As Parliamentary and Local Council results of the June General Elections were made public, our Editor and Vice President of Women in the Media Sierra Leone, Mabinty Magdalene Kamara, held a face-to face interview with Manty Tarawallie then Minister of Gender and Children’s Affairs, who soon after this interview, was appointed by President Julius Maada Bio as new Minister of State, Office of the Vice President. In this interview, she took us through the processes leading to an increase in the number of female representation in elective and appointive positions this year.
Q: How long have you served as Minister of Gender and Children’s Affairs?
A.: I was appointed in November 2019 and we are in 2023 now.
Q: So the Ministry started with you. Is that correct?
A: Yes, I was appointed in November 2019 the same time the President proclaimed the establishment of the Ministry. Before, we had the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs. The President in his wisdom thought it fit to separate the two ministries because it was a huge ministry, to give more focus on gender and children’s affairs, as well as social welfare.
Q: So three years has been a long journey. What has been your milestone, what have you done?
A: Before we even talk about milestones, I think we should make some comparisons` in terms of establishing a new entity. In Sierra Leone setting up entities takes a year or two just to put themselves together, develop their mandates, know what they are doing, understand the sector, before they start to realise even some gains. So when you have that in context and then you look at what we have been able to achieve in three and half years, you then have to appreciate us the most. In a short space of time we have really done well. January 2020, that’s really when the ministry became fully operational and within that period we have developed the Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment GEWE) policy, that speaks to the 13 objectives across ten sectors. We have launched that and commenced implementation of that by mainstreaming the gender demands into every sectoral policy.
We saw women having the right to own lands for the first time in the country, we saw the Mines and Mineral Acts integrating the gender demand inside of it. We also saw the Public Elections Act integrate the demand of gender into it and also in implementing the policy we developed and led to the passing of the GEWE Act, something that has taken over 40 years to get off the ground in Sierra Leone.
There have been talks about it for years, not even a policy has been established let alone a concrete approved bill to go into parliament, so it’s one of our key achievements and such a milestone. Also in the area of sexual and gender based violence, we established One Stop Centres across the country for the first time in the country, a call centre for sexual violence , 116 hot free line, that you can call 24/7 from any mobile network free of charge.
We also established steering committees in every district that bring together each month key stakeholders within districts to discuss issues of sexual violence and come out with their own specific solutions. So we saw a reduction in sexual violence cases from 4,000 cases at the highest peak in 2018 to a 32% low in 2022 and so that’s also a key milestone for us.
In the area of children’s affairs, we also saw the reviewing of the Child Rights Act of 2007 to include key complaints that are necessary to bring the act up to date in correlation with international laws and conventions that we have signed up to. After the bill was published in the national gazette, we took it to parliament, it went through the first reading, and to the legislative committee. It was debated there, but unfortunately because parliament was about to end its tenure we couldn’t conclude the process.
However, it is in such a place now that it can run very quickly. It doesn’t really need to go through consultations again, it can pick from where we had left it, for it to continue in parliament. So that is another key achievement for us.
Also in the area of supporting the reduction of teenage pregnancy, we established what we named Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH). We piloted it in Koinadugu and basically the approach is that the younger people are employed to provide services to younger people. So we have young nurses, young educators, that sensitize young people about sexual and reproductive health, provide services to them, and we have seen tremendous support, participation, acceptability, utilization of services, to know that there will be reduction in teenage pregnancy.
That in a nutshell are some key achievements, and there are a lot more.
Q: Was that extended to early marriage:
A: We know from data a few things that support the drive to early marriage, one being teenage pregnancy, the other is Bondo, and then poverty. So when you delay a girl from going to Bondo and keep her in school longer, you help reduce teenage pregnancy and ultimately you see a reduction in early marriage.
So, with the revision of the Child Rights Act there is a mandate to ban early marriage, but at the same time also to criminalise Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) under the age of 18. Not that we are against FGM, but we are saying let it go back to what it used to be for women over the age of 18. We know that women want FGM, we know that it is a culture and so we are not against it, but what we are saying is that under the age of 18 we criminalise it until that child becomes adult and can decide for herself.
So our methodology and approach is that empower women, keep girls in school longer under the free education, criminalise FGM under the age of 18, ban child marriage and we will see the practice of child marriage being eliminated.
Q: You talked about the GEWE Bill. We all can see it has opened many opportunities for women as seen in the Land Right Acts, Mines and Minerals Development Act. We reported a lot then and saw how women were happy for the fact that they are going to be involved in decision -making in terms of their lands, when investors get into communities to do business.
So what motivated you to actually push for this bill?
A: First and foremost, I would say that passing the bill or promoting the rights of women and the empowerment of women is not my idea, it is the Sierra Leone People’s Party’s (SLPP) idea. It is President Bio’s idea, it is in the manifesto of the SLPP.
So it is not something that I conceived but was something that emanated from His Excellency and the SLPP.
It is just that as the minister appointed, I believe in the same thing. So that made me passionate, and committed as I already knew the challenges in the sector, so it was easier for me to fix some of these problems. So what we did we did not put in the GEWE act we mainstreamed it. We have some mainstream, but there is more to do.
What mainstreaming means is changing that approach across all sectors, meaning all their guiding policies should be specific about what is for women and men. Now you can see that in the land rights act there are specific rights for women, so for mines and mineral act and the Public Elections Act. That women’s right should be included in every law in the country including the constitution.
The drive for that is to see women take their rightful place. We are 52% of the country’s population and we are at the bottom of the bottom. If Sierra Leone is to grow, if Sierra Leone is to get to a middle-income country, which we all want to see, you cannot have half of the population or more than half of the population lacking behind.
You have to bring that population into leadership, to contribute to the economy which means education, skills development, leadership positions, and business opportunities for them to contribute to.
My drive is to see women take their rightful positions and contribute to nation- building. Yes, we are smart, yes we have our education, but the way our level of compassion and the way we see things are totally different from the way men see things. So when you have the two together, you have something beautiful for your country, but if you only have one side of the brain functioning and not the other, you don’t have the wholesomeness that you are supposed to have.
Q: For any good thing it comes with a lot of challenges sometimes, it takes steps to get there. How was the journey in developing the GEWE bill?
A: The GEWE bill was tough. There is no other description. It was tough, it was hard and it was really long. I had support especially from his Excellency the president. Women of Sierra Leone from every corner wanted the same thing, they wanted women to move forward. People did not know how and because they did not know how, we came up with new ideas on how to do it.
For the men folk, it was the difficulty of relinquishing power to women. It is a question of survival, what is now going to happen to me, how am I now going to survive? So that was the challenge and the reality is true, that is a question of survival and they are giving up seats for women and what will happen to them. That is why it took 13 months in parliament. We negotiated, galvanised support both internally within the parliament and externally. I don’t think that I have heard of any bill that has been in parliament for 13 months, over a year.
Q: Did you at any point think of giving up?
A: Of course not. I knew that Rome was not built in a day and I know that we are changing the status quo and it is not easy. I had to have the tenacity, the patience to push and carry this forward and I must say the encouragement I received from my boss was also very helpful. Whenever it got really tough, he would encourage me. That also gave me the drive, the impetus to continue pushing through, continue taking some of the insults, and continue taking some of the threats, but today following the outcome of the elections, 41 women are going into parliament, a percentage of 30.4%. So the 30 percent quota has been fully achieved.
So it is like giving birth to a young baby. You go through the nine months of pain and then you through the birth and screaming and shouting, the baby comes, and you look at the baby and say oh! Oh! Wonderful I can do this again. You forget all the pains. So this is it. It was worth it because 41women in parliament, we expect their presence will change our legislature process.
Q: So now that the outcome is being celebrated on Facebook, across Sierra Leone and even globally Sierra Leoneans are celebrating the fact that more women are in there.
How do you feel?
A: It’s wonderful, it’s a euphoric feeling, a beautiful feeling and a sense of accomplishment. We have created a new unit in the ministry called Support for women in leadership and we will support them to understand what they need to do, we will support them to shine.
So we can showcase that we have them and their contributions matter and we are taking one step.
Q: So has that inspired you to go for more?
A: I think it inspired me and many others that it is possible, because there is a power of visuals. When you see, you really believe. It is difficult for some people to believe without seeing. So now that they have seen, they are inspired, I am inspired and everybody is inspired to take on challenges, to contribute as a woman, and that is beautiful. It is beautiful for Sierra Leone, beautiful for womanhood and beautiful for all of us.
Q: However beautiful it is, there must be some challenges, there must be some loopholes so are you looking forward to actually pushing for a review to make the Act better?
A: Absolutely. The Act is there for review; the act is there to assess the need for its strengthening to ensure that it lives up to expectations.
We know some of the areas that are weak; that you may call loopholes, they require some level of intervention whether it would be me or whether it will be somebody else, but they have a platform now to do that. That is the beauty of growth, the beauty of democracy, the beauty of empowerment. It is there now; we can now shape it, change, reduce or strengthen it to whatever we want to do with it, but it is there now.
There is a lot that we can add to it and I think it will be incremental because that is what we went through from the start an incremental approach and so there will be increment to it. So like I said it is not static it is dynamic so it will always require amendment.
Q: Some critics including women are saying that the political parties are actually doing a leap of service to women by nominating women with “low quality” who mostly are not voted on because of lack of public trust.
How do we ensure that these women presented by the political parties can actually stand the test of time?
A: How do you ensure that men represent you well? I don’t like that question from women. We are very critical about ourselves and I don’t think that we should have men in positions of power and we don’t hold them to the same level of scrutiny. Let us allow the women to come. We have professional women coming in. Nobody is perfect, let's support them to ensure they are perfect.
Q: So whoever is brought forward, should be supported. Is that what you are saying?
A: Whoever is brought forward let us perfect them as they are going, we are seeing more people come in to compete. The first cohort of women are the trailblazers. Others are waiting to see what these ones do before they come so let us support these ones and then more women will come forward until we get the perfect that we are all looking for. We still don’t have that yet and they are still running after them, dancing for them, cooking for them so let do the same with our women nobody's perfect. The ones that have come forward let us support them to be perfect the same we are supporting men to be perfect. Some men are not that educated to be there and some men are not doing well in communities to be there but we dance for them, we sew “ashobi for them”, we cook for them. Let us do the same for our women to support them through the process and they will become perfect.
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