Women: The Silent Ones

By Alpha Bedoh Kamara
Despite the passing of the Three Gender Bills into law, violations and abuse of women and girls still continue in most sectors of the country, with cases of rape becoming a challenge for the criminal law officials.
Two weeks ago, an eight-year-old girl was reportedly abducted in Bawuya, Moyamba District and raped. She is presently waiting surgical operation at the Bo Government Hospital. According to a neighbor, the victim who was living with her grandmother after the death of her father was unable to identify the perpetrators.
This information was disclosed on Friday when the UNFPA Country Representative in Sierra Leone, Madam Ratidzai Ndlovu led a provincial tour of Americans for UNFPA, media practitioners and UNFPA Country office staff to the Bo Government Hospital to evaluate the impact of donor funds and assess resources to be mobilized to address the health needs of vulnerable women in society.
The Chief Executive Officer of Campaign for Human Rights and Development - Sierra Leone, Abdul Fatoma, also said there has been progress in the struggle to end violence against women but that many challenges persist.
Fatoma said discrimination continues against women’s participation in politics and decision-making processes concerning national development, and that this is despite tremendous efforts made by civil society organizations, human rights groups and women’s groups for the inclusion of women in politics and other strategic positions in the government and other public institutions.
“This is the essence of effective campaigning, but it is not easy to do. Moreover, it may come across as being unduly cynical,” he said, adding that it appears that governments are ahead of the human rights community in understanding that this is the way in which events can move forward and in particular, it seems that governments recognize that the sober-minded NGO community in Sierra Leone in general can do many things that governments cannot.
The United Nations Human Rights on Women and Violence (http://www.un.org/rights/dpi1772e.htm) states that violence affects the lives of millions of women worldwide, in all socio-economic and educational classes. It cuts across cultural and religious barriers, impeding the rights of women to participate fully in society.
“Violence against women takes a dismaying variety of forms, from domestic abuse and rape to child marriages and female circumcision. All are violations of the most fundamental human rights,” the report states.
These are few instances of the position of women in Sierra Leone, challenges that are being influenced by many factors in society.
However the Three Gender Laws that are supposed to address the challenges faced by women and girls in our society can only do so with the support and willingness of the people to make them work.
Among the many challenges facing women in Sierra Leone are high rate of illiteracy, poverty and unemployment, coupled with traditional and religious beliefs.
These challenges faced by women in Africa, and Sierra Leone in particular, makes them to continue to suffer in silence; the reason being that those that want to stand for their rights or challenge their predicament are often frustrated by tradition and religion.
Therefore the majority suffer in silence with perpetrators committing their crimes with impunity.
This trend cannot be disassociated with the heinous crimes perpetrated against women and girls during the 11 year war in Sierra Leone, when they were subjected to rape, forced marriage, amputations with pregnant women’s wombs split open for combatants to know the sex of the fetus.
The eight-year-old girl and many others raped daily will continue to suffer until all stakeholders in society are made to understand the laws with proper sensitization about how vital they are to socio-economic development. The laws can also be fully understood with improvement in the girl-child education and protection from sexual and societal harassment.
The Three Gender Laws bring hope to the many that continue to cry in the dark, because until now women found it difficult to seek legal redress for grievances because of the poor state of the law.
However while the government has signed up to all major international instruments, most notably the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), it struggled to domesticate them into national law until 2007 when they helped to turn these international commitments into national legal treaties.
The irony now is: though the laws are there to protect women and girls, yet violence continues unabated, with tears their only solace for getting even.