Event Rapporteur: Harnessing Social Media to Combat Corruption in Sierra Leone

N'yella Rogers, a human rights lawyer as well as a Fellow with the National Endowment for Democracy, spoke on February 18th at the Kay Spiritual Life Center as part of the Human Rights Defender Series. The event was titled "Harnessing Social Media to Combat Corruption in Sierra Leone." However, while the event did not focus as much on the social media aspect of her work to bring change and reform to her native country, Rogers was able to provide the event attendees a unique perspective of the continuing fight to help fight the difficulties that women have to endure in Sierra Leone.

Rogers says that "human rights is a personal journey," and she certainly described it as such by providing the audience. She was born to a woman much younger than her husband, and a father that had a number of other wives (she says this is pretty common in Sierra Leone). As she began a career working for human rights, she saw firsthand the broken legal system that governs her country and thus began to reviews the cases of women wrongfully accused. She described that there were a great number of cases of rape and forced pregnancy in prison. Many women are wrongfully accused of crimes because of the dual legal system present in the country where there is civil law, which is more common in the urban areas of Sierra Leone, as well as customary law which will see women more as property of their husbands, which is more common in the rural areas. Women are seen as property and thus cannot inherit property and when their husband dies, the widowed wife often has to remarry within the family of her husband or risk everything. It is also common for families to accept bribes to ignore a crime of rape, for example, and can even force consent to marriage. Also, a common and valid legal defense in the case of rape is that if the perpetrator believes that he is in a legitimate relationship with his victim,

She discussed how even after important legislation has been passed, such as the Child Rights Act of 2007 and the Sexual Violence Act, there is still a long way to go in order to achieve the ultimate goal of securing equality for woman in Sierra Leone.

Despite the title of the event, Rogers did not mention utilizing social media in order to achieve her and her organization's goals at all during her presentation, only addressing it during the Q&A period in response to a question. She described the process as still being in the embryonic stage and it is not quite ready to be launched but she did appear to be optimistic to utilize social media in order to reach a different audience. While she described that the youth in Sierra Leone do have inconsistent access to high-speed internet, she did say that around 90 percent of youths do have mobile phones, giving her and her project access to a wider audience. The hope that would be by appealing directly to the youth of the country, it will pave the way for some substantial change in the country down the road.