According to the National Electoral Commission (NEC), which runs the country’s elections, 1,198 people will vie for positions as local councillors or mayors this July.  The majority of candidates represent the All Peoples’ Congress (APC) and the Sierra Leone Peoples’ Party (SLPP), the country’s dominant political parties.  However, in districts across the country, people are noting that the number of women on the ballot is distressingly low.  [Stay tuned for exact numbers later this week.] 

In Kailahun District, one of my Sierra Leonean colleagues working on election issues argued that women tried to secure nominations but that party leadership denied them the opportunity to run.  She noted that even women who currently hold local council positions lost nominations to male candidates. 

These days it’s popular to talk about including women in government but it’s rare to see parties actually follow through on their verbal commitments and back women for positions of power.  In December 2007, IPS ran a story that quoted leaders from the APC and SLPP promising that the parties would strongly support women in the local council elections:

"Women are going to feature prominently," said Victor Bockarie Foe, secretary general of the ruling All People's Congress, in reference to the candidates for local elections. Just over 11 percent of candidates that ran for parliament earlier this year were women.

There was more of the same from the main opposition grouping, the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP).

"We want to ensure that government is taken closer to the people," said SLPP Secretary General Jacob Jusu Saffa. "We will robustly support and campaign for women at the forthcoming local elections."     

My colleague in Kailahun, however, did not see women’s failure to obtain nominations as a result of men’s discrimination against women.  “Many women are not very well educated,” she noted.  “Their communities have been told by NGOs and the government that they need well-educated representatives so their support for the women has declined.”  My colleague’s perspective highlights the structural discrimination women face in Sierra Leone.  Clearly, if women do not receive access to educational and economic opportunities at the same rate as men they will also continue to face discrimination and marginalization in the political realm.

Some women are fighting back after losing a nomination, my colleague told me.  One woman in Kailahun District has decided to run as an independent after the SLPP failed to award her a nomination.  “She is loved by her community and they have urged her to run,” my colleague explained.  However, party loyalty runs deep in Sierra Leone.  Any woman bucking those structures will have a tough race on her hands.      

When I arrive, about 30 to 40 women--new and soon-to-be mothers--from the surrounding communities are sitting on rows of benches in the PHU's main room while traditional birth attendants (TBAs) in patterned skirts and head wraps sing and dance.  Their songs contain messages about safe motherhood and encourage women to come to the PHU for antenatal care and delivery.  The songs are the routine start to the pregnant women's support group that convenes monthly at the PHU to ensure that local women receive proper medical care and support during their pregnancies.

Sierra Leone has some of the highest rates of mortality and morbidity for new mothers and children under five in the world, in part because many women do not access medical care for themselves and their offspring during their pregnancies or after they give birth.  Even fewer make it to a PHU for the delivery.  According to the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Aide in Bangabaya, only one or two women a month give birth in the facility, despite the high numbers who attend the pregnancy support groups.  Women who do not give birth at PHUs are usually assisted by TBAs in their homes; unfortunately, the TBAs lack the drugs and equipment to deal with complications during delivery.  If things go terribly wrong, it can be at best difficult and at worst impossible for the Koidu Hospital's ambulance to reach the women in their villages.

This day, I am at the Bangabaya PHU with Dorice Manasseh, IRC's Child Survival Coordinator, to learn about IRC's new pilot project to encourage women to deliver at the PHU.  After an introduction by the MCH Aide, Dorice addresses the pregnant women directly, asking why they and other women in their communities do not come to the PHU to deliver.  The most common response is the distance between their communities and the PHU.  Dorice announces that the Bangabaya community, with support from IRC, is constructing a traditional mud brick house next to the PHU for pregnant women.  When it is completed, women who are expecting to go into labor can stay at the house for a few days and then access the PHU for delivery.

In addition to increasing access to the PHU, IRC is working to provide high quality care at the PHU.  IRC has posted a midwife to the Bangabaya PHU, redid the maternity ward (including providing lights powered by a solar panel) and is supplying basic drugs and supplies for emergency obstetric operations.  The hope is that by easing access to the PHU and providing top-notch medical care, more women will come to the PHU to give birth and maternal and newborn death rates will drop. 

As usual, however, there is one question on everyone's lips: will the community and the government be able to maintain these improvements after NGO support ends?