One of the principles of United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and their practical implication for children is the Principle of Accountability. This principle states that children and young people are the holders of their rights and have legal entitlement to the security of these rights. It is also important that those responsible forprotecting these rights are identified and made accountable and responsive. Although government is the main legal duty-bearer and indeed it is its responsibility to ensure that rights are secured, other adult members of society also have responsibilities. This means that these individuals and groups have an active role to play in ensuring that the rights of children in their care are secured. This presupposes that we must work together at all levels to ensure a child friendly society.
To this end, the Sierra Leone government hastaken a number of strides including theenactment of laws such as the Young Persons Act Cap 44 of the Laws of Sierra Leone 1960, Prevention of Cruelty to Children Cap 31 of the Laws of Sierra Leone 1960, the Child Right Act 2007 and the Sexual Offences Act 2012. All of these laws are stipulated asa protective and some follow-up mechanism aimed at protecting the rights of children.
In spite of the enactment of theseLaws, there are still strong challenges at the national and governmentallevels. For instance, the Child Right Act 2007 makes provision for family courts, and the Domestic Violence Act 2007 makes provision forSafe Homesfor victims of sexual and gender-based violence. Most of these structures are either not well funded or are till date not set up at all;the few which exist are not setup right across the country; they have capacity issues, difficulties of professionalism and problems of inadequate logistics. For instance, a Safe Home has been constructed in Makeni but has still not been put to use because it lacks furniture and other internal structures necessary for habitation.
The main gist of this articleis not what the government is doing but what individuals, communities and societies can do to address this gap. So,given thatin the midst of the challenges facing the government and the fact that government cannot address all of these problems right away,it is about time these rights are protected by the collective efforts of the family, community and the society. Whilst the primary responsibility lies on the government, society too has a very big role to play in protecting children. Families and parents have the responsibility to make sure that they take care of their kids, send them to good schools and all that. The community has a role to play in taking care of and monitoring the children, and the society should ensure that Civil Society groups do a lot more awareness raising sensitization on the Sexual Offences and other Acts. By this, we are suggesting a return to the situation that used to obtain before, wherein children were not raised by the parent or guardian alone but by the society as a whole.This is so that we have a situation where inevery party will be involved in protecting the rights of a child rather than a situation where a child or young person is sexually abused and people pin the blame on the victim because of the way she was dressed, how gullible she was, and so on. This will be a misguided judgment, for there have been cases where children as young as five years have been victims of sexual penetration. It shows thatsomehow the community and the society are not helping the situation at all.
Even if the government puts in place the structures and the enabling environment, we still need the support of the family, community and society. For example, parents (families) should let their children know that they have the right to speak up and report when someone touches them in a way that makes them feel uncomfortable or makes indecent advances at them, and that they can say “no” to adults, even if they are family members or their parents’ friends. Also, it is the case in this country that children rely on their parents for emotional and financial support; it will therefore be dangerous to reject children and expose them to peer group life.
This is so that collectively, we are not always blaming the lack of capacity on the police, or the Judiciary for not having enough Judges and Magistrates, or the Family Support Unit for not having enough personnel and notbeing present right across the country. But at community level, we can even setup accountability groups to ensure that cases of sexual penetration, rape and other sexual and gender-basedviolence (SGBV) are not compromised by family members and that out of court settlements are discouraged. It will also help combat domestic violence against children and women and to encourage victimsand other members of the public to prosecute cases of SGBV by reporting such incidents and willingly coming to court to give evidence in such trials.
There is a particular case of sexual penetration involving a14 year- old girl that I am monitoring .The girl was sexually penetrated and subsequently became pregnant. The family, knowing very well that this class six pupil had been sexually abused, decided to settle the matter at home, and it was only when the perpetrator refused to co-operate by taking responsibility for the pregnancy and the victim that the victim’s father decided to report the matter to the police. The case has gone through Preliminary Investigation in the Magistrate Court and has been committed to the High Court for trial. While awaitingthe High Court trial, the victim gave birth to a baby boy. The victim’s father then called me and said he was no longer willing to proceedwith the case, as the court was not doing anything to help him take care of the alleged victim and her child, and that every aspect of the child’s welfare was presently billed entirely on him. He said he did not see any need to continue with the trial and as such, he had decided to resign to faith. It was after I hadinformed him that the Sexual Offences Act criminalizes out of court settlement that he reluctantly decided to come to court. Since then I have not heard from him. That particular family is not helping the matter, and in such a case, itmatters not whether the police are ready to prosecute,or witnesses are willing to testify, or the Judiciary is poised to do justice to the case. That single act by that family will bring the trial to a halt at the High Court. This is not an isolated case,as there are many cases reported to the police but when they go to court the victims and their parents do not follow-up, thereby frustrating the trial. In most of these cases, the genuine reasons for not showing up at the trial are that the alleged victim and family had accepted an out of court settlement.
Without making any excuse for the government, society needs to come half of the way, so that collectively we can kick against those chilling reports of sexual abuse on children as young as five (5) years by men who are fit to be their fathers. This way we can protect our children and women against sexual and gender-based violence in our community and the country as a whole.