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Sierra Leone

Law and Development from the Ground Up: Bridging Health Care by the Sewa River

Margaux Hall's picture

In Sierra Leone's rainy season, the Sewa River, feared by many locals for its powerful currents, floods over its banks separating entire villages from basic services.  Konta health clinic in Kenema district operates near the shores of the Sewa, and during the six-month rainy season, five of Konta’s 17 dependent villages cannot access the clinic.  If women in those villages give birth during the rains, they entrust care to traditional birth attendants; if children fall ill, they turn to traditional medicine, stockpiled drugs, and, often, prayer.  As one woman explained during a recent community meeting in Konta, these are the only options, even if the all-too-frequent consequence is death.  Hearing her account, it’s difficult not to feel a strong sense of injustice, even in an incredibly resource-constrained country like Sierra Leone.  But is there a role for the law in remedying this situation?

Sierra Leone’s Cold Spot? Young People, Elections and Accountability in Kono

Jessica Sinclair Taylor's picture

Ibrahim Fanday, Chairman of Kono Youth Commission smiled proudly as he says ‘Kono is known as a trouble hot-spot – but at the end of the day, the elections were peaceful.’ Martha Lewis, a member of the local women’s network, agreed, saying ‘Hot spot? Cold spot!’ 

When Sierra Leone went to the polls in November last year, it followed months of speculation and fears that the hotly contested elections would be a flash-point for violence.  And Kono, the state which saw the worst of the ten year civil war, and remains notorious chiefly for its diamond miles and its instability, was predicted to be at the centre of any trouble.

The elections passed without major disturbances and were pronounced free and fair by the EU observers following them.  Ibrahim believes that the youth of Kono played a role in keeping the polling peaceful, by acting as ‘peace ambassadors’ in their communities.  His pride is echoed by everyone I speak to - Sierra Leone seems to have passed some kind of test, in both national and international eyes, by holding an election where 87.3% of the population turned out to vote, and the peace held.

New Pledges Expand GAFSP's Food Security Work in World's Poorest Countries

Rachel Kyte's picture

When you want to put money, ideas, innovation, and hard work together to increase food security, there’s nowhere better than the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program – GAFSP.

Don’t just believe me. Listen to the Rwandan farmers whose now-terraced hillsides are getting higher yields, producing better nutrition, and improving their livelihoods.

Similar stories can be told in Tajikistan, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, and elsewhere.

Japan and the Republic of Korea are among those convinced that GAFSP is a good investment in food security. Inspired by a challenge from the Unites States, Japan and South Korea just pledged an additional $60 million to GAFSP at a meeting in Tokyo held in conjunction with the World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings.

The United States announced that it was prepared to contribute an additional $1 to GAFSP for every $2 contributed by other donors, up to a total of $475 million.

Why is GAFSP so successful?

Weekly Wire: the Global Forum

Johanna Martinsson's picture

These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.

CIMA
Making Media Development More Effective

"CIMA is pleased to release a special report, Making Media Development More Effective, by Tara Susman-Peña, a media development and communications consultant. She was the director of research for Internews’s Media Map Project, which informed this paper. A wealth of research demonstrates that a healthy media sector is consistently paired with better development outcomes and can contribute to better development. However, media development–donor support for strengthening the quality, independence, and sustainability of the news media–has comprised only about 0.5 percent of overall aid to developing countries. Should media development’s track record earn it a more central place in international development? A strong evidence base of original research conducted for the Media Map Project, a collaborative effort between Internews and the World Bank Institute, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, provides the opportunity to analyze the extent to which donor support to media has helped the media sector fulfill its promise to strengthen development. This report points out that donors to media development have a number of blind spots that prevent their interventions from being more effective and that media development stakeholders could improve their efforts by applying aid effectiveness principles to their practice." READ MORE

DFID Research for Development
Emerging Implications of Open and Linked Data for Knowledge Sharing in Development

"Movements towards open data involve the publication of datasets (from metadata on publications, to research, to operational project statistics) online in standard formats and without restrictions on reuse. A number of open datasets are published as linked data, creating a web of connected datasets. Governments, companies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) across the world are increasingly exploring how the publication and use of open and linked data can have impacts on governance, economic growth and the delivery of services. This article outlines the historical, social and technical trajectories that have led to current interest in, and practices around, open data. Drawing on three example cases of working with open and linked data it takes a critical look at issues that development sector knowledge intermediaries may need to engage with to ensure the socio-technical innovations of open and linked data work in the interests of greater diversity and better development practice."READ MORE

Peeling the mango: Community dynamics and social accountability efforts in Sierra Leone

Margaux Hall's picture

Recently, at a community meeting I attended at Robina clinic in Tonkolili district, Sierra Leone, facilitators asked a group of young women to rate the quality of health service delivery using what they coined the “mango test.” As part of this “test” community members decide how many hypothetical mangos, on a scale from 0 to 5, they would give a nurse as thanks for the quality of her care. 

Paralegals and Social Accountability: Who knew?

Shamiela Mir's picture

Social Accountability is getting more and more innovative these days. A recent event organized by Justice for the Poor (J4P) showcased a pilot program in Sierra Leone where a group of development practitioners are exploring new ideas on social accountability and how legal empowerment tools, such as community paralegals can play a complementary role by helping communities navigate the murky waters of administrative accountability and hold the government and the healthcare service providers accountable.

Public Finance for Water in Sub-Saharan Africa

Meike van Ginneken's picture

We know that water and sanitation services do not always recover their costs from tariffs. So, if communities or governments are to maintain the infrastructure properly, they depend on the public budget. And those expenditures must be predictable and transparent.To take a closer look at this issue, the World Bank analyzed public expenditure on water supply and sanitation from fifteen countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, assessing how much public money was budgeted for the sector and on what it was spent.

Justice in health care delivery: a role for Sierra Leone’s paralegals

Margaux Hall's picture

I recently attended a community paralegal training on promoting accountability in health care delivery in Makeni, Sierra Leone. During the training, a community paralegal named Elizabeth Massalay talked about bringing her niece to a clinic in Moyamba district to receive immunizations that the government provides free of charge thanks to the Free Health Care Initiative (FHCI), which offers free health services to pregnant and breastfeeding women and children under five. Mothers queued for free immunizations, painting a hopeful picture for a country that ranks 180 out of 187 in the 2011 Human Development Index and where almost one in three children die before reaching the age of five.

However, against this promising backdrop, Elizabeth saw that the nurse was demanding six cups of rice from each mother before providing the immunization. Elizabeth was witnessing how breakdowns within state institutions—including absent nurses, improper user fees, and “leakage” of up to 30% of FHCI drugs (according to government and UNICEF statistics)—undermine health care delivery. Responding to such breakdowns requires an understanding of health policy and regulations—what the state must provide and to whom—and knowing where and how to apply pressure when the state fails to do so.

History of Hybrid Courts in East Asia & Pacific: A ‘best fit’ approach to justice reform?

Peter Chapman's picture
Peter Chapman

It took 41 years for the fastest developing 20 countries in the 20th century to achieve basic transformations in the rule of law.  However, the World Development Report 2011 suggests that fragile countries cannot afford to wait that long.  Instead, in managing disputes, it is imperative for governments and the international community to support arrangements that fit each country context, take into account capacity constraints in government and the local level, and respond to the needs of users. Justice reform should be measured accordingly from a functional perspective—based on the needs of users—rather than abstract modeling of institutions on western approaches. 

How the RABI program transformed Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone has become one of the most improved economies in the Doing Business 2012 report—an amazing step toward sustainable economic growth for a country that has overcome a devastating civil war less than ten years ago. The country is now ranked 141st on the ease of doing business—an improvement of 9 places from the previous year. This achievement was made possible to a large extent by the IFC-World Bank Removing Administrative Barriers to Investment (RABI) program.

Sierra Leone: Impressions from Moyamba and Fourah Bay

Ritva Reinikka's picture



As we head into Spring Meetings in Washington, Sierra Leone is very much in my thoughts, because it is a country that faces many serious challenges—especially those relating to the survival of women and children—and because I’ve just returned from there, and have seen firsthand some of the efforts that are being made to turn this situation around.

This was an opportunity to look at human development in Sierra Leone through the lens of our

For the sake of fairness: Justice in development

Vivek Maru's picture

I spent four years co-directing a grassroots legal empowerment organization in Sierra Leone called Timap for Justice (“Timap” means “stand up” in Sierra Leonean Krio). One of our clients was a cigarette seller and sometime sex worker from the east end of Freetown—I’ll call her Kadiautu. A drunk off-duty police officer brutally beat Kadiatu after an argument one night, not far from the station.

May the Force of Broad-Based Economic Growth Be with You

Cara Santos Pianesi's picture

 If the world has a stage, the annual September gathering of the UN’s General Assembly is it. There, world leaders have an opportunity to address their colleagues (and, by media extension, global constituents) in a somewhat long-format speech. At the General Assembly, Premier Khrushchev banged his shoe. And, with understandably less attention, President Obama had this to say about development at this year’s High-Level Plenary Meeting (a.k.a. the Review Summit on the Millennium Development Goals):

“…To unleash transformational change, we’re putting a new emphasis on the most powerful force the world has ever known for eradicating poverty and creating opportunity. It’s the force that turned South Korea from a recipient of aid to a donor of aid. It’s the force that has raised living standards from Brazil to India… 

Social media: a focused, coordinated approach

Michael Christopher's picture

After having dabbled in the social media space for some time now, it seems that the World Bank Group has finally jumped in with both feet. No matter where you turn these days, a host of social media initiatives are springing up around the World Bank Group.

How soccer can save the world

Yasmine Cathell's picture

Soccer (aka football) is more than just a fun, popular, international sport. Soccer plays a role in international development by funding global education, effecting positive social change and producing renewable energy.  Yes, renewable energy.
Baby and soccer ball

Soccer and Society


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