By Thabile Cele | Fundraising & Communications Manager
Today’s report will update you on one specific aspect of this project - creating an internship scheme to expose law students to feminist lawyering.
Sierra Leone, like many other countries, faces numerous challenges in providing access to substantive justice for women and girls. We have a limited number of lawyers and paralegals that understand how access to justice or lawyering should be informed by the lived experiences of women and girls. This means that the justice administered tends to reinforce the same oppressive system we are fighting.
Our continuous interaction with law students - especially female law students - has shown that they are aware of the injustices faced by women and girls that are the result of a legal system designed by and for men. However, they do not have the environment that supports them to translate their awareness from theory into practice. It is for these reasons that it is important to build feminist lawyers while they are still in their formative stages of legal education.
The Frances Claudia Wright Scholarship was launched in January 2023 in response to the gendered structure of Sierra Leone’s legal profession, legal theory, legal practice and access to justice. Through this scholarship, AdvocAid has created an environment for female law students to thrive in their feminist journeys as they build their legal careers.
We’re excited to be building on this scholarship by also launching a feminist legal internship programme in September, with our first two female law students currently enrolled at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone. This legal internship will expose them to a feminist legal environment that helps them turn legal theory into feminist legal practice.
The internship programme aims to promote a feminist and human rights approach to law. We believe this is instrumental in shaping a younger generation of students who will become the next generation of leading legal professionals handling sex and gender discrimination cases in Sierra Leone. By providing law students with opportunities to work with feminist lawyers and advocates, the internship scheme will also instill values of equality, empathy, and social justice.
The students will gain practical experience in addressing gender-specific legal challenges, helping them develop a deeper understanding and argument of the issues faced by women and girls in accessing justice.
In an interaction with one of the young female law intern students - Mariama Rejoice Bangura (featured in the photo below), one of our paralegals wanted to know what motivated her to pursue law. Her response was:
“From an early age, I found myself questioning societal norms, especially with regards to patriarchy. I had no idea there was a name for the views and stances that were slowly starting to grow within me.
"Through sources like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, I would later learn of the feminist movement and its community.
"Researching more on its values, I soon found out that only a minute percentage of injustices against women, including cases of sexual assaults, went through the due process, with even fewer ending in conviction. This drew my attention, as issues in that light were quite evident in my reality.
"I wanted to empower myself and put myself in a position to make a change.”
Hearing from Mariama as to why she chose to pursue law, really excites and energises us at AdvocAid. It’s why we are creating an environment through these scholarship and internship programmes that provides the space to empower young female law students to name and defend their views and stances while still in their formative stages. It is at this early stage of their legal education that the students of today (and Sierra Leone’s future lawyers) build their professional identities.
We are excited to be welcoming them into a professional environment that means they can later proceed to hold positions of power and drive positive change in our country - whether that’s through, becoming judges, politicians and or disruptors. We want our interns to be introduced to new ways of being a lawyer and new ways of thinking about law.
An internship experience like this will give them the confidence to cause change within the institutions they work and live in. As we afford experiences like this for other young female law students, we shall always be grateful for the support from our kind donors that understand the importance of educating students at their formative stages If you would like to know more about how you can increase your gift to fund a specific intern and/or scholar under this project, please get in touch.
We are truly grateful for every donation as your donation signifies your belief in our cause and willingness to move on this journey with us. Thank you for your continued support.
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