Implementing the Gender Acts in Sierra Leone

Q. What new legal protections are provided under the Gender Acts?

 A. Sierra Leone operates under three sets of law: formal law, customary law and Muslim law.  The three Gender Acts—the Domestic Violence Act, the Devolution of Estates Act and the Registration of Customary Marriage and Divorce Act—provide protection to women under all three types of law.

 The Domestic Violence Act is the first formal law in Sierra Leone to address domestic violence per se.  Prior to the Act’s passage, domestic violence could be prosecuted under the Offenses Against the Person Act of 1861 as wounding or grievous bodily harm, but domestic violence was not a criminal offense in itself.  In 2006, there was only one conviction under formal law of a crime related to domestic violence.  Under customary law domestic violence was legal as long as it is “reasonable”—meaning no wounding occurred.  Just because the law did not cover domestic violence, however, does not mean it is was accepted in all parts of Sierra Leone.  There’s a common phrase regarding domestic violence in many small villages that translates to “she was not given you to beat her like a drum”.  Although a special unit (the ‘family support unit’) was established in 2001 within the Sierra Leone Police to deal with incidents relating to the family, and the vast majority of reported cases involved domestic violence, the unit has arguably made few inroads into addressing the issue. Without the support of the law, mediators within the Units found they could do little more than call up the victim’s husband and beg him to allow her to return home - a situation which unit staff members report to find very dissatisfactory.

The new law makes domestic violence a criminal offense, and strengthens the ability of the police and Family Support Units to respond to domestic violence.  People can also bring civil proceedings under the law, for example seeking protection orders.  The law provides a broad definition of domestic violence, including economic abuse (unreasonably withholding or destroying the other person’s financial resources); harassment; emotional, verbal or psychological abuse; intimidation; physical abuse and sexual abuse.  Marital rape will become an offence under the Act.  The broad definition has its pros and cons. On the one hand it will prevent judges from claiming that an act of domestic violence is not sufficiently grievous to fall under the law.  At the same time, the definition may be so broad as to be uncertain.

Prior to the passage of the Devolution of Estates Act, the law governing intestate succession varied across the three types of law.  Under formal law, wives only received 30 percent of their deceased husband’s property while a husband would receive 100 percent of a deceased wife’s property.   Under Muslim law, women were not entitled to administer estates and there was no legal guidance as to how property was to be distributed.  Provisions under customary law varied across the country, but generally marital property reverted to the husband’s family.  Widows are often ejected from the family home with their children.  In these cases, if they wish to remain in the home, they are often required to marry the deceased husband’s brother.  Under the new law, surviving spouses of either gender are entitled to remain in the family home until they die; it is now a criminal offense to eject them from the home.  Husbands and wives now inherit property from each other equally, and male and female children also inherit equally when a parent dies without a will.  Certain property under customary law still cannot be passed to a widow, but it remains a criminal offense to eject her from the home she shared with her husband during marriage.

Finally, the Registration of Customary Marriage and Divorce Act still has some legal issues to be ironed out before it becomes law, but it should set 18 as the legal age for marriage, require consent of both parties for a marriage to be lawful, and provide that applications can be made for spousal and child maintenance of a reasonable level. This reinforces recent similar provisions made in the Child Rights Act 2007. The Act also requires that marriages be registered. Many women in Sierra Leone consider this latter provision to be particularly significant since men currently frequently abandon their wife for another woman and claim they are not legally bound to support her because they were not married.  The Act should also state that dowry and gifts given in the marriage do not have to be returned upon divorce, a provision which should stop the current practice of women being tied into an unhappy marriage because her family cannot afford to pay her way out.

What was the process of passing the Acts through Parliament?

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) originally funded two groups to draft the bills—the Parliamentary Human Rights Committee and the Law Reform Commission.  The problem was that these groups did not coordinate the drafting process and thus produced two different versions of the same bill.  The Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs (MSWGCA) was not taking the initiative to create a standard set of bills or push them through Parliament, so a coalition of NGOs and other organizations known as the ‘coalition on the gender bills’ came together to push the process forward.  I worked with the coalition to track down the bills, lobby the government to prioritze their enactment, provide training to women throughout the country on the provisions contained in the draft legislation, and provide legal support to the editing process.  Once the bills were printed, then-President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah issued an executive order so that the bills could be automatically passed by cabinet, and a certificate of urgency so that Parliament would be obliged to hold all three readings of the bills in one sitting.  There was a lot of pressure at the time to pass the bills quickly before the dissolution of Parliament and the national elections, and in the event the bills were passed in one day, led by the Minister of Social Welfare, just two days before Parliament dissolved for the elections. 

What factors created a favorable environment for passing the Acts?

Women in Sierra Leone have been demanding these laws since Sierra Leone gained independence in 1961.  Sierra Leone ratified the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1988 but did not pass any legislation to domesticate the rights contained in the convention.  Sierra Leone is at the bottom of the Gender-related Development Index and donor pressure had also been building for some time. In the short term there was pressure to fast track the process from the coalition on the gender bills, which comprised representatives from Action Aid, the International Rescue Committee, Oxfam, the United Nations Integrated Office in Sierra Leone, and local NGOs such as GEMS and the Sierra Leone Court Monitoring Programme.  Government officials received additional pressure from the international community and local Sierra Leonean NGOs when they traveled to New York in May 2007 to defend the country’s CEDAW report at the United Nations.

Additionally, as the national Parliamentary elections [which took place in August 2007] drew near, political parties wanted to accomplish something that would appeal to women voters, who made up 48 percent of the electorate.  The coalition of organizations working on the bills lobbied MPs individually and in groups, and ensured that hundreds of women from across the country came to Parliament for the debates, wearing white, showing MPs that it was an issue close to the heart of women throughout Sierra Leone. This show of solidarity put a lot of pressure on the MPs close to the elections to pass the bills.

Now that the Acts have been passed, what are the steps that need to be taken to make sure they are implemented?

The coalition that worked to pass the bills is now working to keep the momentum and partnership going to push forward implementation efforts.  Already, implementation of the Gender Acts has been mainstreamed into the justice sector’s three year strategy.  It has also been prioritized in the UN Peacebuilding Commission Framework for engagement in Sierra Leone.

There is still a lot to be done, however, to make sure people are working together and not duplicating each other’s efforts.   A lot of groups, for example, are organizing training sessions across the country on the Gender Acts.  We need to make sure that these organizations are disseminating correct information about the Acts and that they are prepared to answer common questions the communities will pose.  It would be helpful to have a coordinating session both to map out where different organizations are working, discuss strategy and formulate a common training program and answers to frequently asked questions.

At the local level, education will be a major part of implementation.  Training needs to be held for family support unit staff, local councils, hospital staff and traditional leaders such as local and paramount chiefs on their responsibilities under the law and what their constituents should expect. Education sessions will also be held with local community leaders and members to educate them on their rights and mobilize them to promote implementation in the course of everyday dispute resolution.  Mechanisms also need to be developed to monitor implementation of the Acts and report back to a central body.

At the higher level, steps need to be taken to strengthen the Ministry of Social Welfare, which is charged with leading implementation, and the Family Support Units of the Police.  The Ministry of Social Welfare, for example, has the largest portfolio of any government department but the smallest budget.  In 2006, its budget was 500,000 USD, which mostly covered staff costs.  The Ministry is supposed to have offices and social workers operating across the country, but it does not have the capacity to carry out significant projects.  Social workers often go unpaid, and without transport or communication allowances struggle to attend to their communities.  In addition to lacking financial resources, the Ministry suffers from poor internal communication of information.  The Director of Gender, for example, never even received a copy of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report.  Finally, the Ministry has little clout in the government, which is generally male dominated and little interested in “women’s issues.” Many of the Ministry’s functions should be carried out by other government agencies with oversight and coordination from the Ministry: unfortunately, the Ministry is currently not exerting such oversight and in practice most programmes required by its mandate are not being effectively carried out. Real financial and human resources need to be put into the Ministry to strengthen its position in the government and to build the morale and capacity of its staff to tackle its work.

The Family Support Units of the Police are potentially a very positive force for implementation of the Domestic Violence Act, and many people within the FSU are eager to work on this issue.  Like the Ministry of Social Welfare the FSU needs support in terms of skills building and funding.  Now that the FSU has the law it needs to prosecute domestic violence, its staff need to be trained in investigation and prosecution as well as how to monitor cases.  It is also important for the FSU to receive sufficient funding to follow-up with cases.

We’ve covered a lot of the challenges that will be faced with implementation.  Are there other challenges you would like to highlight?

Implementation will require real mobilization of local community members.  Women already know the problems in their communities.  There need to be extensive consultations with local women to discuss which implementation strategies will work and which will not.  These women know what will be accepted in their community and how to sell these bills.  Men also need to be at the heart of implementation.  Right now most of the implementers are women.  Paramount chiefs need to lead the way on the Acts, and encouragingly many of them have been supportive so far. 

Finally, we need to be aware of community attitudes toward gender based violence.  In many communities there is a perception among both men and women that women who dress a certain way are “asking” to be raped.  This is common even at the highest levels. During discussion of the bills in Parliament, for example, the Minister responsible for Gender suggested that it would be important to pass a dress code law that would prohibit women from wearing certain “provocative” clothing, as a means of reducing the escalating scale of sexual violence, which law would also prohibit men from wearing clothing generally considered to belong to women, such as earrings.  Additionally, one MP expressed concern that the dowry must be returned by the wife’s family in order for a marriage to end, as the whole purpose of the provision was to ensure that the woman didn’t run away from the marriage. ‘How are we going to stop them running away?’ he asked.  Well, yes, that was the original purpose of the requirement, answered the Speaker of Parliament, but that was precisely what the Registration of Customary Marriage and Divorce Act was trying to change.  Even at the highest, most educated levels, there is still significant progress to be made.