What can other countries learn from Sierra Leone’s sexual violence state of emergency?

Four years ago, Sierra Leone – a small, West African coastal country of roughly 8.4 million people – announced a state of emergency over rape and sexual violence. It lasted four months, but did it make a difference? And is there anything that other countries could learn from its experience?

The declaration was made by president Julius Maada Bio amid widespread protests over the rape of a five-year-old girl, who was left partially paralysed. Protesters called for an end to impunity, more supports for victims and tougher prison sentences, including the potential for life imprisonment. The state of emergency was announced in February 2019 and lasted until June.

Months later, Sierra Leone passed an updated Sexual Offences Act, which brought in stricter penalties for rape and sexual assault. It also established a Sexual Offences Model Court to fast-track justice.

According to figures shared that year by the United Nations, an estimated 62 per cent of Sierra Leonean women, between the ages of 15 and 49, had experienced physical or sexual violence, while about 61 per cent of women had experienced spousal violence. The following year, there were further protests in Sierra Leone after the rape of another five-year-old girl, who died from her injuries.

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In late 2018, shortly before the state of emergency was declared, Sierra Leone’s first lady Fatima Maada Bio launched a domestic campaign called Hands Off Our Girls, focused on stopping sexual violence and child marriage, which, she has said, leads to many girls dying during childbirth.

The Irish government, through Irish Aid, made [sexual violence] a priority, spending more than €10 million euros on related programming between 2019 and 2022

Sierra Leone also took a stance on this issue internationally by co-sponsoring a UN General Assembly resolution last September, called International Co-operation for Access to Justice, Remedies and Assistance for Survivors of Sexual Violence. It was adopted.

Marking that, president Julius Maada Bio tweeted that the “global leadership by Sierra Leone is informed by our domestic context and my government’s commitment”. Ireland’s mission to the UN later thanked Sierra Leone, along with Japan, for their leadership.

Ireland has also played a notable role inside Sierra Leone when it comes to combating sexual and gender-based violence. The Irish Government, through Irish Aid, made it a priority, spending more than €10 million on related programming between 2019 and 2022, with another €2.95 million budgeted for 2023. The mission is seen as a “leading donor and advocate on gender equality and women’s rights,” according to a briefing provided by the embassy. It works with organisations including Goal, Trócaire, Christian Aid and Concern Worldwide.

In Sierra Leone’s capital city, Freetown, the fight against sexual violence is visible. Billboards on the side of the road, for example, read “hands off our girls,” alongside a picture of first lady Bio.

But the country is one of the poorest in the world, and those on the front lines of tackling sexual violence say further support and funding is still needed to see the fight through.

Medical help

One of the most prominent organisations working in this area is the Rainbo Initiative. It began operating in the aftermath of Sierra Leone’s 11-year Civil War, which ended in 2002. Ireland has supported it since 2016, giving almost €2.6 millionto date.

In its Freetown centre, a small set of rooms in the Princess Christian Maternity Hospital, there are eight staff: two counsellors (one man, one woman), three doctors, two nurses, and two employees who work on data and administration. They see up to 15 sexual violence survivors each day.

Hawa Sesay, a psychosocial counsellor with short pink hair and a big smile, has worked for Rainbo since 2008. She said there had been a notable change since 2019. “Now, because of the law, [potential perpetrators are] fearful. Now you can be arrested,” she said. More victims are coming forward to report. “We encourage them to tell their story, we make them feel comfortable, we make sure they have free medical treatment, everything in this centre is free. We provide lunch, transportation, we make sure they have clothing,” she said.

Despite this, Sesay emphasised that sexual violence was “still a national emergency”. She said most attackers were known to the victims, and told stories about teenage girls impregnated by their own fathers and others being forced to marry their abusers.

After they come to Rainbo, some girls are referred to safe houses. Others are visited at home by counsellors. “We have so many success stories,” Sesay said.

Victims are often ashamed or worried about taunting if they go back to their communities. Their attacker may still be moving freely and might threaten them – particularly when they’re struggling financially, Sesay said. “When they’re poor, [the attacker will] take advantage, give them money.”

One big problem, when it comes to justice, is what are known as “compromises” – personal deals made between guilty parties and the families of victims, which usually involve money being exchanged. Their frequency seems to have reduced since Sierra Leone’s state of emergency was brought in, according to Sesay. “It’s still a challenge. It’s really common but at least because of the law and awareness I can say it’s started to be minimised,” she said.

In 2021, Rainbo saw 3,269 female survivors of sexual assault and related issues, and 23 male. But just 37 cases were successfully prosecuted. Sesay said many survivors found it hard to take a legal case if they were poor. “When we visit them in their homes. They will say ‘we’re tired of working with the police or going to the police.’” Delays make it expensive for them to keep engaging with the process. Attending court becomes impossible when they must work to survive, and cases are often adjourned because others involved don’t show up.

The Rainbo Initiative centre doesn’t have the capacity to test for sexually transmitted diseases, Sesay also noted – they just treat based on presented symptoms. “We have enough drugs for now, we are not short of drugs,” she said. But another challenge is the small size of the office, which can mean that they break protocols, particularly when it comes to maintaining privacy for each patient. “We are pleading for more funds. Without funds we cannot keep the centre going… We need a bigger space.”

Speaking by phone, Christian Willie, a Rainbo Initiative field officer who co-ordinates work in more remote areas, explained that he sent officers and interns out to schools, market places, and other locations several days a week to speak about sexual and gender-based violence. He has noticed “vast” changes since 2019, with more people understanding what the existing laws are and who they can turn to when seeking help.

But he said funding which supports direct community outreach, such as the Irish Aid money, had had a more significant impact in changing attitudes and mindsets than the 2019 state of emergency itself. “Trust me, that one is bigger,” he emphasised.

Emergency

At Aberdeen Women’s Centre, situated on a peninsula at one edge of Freetown, staff said their caseload of sexual violence survivors had drastically increased, from 13 in the whole of 2019 to 155 from January to October last year. They receive patients from all over the country and have treated some with brutal injuries.

Martha Bangura, a social worker, explained that sexual violence survivors got free medical care there too, and they were supposed to come for counselling six times. “The Government is taking it as an emergency,” said Bangura. “They’re taking it as an epidemic.” She said women’s movements, which run campaigns such as encouraging people to wear black on Tuesdays, were also having an impact.

More and more girls are now looking for help and their families are helping them… that didn’t happen before

—  Rebecca Larsson, director of the Aberdeen Women's Centre

Bangura said she would like to see more safe accommodation provided for survivors who were not able to go back to their communities. She knew of one teenager who slept on a beach before moving into their premises. “We try to do family tracing and find another family member they can stay with,” Bangura said. She worried about very young girls, because “another person can take advantage of them. They’re vulnerable. Some see it as normal.”

“Sometimes we keep the girls for weeks. We really don’t know where to send these girls,” added Rebecca Larsson, the centre’s director.

Mariama Cole, the centre’s lead nurse on sexual and gender-based violence, said survivors could come with infections, STIs, or tears and physical injuries.

“More and more girls are now looking for help and their families are helping them… that didn’t happen before,” said Larsson. Some survivors develop fistulas, and there have been a few cases where medics have had to remove a girl or woman’s womb.

Sitting in Larsson’s office, all three women said they had heard of many cases involving attackers who were powerful members of the community, from religious leaders, to teachers, to others who previously might have been seen as untouchable. “Now nobody is above the law,” said Bangura.

Still, they all said, some girls and women were unwilling to report what happened to police, and the medical workers can’t push them. “Aberdeen will still treat them,” said Larsson.

Gender ministry

In an interview during a busy day of meetings in his Freetown office, Charles Vandi, the director of gender affairs at Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Gender and Children’s Affairs, recalled how the 2019 state of emergency was “welcome news” that showed how “committed” the Government was to this problem.

Since then, Vandi said it was arguable whether numbers were increasing or the higher numbers were simply a sign that “systems are now put in place [and a] lot of people have confidence in the service provision.”

Like others, he speculated about whether there was a link between the scale of sexual violence and Sierra Leone’s devastating Civil War (though others say it could be more likely linked to ingrained patriarchal systems, which exist across much of the world). Vandi quoted figures released by US-based human rights organisation Physicians for Human Rights, which estimated that between 50,000 and 64,000 Sierra Leonean women were victims of war-related sexual violence during the conflict (around 200,000 more could have been victims of non-war related sexual violence during the same years, the organisation estimated).

“During the war period, a lot of these people who were fighting never knew about war crimes, [they] never knew what constitutes a war criminal,” Vandi said. “A good number of them were just doing things in a fashion that dehumanised people… I’m not sure they realised that any of their actions were outlawed.” But afterwards, many were not punished. “This thing did not stop during the war, it has continued.” He said his ministry is using public education now to emphasise that sexual and gender-based violence “has no place in society”.

Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which operated from 2002 until 2004, recommended that a sexual offences act be introduced. This happened in 2012, Vandi said. But that act did not have any minimum sentencing, which presented a “challenge”.

The 2019 state of emergency gave the state the chance to hold perpetrators for longer while they reviewed the law and led consultations, Vandi said, suggesting other countries could learn from their experience. “The first and foremost thing is that there has to be a sustained political will and commitment… for the highest office of the land to acknowledge that it’s an issue and it needs to be addressed – that leadership is important.”

Vandi said states should question “how is your legal system responding to the menace?” and introduce operational measures to make sure there were services available for victims.

The ministry had also developed a strategy called the National Male Involvement Strategy, he said, to work on prevention. “We realise that we cannot just be putting men and boys in one box to say they are the perpetrators. How do we win them over?”

Regarding his ministry, he said, “we need to do more, because where we are, we are not satisfied. We want to see a society that is free from gender-based violence.”

Along with one-stop centres that have been set up for survivors, they were re-examining the impacts of economic disempowerment, workplace equality, and the state of women’s land rights, as well as bringing in comprehensive sexuality education, he said. “A lot of innovations are happening,” said Vandi, adding that he had recently been at a meeting of what is called the Irish Consortium of Gender-Based Violence: a group with representatives from the Irish embassy and 14 Irish Aid-funded organisations, which meets at least once every three months.

Sexual offences court

Sierra Leone may have a new special sexual offences court, but a visit there showed it was beset by delays.

A clerk and a prison officer discussed another case and whether there was proof that a suspect who was given bail was really dead, as his family now said

It exists in courtroom number seven in Sierra Leone’s high court, a building beside the iconic cotton tree, the symbol that Freetown is built around. It is a small room with eight wooden pews for attendees and lawyers, a witness box, a holding box for the accused, and an area covered with a thick royal blue curtain with its own entry door, so victims can testify anonymously. On one afternoon there late last year, a group waited for the arrival of state prosecutors.

Among them was the accused – a teenager in a too-big light blue shirt – who was due to testify. A piece of paper had been stuck up which read: “silence in court”. As they sat quietly, a clerk and a prison officer discussed another case and whether there was proof that a suspect who was given bail was really dead, as his family now said. A judge had asked for a death certificate or a photo of the body as proof.

The hearing was supposed to be at 9am, but after two hours of waiting the clerk announced that it had been postponed until 2.30pm.

At 2.30pm, the clerks had gone. The accused and a prison officer sat in a pew again, their arms and heads resting on another in front. There was no sign of judges or lawyers. An hour later, the state council had still not arrived and he wasn’t answering his phone.

Fatmata Forster, the president of Legal Access Through Women Yearning for Equality Rights and Social Justice (Lawyers), which offers legal advice and representation to vulnerable women and girls, said her organisation had not been involved directly in prosecutions since 2019, because sexual offences cases were now prosecuted through the ministry of justice.

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To improve their functioning, Forster said it would be helpful if there was a particular prosecution unit which dealt with sexual offences, as otherwise the new structure could lead to delays.

“People don’t want to take these cases [anyway],” she said. “Going through the whole process is, I’m sure, quite traumatising for the people who have to do it… They do not want to go through the whole process, they’re afraid of the stigma, they are not certain if they will get justice.”

Culture of silence

A main challenge is “cultural and societal”, she said. “Even though the taboo and the culture of silence around sexual violence has been broken, it is still very prevalent and it is not something that people like to talk about when it happens to them or happens to their child or happens to someone in their care.”

When people cross that barrier, many still don’t trust the justice system, all the way “from the police to the court”. There could be a lack of communication, she said. Victims drop out of the prosecution process because they don’t feel they get the right kind of support or compassion from police at the early stages of a complaint or investigation, or they don’t get information about new developments, such as being notified when the accused is allowed out on bail.

Victims can struggle to get money for transport to attend court. Lawyers or other organisations sometimes help with that, but it is certainly not “part of the system”, Forster said.

Having said that, Forster sees the Sexual Offences Model Court as a positive development. Other countries could learn from that, she added. “Definitely we could have more judges, more prosecutors and a forensic lab which would help with prosecutions,” she said, but the “promise was kept and I think it’s definitely making a lot of difference… That’s one good outcome and I think it will definitely make a lasting impact.”

The declaration of rape as a national emergency “definitely made people more aware”, she said. “Before then, the conversation was only between organisations and groups that were fighting against [it]… [but this] made it a national conversation.”

Today, she said, what was still lacking was a truly “survivor-centred approach”.

“And that goes for everyone, all the institutions up to the media. We need to find better ways to report on these things. We need to find better ways to treat the survivors. We need to ensure that when they come within the system trying to get justice with these cases… they’re not retraumatised, they’re not re-victimised. And I don’t have all the answers for how we could do that, but we need to treat survivors with more compassion and ensure that when they’re going through these processes their dignity is preserved.”

* This article was supported by a grant from the Simon Cumbers Media Fund.