Chiefs ban genital cutting for girls under 18

April 19, 2009 | IRIN | Online here

Peer educators who warn of the harms of genital cutting.

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone – In Sierra Leone village chiefs, community members and women who perform female genital cutting have signed an agreement stating that girls in northern Kambia district will not undergo genital mutilation – or ‘cutting’ – before age 18.

The number of girls being cut during the December 2008-January 2009 initiation season in Kambia dropped drastically, according to Finda Fraser, advocacy coordinator at local non-profit Advocacy Movement Network (AMNet), which runs a ‘Say No to Child Bondo’ campaign in the district.

Most Sierra Leonean girls – the World Health Organization estimates 94 percent – are initiated at puberty into ‘Bondo’, also known as the Sande Secret Society. As part of the rite, a woman known as a ‘sowei’ in the Mende language cuts the clitoris and prepares the girl for adulthood through singing, dancing and teaching domestic skills. For the initiation girls spend up to three months in the bush.

Anti-FGM/C campaigner John Marah, chairman of NaMEP, a network of Sierra Leone-based NGOs, told IRIN: “We are against just the cutting, not the training. You can still have a rite of passage. It’s just a change of mentality.”

Giant telescope to turn eye to the skies

November 21, 2005 | Canadian University Press

Canadian scientists are behind a plan to build the world’s largest telescope.

With a diameter of 30 metres, the Thirty-Metre Telescope (TMT) would be nine times bigger than the current largest telescope, which is 10 metres in diameter. It is estimated that the project will take $750 million and 10 years to build.

While the telescope won’t allow astronomers to see anything new—they can already see to the end of the universe—it will make things much clearer.

‘My mother gave me to them’

Marion Kargbo was 18 when she was forced to marry a rebel soldier in Sierra Leone. Photo by Bryna Hallam/IRIN

FREETOWN, 26 February 2009 (IRIN) – Marion Kargbo was 18 when she was forced to marry a soldier of the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in January 1999, in the middle of Sierra Leone’s civil war. Ten years later, RUF leaders have been found guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including forced marriage – the first time a court has treated the offence as a crime separate from sexual slavery.

According to local NGOs many women and girls associated with the rebel forces, especially those not in fighting roles, were excluded from the official disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration process whereby ex-combatants received money and training to help them re-enter civilian life.

This is her story, as told to IRIN:

On January 6, 1999, the rebels came to [the capital] Freetown. …The rebels came to burn the [family] house and capture us. Before they set the house on fire, they demanded my mother hand over one of her children. If she didn’t, they would kill us all.

My mother gave me to them.

‘Forced marriage’ conviction a first

RUF interim leader Issa Hassan Sesay was charged for war crimes by the Special Court on 25 February 2009. Photo courtesy Special Court for Sierra Leone

FREETOWN, 26 February 2009 (IRIN) – The Special Court for Sierra Leone on 25 February convicted three former leaders of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), marking the first time a court has convicted on the charge of “forced marriage”.

After a four-year trial, the tribunal found former RUF interim leader Issa Hassan Sesay and RUF commander Morris Kallon guilty on 16 of 18 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and former RUF chief of security Augustine Gbao on 14 counts.

Lack of aid funds for amputees, rape survivors, war widows

February 23, 2009 | IRIN | Online here

Lamin Jusu Jaka, chair of Sierra Leone's Amputees and War Wounded Association, would prefer cash to social services for reparations. Photo by Bryna Hallam/IRIN

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone – With just a quarter of the funding required to compensate victims of human rights violations in Sierra Leone’s 11-year civil war, the government now faces tough decisions as to who will receive what kind of assistance.

Assistance to victims, among the recommendations of Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), is expected to begin at the end of February 2009. Up to 100,000 people – among them amputees and other war-wounded, victims of sexual violence, war widows and children – are eligible.

But the National Commission for Social Action (NACSA), which is running the reparations programme, has less US $3.5 million to run the programme in 2009-10 – far less than the $14 million it requires, according to Amadu Bangura, reparations programme manager for NACSA.