We affirm the President’s commitment to address the injustices women and girls have continued to suffer nearly a decade after the war has ended. As advancing the rights of women is central to our mandates, CARL-SL and AdvocAid join the Government of Sierra Leone in acknowledging the fact that “Ensuring the rights of women is one of the greatest ways of being patriotic.”
To continue to build on the gains already made, we urge the President and the Government of Sierra Leone to address the following key issues, which we identify as representing significant barriers to women’s ability to exercise their rights to justice, equality:
- Speed up the enactment of the Sexual Violence Act in order to increase the legal protection afforded to women;
- Ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol)
- Reform outdated laws which discriminate against women, such as the crime of Fraudulent Conversion provided for in the Larceny Act of 1916;
- Increase women’s access in the political arena, such as adopting temporary special measure of allocating 20% while working towards the 30% recommended by the TRC report;
- Sustain the efforts made to ensure women’s equal access to education and employment
We urge the Government of Sierra Leone to take action in addressing the above mentioned issues between now and the next International Women’s Day. As civil society organizations, we are eager to support the government in its efforts and call on all citizens of this great country to make women’s rights a reality that we can celebrate.
Centre for Accountability and the Rule of Law (CARL-SL) is an independent organization working towards a just society for all persons in Sierra Leone, through monitoring institutions of accountability, outreach and advocacy for institutional transparency, capacity building and empowerment of citizen.
AdvocAid is a civil society organisation that supports justice, education and reintegration for women in prison in Sierra Leone.
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