President Dr Julius Maada Bio has used today’s press conference, also broadcast live, to express his outrage and total condemnation of the continued incidents of rape, sexual and gender-based violence in the West African nation.
President Bio
“The depravity of sexual violence is obscene, criminal, and totally objectionable. As a Government, we stand with the survivors, victims, and their loved ones and my Government will vigorously prosecute cases and bring all perpetrators to justice,” he said.
He reiterated his government’s commitment to providing support for survivors, adding that he was joining the First Lady, Fatima Maada Bio, to urge every Sierra Leoneans to help raise awareness, increase their advocacy while standing up to rid the country of what referred to as a menace.
“My Government is committed to equal protection and justice, inclusive development, and equal access to opportunity for every Sierra Leonean, especially women who constitute 51% of our population,” he assured.
“What we should do is to prevent rape, especially of little kids who know nothing about what is being done to them. If you can have the same passion that I have for the children of this country, rape will be a thing of the past. That is the challenge I throw to every citizen in this country,” he said, while taking questions on the matter.
Journalist and campaigner, Asmaa James, had raised the issue of recent incidents of sexual penetration involving minors
Journalist and campaigner, Asmaa James, had raised the issue of recent incidents of sexual penetration involving minors and made reference to earlier commitment by the President, who in February 2019 officially declared a National Emergency on Rape and Sexual Violence. She urged for more follow-up actions.
Minister of Gender and Children’s Affairs, Manti Tarawalli, said the fight against sexual and gender based violence is a collective one, adding that the more campaigners, advocacy groups and civil society call for more actions from government, the more they would continue to do more and also emphasise on the need for parents to be more responsible for the security of their children.
“This is not just for government. It is for communities and also parents. Since the Sexual Offences Act a lot has happened. We have started the male engagement strategy which was launched by His Excellency. What that does is to use men and boys advocates to go into communities to educate men and boys that sexual and gender-based violence is not acceptable,” she said.
She concluded that the ministry had also started a 24-hour free 116 hotline to report rape, taking in excess of 300 calls a day, adding that they were opening one-stop centres in all referral hospitals to provide psychosocial support, help the Family Support Unit to provide crime reports, provide forensic medical examination and treatment and were introducing DNA testing.
A cross section of participants at the 2-day training held at Kobeibu Hotel in Bo City, Southern Sierra Leone.
By Ahmed Sahid Nasralla
Many African countries including Sierra Leone are seeking better ways of attracting responsible agri-based investments as a catalyst for achieving economic growth through industralization. However, analysis shows that large-scale agricultural investment in Sierra Leone is yet to meet the international Corporate Social Responsibilty (CSR) principles for enhancing local livelihoods.
To strike a balance between attracting foreign agricultural investments while ensuring a responsible investment climate, the Government, led by the Sierra Leone Investment and Export Promotion Agency (SLIEPA) is in the process of finalizing a tool known as the ‘Agribusiness Investment Approval Process (AIAP)’. The tool is currently being tested on existing four investment companies to assess the applicability while ensuring that existing legislations are aligned with the AIAP.
The project, ‘Supporting the Implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests – Phase II’ is funded by DFID. Through this project Solidaridad West Africa was contracted to train and sensitize Traditional Authorities and communities on the Agribusiness Investment Approval Process (AIAP) in line with Responsible Agricultural Investments (RAI) in Sierra Leone.
As part of creating awareness and building the capacity towards this drive, a two-day workshop was organized from August 2-3, 2019 for staff of the four pilot companies including Sierra Tropical, Miro Forestry, Lizard Earth and Gold Tree Holdings Limited. The training was conducted by Solidaridad Sierra Leone and facilitated by members of the Responsible Agricultural Investment Technial Working Group (RAI-TWG) drawn from the Sierra Leone Investment and Export Promotion Agency (SLIEPA), Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF), Ministry of Lands Housing and Environment (MLHE), the Human Rights Commission (HRC), Transparency International (TI) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO-UN).This training forms part of the agreement between FAO-UN and Solidaridad West Africa to conduct training and sensitization for traditional authorities, communities and staff of four pilot agribusiness companies on the AIAP.
In his welcome address, Nicholas Jengre, the Country Representative of Solidaridad Sierra Leone, said “One of the key components of the Agribusiness Investment Approval Process (AIAP) is to empower community people and landowners to have a say on what their land is used for. In the past, we have seen that investments have deprived communities of land to grow food crops – thereby increasing the food and nutrition insecurity within such investment sites.”
Mr. Nicholas reminded participants of the recently released 2018 FAO Food Index Report entitled: “State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World”, which revealed an alarming 820,000,000 people in the world who did not have enough to eat in 2018. Africa, he continues, was largely affected. “We cannot continue in this way, so the AIAP is supporting the drive to ensure that agribusinesses are carried out in ways that ensures communities have sufficient land for crop production and significant vegetation for their natural resource needs”.
The Investment Promotion Manager of the Sierra Leone Investment and Export Promotion Agency (SLIEPA), Hardy Jalloh assured participants that the finalized investment approval process would bring in more investors because it will not only guarantee sustainability but also security of their investments.
The seven steps of the AIAP includes 1) a potential investor contacts SLIEPA 2) SLIEPA and the potential investor visits potential communities 3) the investor undertakes feasibility and identifies legitimate land owners 4)The investor negotiates with land owners 5) the investor conducts environmental, social and health impact studies 6) signing of agreement and 7) Start of operations.
While facilitating the training, the National Project Consultant of the project, Mr. Gbessay Ehlogima Sam Momoh reiterated the importance of the training in helping to create a conducive environment for investors to be responsible, accountable, transparent, and respecting the ten principles in responsible agricultural investment. Other relevant concepts relating to the AIAP were delivered during this training session by the RAI-TWG members: the key provisions in the National Land Policy by Jobo Samba from the Ministry of Land, Housing and Environment (MLHE), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and priority areas of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) by Jeneba Ahlarzm , environmental compliance and the seven stages in conducting environmental impact assessment by Alfred Jondie from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Human Rights Commission led by Abdulai Yolla Bangura presented on the human perspectives as well as the Free Prior and Informed Consent principles while Edward Koroma from Transparency International presented on Transparency and Accountability in line with the AIAP.
Lyttelton Braima, a participant from Sierra Tropical Limited stressed that effective community consultation processes will ensure a smooth take-off of any agribusiness project since all stakeholders would have been well informed. He appealed to his colleagues to ensure that companies set up multistakeholder platforms at their investment sites to promote effective consultations.
Specimen-news.com 