Journalists for Human Rights

Sierra Leoneans don’t have the same love affair with weather stories that Canadians do. Locals don’t gab about the extreme heat, torrential rains or heavy winds. Radio stations don’t report on it either. In Makeni, there’s no source for weather reports or forecasts.

But that doesn’t mean the weather isn’t newsworthy. As the rainy season heightens, downpours are almost daily occurrences. Just last week, Makeni was hit by the worst storm it has seen this year. Rain pounded homes, businesses and streets throughout the night. Winds whipped through the city, tearing up shoddy structures that pass as dwellings.

In the morning, the destruction was most apparent on Rogbaneh Road. Shops along the main business strip were severely damaged and millions of Leones in merchandise were destroyed. Business owners and city workers spent the better part of the day sifting through rubble and searching for anything that might be salvageable.

At 9 am, we received a call from a local reporter. “I have a big story,” said Amara Bangura. Thirty minutes later, we were on Rogbaneh Road with two reporters.

Joseph Bangura reports for Radio Mari:

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Sierra Leoneans don’t have the same love affair with weather stories that Canadians do. Locals don’t gab about the extreme heat, torrential rains or heavy winds. Radio stations don’t report on it either. In Makeni, there’s no source for weather reports or forecasts.

But that doesn’t mean the weather isn’t newsworthy. As the rainy season heightens, downpours are almost daily occurrences. Just last week, Makeni was hit by the worst storm it has seen this year. Rain pounded homes, businesses and streets throughout the night. Winds whipped through the city, tearing up shoddy structures that pass as dwellings.

In the morning, the destruction was most apparent on Rogbaneh Road. Shops along the main business strip were severely damaged and millions of Leones in merchandise were destroyed. Business owners and city workers spent the better part of the day sifting through rubble and searching for anything that might be salvageable.

At 9 am, we received a call from a local reporter. “I have a big story,” said Amara Bangura. Thirty minutes later, we were on Rogbaneh Road with two reporters.

Amara Bangura reports for Radio Mankeh:

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The UN is everywhere in this country. The UN’s Integrated Office in Sierra Leone, or UNIOSL, is set to close up shop sometime in the coming months, after its three year long mission in Sierra Leone; but until that happens, it’s unlikely that the omnipresent existence of the ubiquitous blue and white flag will change.  Plenty of other international government bodies and NGOs have incredibly strong presence in Sierra Leone.  The country is home to regional offices of Care, Doctors without Borders, USAID, Feed the Children, Christian Aid, World Vision, and more.  Driving down the road between Freetown and Makeni is like walking the red carpet at the international development Oscars; all the big names are there.

These organizations do a lot of good work, and almost as importantly, they create a lot of jobs.  It has been said that the NGO community makes up 60% of the Sierra Leonean economy.  They employ large numbers of both foreign and local staff, and have varying mandates that dictate their long term plans concerning their time in the country.  Journalists for Human Rights itself is currently just over one year into its five-year term in Sierra Leone.

It is easy to judge the success of these organizations based on the number of people they employ, the money they spend and the shininess of their big white Land Cruisers.  By the same token, it is also easy to overlook the work that’s being done by small local NGOs.   These organizations lack big budgets, foreign staff and, at times, the money for local public transport–let alone brand new jeeps.  But the work they do for the development of the country is immense.

One such organization is Vision for the Blind, a small charitable group based in Freetown, with regional offices across the country.  Recently some Radio Maria reporters and I spent a morning at the Vision offices in Makeni, speaking with beneficiaries and gaining an understanding about the day-to-day work done by the centre’s staff and volunteers.  Through teaching valuable skills such as gara tie-dying and soap making, Vision for the Blind gives visually impaired people an opportunity to control the future of their own livelihoods.

Radio Maria reporters Leonard M. Massaquoi, Sheku Sakoh Turay and I produced this report for broadcast on the program “Day Break Salone”.

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On June 23, five JHR trainers and their Country Director traveled to Kabala to give a workshop to the staff at the community station, Radio Bintumani. Despite the excitement of working together for the first time, the team was exploring new territory.

Nestled between lush mountains and farmland, Kabala is Sierra Leone’s agricultural hub. It is reached on a windy and pot-holed road, 6 hours north of Freetown.

Having organized the workshop so close to the July 5th local elections, JHR decided to give training on news writing and elections coverage. At the end of the meeting, new skills and knowledge were put to practical use. A representative from the National Electoral Commission hosted a briefing for reporters with an update of the council elections.

Buried amongst predictable (and un-newsworthy) information regarding voter ID cards, staff training and the campaign, the NEC representative almost said under his breath “to be honest, my biggest worry for this election is police security”.

Only one of the 20 reporters picked up on the statement. And I decided to stay in Kabala for a couple of extra days to help him cover the story.

With the local council elections less than 2 weeks away, there is concern about security in the Koinadugu District.

The National Electoral Commission says it’s  worried the police will not have enough officers to cover all polling stations in the District and some candidates don’t feel safe during the campaign.

Abass Sessay reports:

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More children in northern Sierra Leone are going hungry because of the Global Food Crisis.

The food crisis which is causing riots, sickness and hunger around the world is taking its toll on Sierra Leone.

In the northern province, the country’s poorest area, women and children are suffering the most.

Numbers at the therapeutic feeding centre in Makeni are on the rise and villagers can’t afford to buy food.

In this report Alhaji S Bah takes a look at this growing problem.

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Sierra Leone is still riding high following last August’s overwhelmingly peaceful presidential and parliamentary elections.  The country as a whole seems to have faith that next month’s local elections will follow the same pattern.  Yet with this confidence still comes a need for preparedness.

A recent rainy Friday morning in Makeni played host to one example of this preparedness as police officers from around the region gathered to brush up on election related skills.  From crowd control to VIP protection, law enforcement officials play an important, if not sometimes controversial, role in Sierra Leone’s election process.

Radio Maria’s Sellieu Conteh reports from Makeni.

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Sierra Leone gets more then its fair share of bad press.  It seems that nearly every week a new study, list or statistic is published that places the country at or close to the bottom of the “ranking du jour”.

Perhaps most notably the country is working to shake the stigma that comes with being ranked the world’s least developed nation, which, according to last year’s UN Human Development Index, places Sierra Leone 177th out the 177 countries judged.  Conflict countries, Afghanistan and Iraq for instance, were omitted from the list due to lack of reliable statistics.  This however is a minor detail; for all intents and purposes Sierra Leone is world’s least developed country.

It’s seems rare here for an NGO to deliver a speech or report without mentioning this fact.  Choosing not to mince words, or pass up an opportunity for dramatics, those in the development community often bluntly refer to Sierra Leone as “the planets poorest country”.  The moniker gets tossed around so much I half expect it to be printed on the country’s currency.

Some of these labels are well founded and serve a purpose; some are skewed and seem instead to serve a particular agenda.  Others appear simply to be sensational, helping to further Sierra Leone’s reputation as a hotbed for underdevelopment.

A study released late last month by the New York based “Committee to Protect Journalists” placed Sierra Leone near the top of their “Impunity Index”.  Second only to Iraq, Sierra Leone has, according to the CPJ’s list, more unsolved murders of journalists then any other country in Africa.

I’m not disputing the validity of the study’s numbers, and I’m certainly not negating the right that local reporters have to safety and security.  But I do worry that Sierra Leone’s new standing as the “world’s second most dangerous place to be a journalist” will do nothing to help repair the country’s tarnished repute.  According to the study the murder of nine Sierra Leonean journalists, occurring between 1998 and 2007, remain unsolved.  The most recent case dates back to 2005.  While this number is unacceptable I do question whether it’s truly reflective of the current state of media in the country.

One of the main problems with the survey is that it fails to address whether the real issue is the risk facing Sierra Leonean journalists, or the ineptitude of the national police force.  Because the “impunity index” only takes into account unsolved cases there’s reason to believe that more journalist murders may well take place in other countries, it’s simply that their police forces are more successful at finding and convicting the perpetrators.  Having already had a number of encounters with the police during my three months in the country I’m prone to thinking that the core issue is more likely to be related to the poor quality of law enforcement.

The time period measured also falls squarely within the bloodiest years of Sierra Leone’s civil war.  Journalists were murdered during this time, yes, yet so were countless others who threatened the influence of the vicious rebel regime. Since the end of the war the study found only one murder of a journalist remaining unsolved.

There are undoubtedly a number of problems that plague the media sector in Sierra Leone.  The country lacks a formal freedom of information act, liable laws are too strict and the vast majority of working journalists fail to make a livable wage.  While these are important issues they don’t indicate a serious threat to the lives of journalists.  Instead the CPJ’s “Impunity Index” lays yet another unfortunate distinction upon a country whose tourism brochure could already read like a grizzly Stephen King novel.

As a journalist I’m all for letting the truth speak for itself, but the sad reality is that the truth in Sierra Leon often has many faces, choosing which to display can either help or hurt the image of the country.  While Sierra Leone’s new standing as the “world’s second most dangerous place to be a journalist” may not be truly representative of the nation’s media sector, it is indicative of the Sierra Leone’s struggle against labels.

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Impressions of life and work in West Africa.

JHR Trainer, Rachael Borlase, is currently working on a six-part series about life and work in Sierra Leone. For the next several months, her adventures and reflections will be broadcast on CBC Radio throughout Newfoundland and Labrador.

In this segment, Rachael explores her new job and home.

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“In a country with an unemployment rate of nearly 80% it is hard to take seriously the concerns of those lucky enough to have an income”.  While the words of labour ministry spokesperson Edmond Y. Kamara sound blunt and insensitive, it’s hard to deny that they also make a fair deal of sense.

The problem remains however, with unpredictable wages and the relentless risk of immobilizing injury, workers cannot afford to pay into anything other then the immediate needs of their dependents.

-Mackay Taggart

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Vendors are disgusted with the filth at their market and say they will stop paying their dues unless city council cleans up its act.

The following radio news story was put together by Fatmata Kuwatteh of Radio Mankneh. As a trainer, it was my first opportunity to work with a female reporter. Despite Kuwatteh’s obligations to her home, husband and children, she was determined to research, write and produce this story.

What would have taken me one day of work in Canada, took us two weeks to complete in Sierra Leone.  Nevertheless, the piece was aired on Radio Mankneh and Fatmata Kuwatteh has been jubilating ever since

Rachael Borlase

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