Project Description: In spring 2008, the Leitner Clinic partnered with Timap for Justice, a grassroots justice organization in Sierra Leone, to analyze the child maintenance provisions of Sierra Leone’s 2007 Child Rights Act and draft revisions to the law that address the needs of rural children. The Leitner team consisted of Fordham Law students Nasim Farjad (`08), Meghna Saxena (`08), and Helen Shin (`08) and was co-supervised by Prof. Chi Mgbako and Anna Cave, an associate at the law firm of Davis Polk &
Wardwell.
In June 2007, Sierra Leone passed the Child Rights Act (CRA), which regulates such matters as applicati ons for child maintenance. The issue of child maintenance has been recognized as a rights issue in international human rights treaties, and the law represents the country’s attempt to comply with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Yet, the CRA, while a success in theory, does not reflect the reality for many parents and children in Sierra Leone.
Through research and fieldwork, Leitner Clinic students critiqued the shortcomings of the child maintenance provisions of the legislation and drafted revisions to the law. The Leitner Clinic calls for the creation of a mobile court system and establishment of family courts within the state-sponsored customary law court system so that rural parents will have access to courts that can enforce maintenance orders; the incorporation of explicit provisions approving alternatives to cash for child maintenance payments due to the fact that most Sierra Leoneans are subsistence farmers and not salaried workers; guidelines for determining the value of alternatives to cash; the creation of a government-sponsored “maintenance fund” modeled after similar initiatives in Africa; and the creation of procedures to obtain maintenance orders.
I am grateful to the Clinic for providing me with the invaluable opportunity to meet with and learn directly from Timap paralegals and other human rights advocates in Sierra Leone. Their enthusiasm and commitment to human rights was contagious and the experience has profoundly inspired and humbled me.
-Helen Shin (’08)
Description of Fieldwork: The Leitner Clinic traveled to Sierra Leone in March 2008 to meet with Timap for Justie paralegals in Magburaka, Yele, Bo, Kaniya, and Bumpeh about the challenges of working on child maintenance issues, specifically within rural settings. The Leitner Clinic also met with Timap’s codirectors in Freetown to brainstorm ideas regarding revisions to the law.
Project Outcome: The Leitner Clinic drafted a document critiquing the child maintenance provisions of the Child Rights Act and suggesting concrete revisions to the law so that it will better reflect the reality on the ground in rural Sierra Leone. Timap for Justice will use the document to advocate for changes to the law
