Celebrating 10 years of Justice for Women

March marks the end of AdvocAid’s 10th anniversary, and we will soon be closing down this project. We want to thank everyone who kindly donated and made it possible to reach our funding target. Whereas our December report explained some of the challenges we have been through in 2016, we’ll end our anniversary by telling you about the difference your support makes for the many women arrested for minor offenses.

Across Sierra Leone's prisons sit hundreds of men and women, who have been arrested for petty crimes such as loitering, fraudulent conversion (debt), or public order offenses. AdvocAid works to change this.

In the first 10 months of 2016, our paralegals assisted 1300 women and girls – that’s four cases every day! Only 721 of these women were charged to court, and of those who were, more than half were granted bail or released as a result of acquittal and discharge, low sentencing, or payment of fines.

The most notable impact of AdvocAid’s work is in other words that the majority of minor offenses are settled quickly, so that detained women can return to their families and jobs. However, the high numbers of cases that don’t result with conviction reflects that many women are arrested for very minor offenses that pose little or no threat to society and could, in fact, be mediated at the community level. One such case was that of 25-year old Iye, who was arrested after a dispute with the father of her children.

Arrested for insulting her long term partner – Iye and Alpha* had been living together for many years. They have eight children (although three of them passed away), but they had never married. One day Iye found out that Alpha was in love with someone else and that he had asked this woman to marry him. Infuriated and hurt, Iye caused a scene in the compound where they were living. As a result, Alpha evicted her from their house.

Alpha offered to pay Iye’s parents financial compensation as she went to live with them, but at the same time, he made it very clear that he was no longer interested in the relationship. After a couple of weeks, Iye went back to Alpha to ask him to at least share their properties, but Alpha refused so Iye got frustrated and rained abuses at him again. This made Alpha report her to the police, and she was arrested and charged with abusive language and public insult.

AdvocAid met Iye in a police cell and helped her obtain bail so she could go back home while the case was being investigated. However, a week later, Iye called our paralegal to tell him that her parents had been arrested for threatening Alpha who was still refusing to take her back. AdvocAid's paralegal stepped in once again and – on condition that they would go back and settle the matter in the community – the parents were also granted bail.

Mediating disputes – AdvocAid’s paralegals often participate in mediation of disputes where families or communities are unable to solve disagreements on their own. This is crucial, not just for the clients and their communities but also for the judicial system which is already dealing with a backlog of court cases.

In the end, Iye and her parents gave in and agreed to no longer disturb Alpha and his new partner. Our paralegal supported the mediation along with prominent community leaders, and although the situation was very difficult for Iye, at least she and her parents did not also have to face a court case.

*The names of Iye and Alpha have been change to protect their identities.

New AdvocAid projects on GlobalGiving – Very soon, we will be launching new projects that will better cover all our programme areas. We hope that our regular sponsors would consider moving their donations to one of these new projects so we can close down this and our Access to Justice for 360 Women project. Many thanks in advance!

Links:

• Learn about how we provide Access to Justice for women and girls

2016 is coming to an end, and we are absolutely thrilled that we have almost met our fundraising target for our 10 Year Anniversary project! For that, the whole AdvocAid family wants to say a huge thank you to everyone who generously donated. You made it possible for us to celebrate with beneficiaries and partners in Sierra Leone. However, because we are only just getting close to the target now, we have prioritised our funding slightly differently this year than what we said we would.

Celebrating our anniversary has been a profound joy, but 2016 has also been one of the most difficult years in the history of AdvocAid’s existence. Since Ebola, most resources have been diverted to rebuild the health and education systems, which both suffered massively during the 2014-15 outbreak. As a result, the already underfunded justice sector has come under further constraint and it has become even harder to secure funding for our legal aid work.

To deal with the crisis, we have focused on retaining crucial services to female detainees instead of going through with all our commemorative projects. Since the last 42 inmates graduated in September, we have had to put our literacy and numeracy classes temporarily on hold. The good news is that by reaching our funding target, we will be able to restart classes in 2017. We know this was not on the list of things we wanted to do with this project, but hope that you will understand our priorities.

We have also managed to continue providing legal assistance and representation, and in spite of severe financial volatility, our paralegals and lawyers have assisted no less than 1207 women and girls since January –75% of whom were either released, on bail, or discharged after our intervention!

Looking ahead - Fundraising became the theme of 2016, and it has finally started to pay off! In October and November, we held a church fundraiser and fundraising gala, raising $2900 from guests and corporates. What is more, AdvocAid was recently announced as winner of Clifford Chance’s Access to Justice Award 2016, and we will be receiving a great deal of support, including 500 pro bono hours from their staff and a donation of £50.000 to be used over an 18 month period.

We still have a long way to go, but we are hopeful that the new year will be easier – for AdvocAid and thus also for the women and girls we serve. We have not been able to create the AdvocAid story on film, but we hope to soon be able to paint legal educational murals on the walls of the correctional centres, as we planned.

The funding that has come in recently will enable us to get back on our feet, but we need a sustainable income more than ever to really get through the crisis. We hope that you will continue to support us – either by becoming a regular sponsor of AdvocAid or by encouraging your friends, family and colleagues to donate to our work.

Links:

• AdvocAid holds nationwide literacy class graduation
• Clifford Chance selects AdvocAid as winner
• Find AdvocAid on Facebook