but they usually know the person one way or the other,” he says. So that makes it very, very complicated to draw the line between a trafficked child as somebody who’s been abducted and a trafficked child who’s just been given away willingly by the parents.”

To make sure families don’t resell their children, officials monitor them for two years. But there are reports some trafficked children return to their former work.

Joseph Rispoli is the project’s manager. He says the same 10 to 12 communities in Ghana’s central region are sending children away. Child trafficking, he says, won’t stop until they figure out why that is.

“We have an idea of the root causes – the push and pull factor – but we don’t have any credible or accurate estimates of the magnitude of child trafficking in Ghana in any sector. We’d like to get it in all sectors by next year so that it can culminate in a national plan of action.”

Mothers waiting for their children

Meanwhile, local police officers are stepping in to protect the community’s children. They’ve imposed a curfew: no one under 18 can go out after 8 p.m. District crime officer Patrick Yeboah says police are now also arresting men who impregnate girls under the age of 12. He says it encourages child trafficking.

“She wouldn’t go to school anymore, she would stay at home. She wouldn’t take care of her child, or what she’d do is sell the baby into this slavery. We are doing this to deter them from so doing,” he says, punching his hand for emphasis.

The Child Trafficking Bill is expected to become law this year. Yeboah says it will make his job easier. Then, he won’t just be slapping the wrists of people guilty of buying and selling children – he’ll be arresting them.

Back at the ceremony, an IOM official calls out the names of the children, then their relatives. Kwabena Mensah’s name is called out: once, twice. He stands up and saunters over to receive his plastic package of school supplies. His grinning mother embraces him for the requisite photo. He admits he’s not so sure about this new life.

“The hardship I experienced was so great. I’m glad to be back home, but I don’t know much about my mother since I haven’t lived with her most of my life. So, we’ll just see how it goes,” he says.

The young man looks at the white waves crashing onto the shore. If nothing else, he’s determined to break from the past seven years on the water. He wants to study to become … a pilot.

Colleen Ross is a national news producer for CBC Radio in Toronto. She lived in Ghana in 2005, working with Journalists for Human Rights and freelancing for the CBC and BBC. She has an M.A. in both English Literature and Journalism, winning a scholarship to CBC Newsworld. Colleen is trilingual, and taught at a German university before entering journalism. She is originally from Fruitvale, B.C.

Photography credits: Emilee Irwin (top), CBC news (all other photos)

This heart-wrenching TV report from the CBC’s Brian Stewart inspired aid projects around the world to assist the famine that swept through Ethiopia in 1984-1985. A combination of a less-than-average rainfall in 1984 and the governments counterinsurgency in the north between the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front and in the south with the Oromo Liberation Front left more than a one million dead, with a total of eight million victims. The media played a key role in increasing global awareness of the famine, mobilizing the people of the world to react.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFPr-zAXNuc

Brian Stewart writes about his experience covering the Ethiopian Famine of 1984-85, the first western journlaist to do so. Click here for the story “Indepth: Ethiopia, Covering the Story” (CBC News Online | December 14, 2004)

With recent calls from the Government of Liberia occupants in the new Health Ministry in Congo Town to vacate, occupants say they would appreciate assistance before they must leave.

“They said we should leave, but they didn’t have [anything] to give to us,” explained George Bull, a resident for nine years who moved out earlier this month after they were visited by government officials. “But,” he continued, “we are appealing to [government] that they should be able to help us with little tokens to help us establish ourselves.”

Residents said help with money or other assistance to relocate would be greatly appreciated.

Some occupants said people have been in the building almost ten years and have been told on numerous occasions government officials have told them that they have to leave the building.

Atlanta Kettor, the spokesperson for the occupants, explained that they realize that they do not have a right to be in the unfinished building, but live there because poverty left them without other options. They are currently appealing to the government to help them reestablish their lives.

Kettor explained that the Liberian Civil War brought most of the people to live in the unfinished ministry. He added that since the war ended, many politicians, including then presidential hopeful, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, have come and given promises of support and assistance.

“This is my home, since the war we have been waiting to get reestablished, but how can we? We have been waiting for a genuine government to help and enable us to resettle. Many candidates came during elections but since then, nothing,” said Mr. Kettor.

Kettor stated that they are all awaiting for President Johnson-Sirleaf “not [to] do all,” but to help start the residents off in a new location.

Mr. Kettor said that presently, some six hundred people live in the abandoned building. They are aware that they do not have a legal right to live at ‘The Titanic,’ are willing to relocate, even if the government is not in the position to give them anything.

Meanwhile, the Executive Director of the National Commission for Demobilization, Disarmament, Rehabilitation, and Reintegration (NCDDRR), Reverend Jarvis Witherspoon said he has been selected by the Vice President of Liberia to negotiate for the relocation of occupants of the unfinished Ministry of Health.

Rev. Witherspoon said the occupants would have two months more to vacate the building because the Chinese Embassy in Liberia is making plans to complete construction.

He said that the removal of the occupants would be a smooth transition.

Exactly how the government would relocate the occupants has not yet been decided by Witherspoon or other relevant members of government. However, Witherspoon gave surety that they would not be forced out without some form of assistance, because government is aware that the occupants have nowhere to go.

Rev. Witherspoon then called on the occupants to cooperate with the government to conclude everything in one month time, to enable the Chinese experts to complete the building.

In Small Bo chiefdom Kenema district, as in much of Sierra Leone, women are still deprived of inheriting property left behind by their husbands.

It is a burning issue even though the Devolution of Estate Act, which was passed in 2007, criminalizes the act of depriving a woman from inheriting her husband’s property after his death. The act further states that it is an offense to eject a surviving spouse or child from the matrimonial home before the formal distribution of the estate.

A woman in the streets of Freetown.

Chapter three of the 1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone states that the fundamental human rights and freedom of every individual in Sierra Leone must be recognized and protected.

Article 23 of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights recognizes the right to equality in marriage. This means that men and women have the same rights and responsibilities during the marriage and at its dissolution.

Despite this, none of the women in Wiama village in the Small Bo chiefdom in Kenema district own land.

When Jatu Lansana’s husband died some years back, her own family wanted to take her to another community. But her husband’s family refused on the grounds that she has given birth to children in the family and it would be unfair to take all the children to another family.

“I was here for five years without a husband,” Lansana said. “All the property my husband left behind was taken away from me. I was abandoned by both my husband’s family and even my children.”

One of her husband’s brothers decided to marry her. She denied because of the difficulties she had undergone, but was forced to agree.

Mamie Kamoh said the vast cocoa and coffee plantations left behind by their father were claimed by her three younger brothers on the pretext that they are the head of the family and they take care of the home while she is away with her husband.

It is stated in the Devolution of Estate Act that where there are only children left, each child should get an equal share of the estate.

“Since my brothers started working in I have not received anything from them. I requested for Le 50,000 to pay the school feels for my son but there was no money,” Kamoh said.

“The other time I attempted to enter the plantation I was sued to a native court in which I was fined Le 100,000. I felt dejected because the property by right belongs to all of us.”

A Sierra Leonean woman.

Tajoh Mamoh wanted to construct a two-room building on her family land, and told her family and the town chiefs about it.

“It was at that moment that my brother informed that chiefs that he wanted to construct a house on the same land,” she said. “I was deprived because the land was given to my brother. Up till now he has not started the construction.”

Being able to inherit and own property means women can be self reliant and provide for their children on their own.

Part of the problem is that many people do not know about the new Devolution of Estate Act, which was passed in 2007. To help address this, the Lawyer’s Center for Legal Action (LAWCLA) has put the new laws into clear language that is easier to understand.

Doris Kalle, the regional coordinator for the Coalition of Women’s Movement, said her organization has also embarked on a massive sensitization campaign in the district. They are educating women and traditional authorities on the new laws.

“A lot of women have been mainly complaining about the distribution of property especially plantations left behind by their husbands,” she said.

“We are still faced with the situation where men feel their wives are property to them. We don’t have proper bylaws that clearly define the rights of women in this community,” she said, adding that it is imperative to explain the gender acts in local languages so that people will understand.

The Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD), a non-governmental organization based in Kenema, is using radio programmes to educate people about the new laws.

Patrick Adu, who works with the MRD, said in the case of property devolution, the general practice in remote communities is that the widow herself is regarded as a property to be inherited together with the deceased husband’s property.

If she does marry one of her late husband’s brothers, she may enjoy whatever benefit he derives from the estate. In the event the wife refuses to be “inherited” by one of the husband’s relations, only her personal belongings will be given her.

Young Sierra Leoneans.

Adu said that when a woman decides not marry her husband’s relations, traditional divorce laws may be invoked, keeping her from getting the property. “This is responsible for most of the problems in our villages,” he said.

Generally under the customary law, the widow is not entitled to take out letters of administration; such rights are given to the eldest surviving male in the deceased’s family. If the wife succeeds to get any property at all, she will only be given one-third of it.

Local bylaws are used in most parts of the country.

According to David Kallon, a court clerk of native administrative Court No. 4 in Kenema, the chiefdom committee drafts the laws and passes it on to the local chief administrator for approval.

But the bylaws currently in use were drafted in 1963 and have not been updated with any new laws, such as the gender acts.

He said the court only gets involved with disputes when someone makes a complaint. That means that people must understand the laws.

“We don’t call on cases from either the woman or her husband’s family but if there is any conflict among them it is the responsibility of the aggrieved to report to the court so that the court can make a ruling,” he explained.

Another problem, he said, is that the local courts lack the support to adjudicate cases properly. This leads to delays.

“Court officers are not paid. Our bylaws are not properly written. These are all compounded in the delay in of justices in our communities,” Kallon said.

Jennah Kandeh, the deputy minister of Social Welfare Gender and Children’s Affairs, expressed the government’s commitment to ensure that the gender laws are properly implemented in the interest of women and society.

She said the law was instituted to put an end to impunity against women and children.

Kandeh said her ministry has established a committee that is devoted to the sensitization campaign so that women at grassroots communities and their local authorities understand the new laws.

“We know that women are going through a lot of difficulties but with the concerted efforts by women’s organizations like the 50-50 Group and other partners in the fight, much will be achieved though community sensitization,” she said.