Female Genital Mutilation (Spring 2010)
Project Description: In spring 2010, in collaboration with the Center for Safe Motherhood Youth and Child Outreach (CESMYCO), a leading anti-FGM NGO in Sierra Leone, the Leitner Clinic designed and conducted anti-FGM human rights workshops for hundreds of students in seven secondary schools in northern Sierra Leone. In addition, the Leitner Clinic held town hall meetings to collect information about FGM and community by-laws in order to draft a community by-law to regulate the practice of FGM. The Leitner team consisted of Fordham Law students Jenna Beatrice (`11), Allison Chandler (`11), Melissa Paquette (`11), and Ryan Sylvester (`11) and was supervised by Prof. Chi Mgbako.
Partner Organization: The Center for Safe Motherhood Youth and Child Outreach (CESMYCO) is a Sierra Leonean NGO that campaigns against FGM. CESMYCO works throughout Sierra Leone to train and sensitize communities about FGM.
Description of Fieldwork:In March 2010, the Leitner Clinic traveled to Sierra Leone to conduct workshops related to FGM and other harmful traditional practices in secondary schools in the Kambia district in northern Sierra Leone where CESMYCO has successfully been battling FGM for ten years. The Leitner Clinic also worked with CESMYCO to conduct outreach workshops with medical personnel. Finally, CESMYCO and the Leitner Clinic led community workshops with FGM initiators and traditional leaders on the possibility of drafting community by-laws banning the performance of FGM on women younger than 18 years of age as a first step in outlawing the practice on the village level in parts of the Kambia and Mabina districts where CESMYCO has long-standing relationships with the community.
Project Outcome: The Clinic drafted a proposed community by-law to regulate FGM at the community level; researched funding sources for CESMYCO to continue its efforts, particularly to promote alternative employment for soweis (women leaders within the Bondo secret society in which FGM occurs in Sierra Leone); drafted a news story for submission to allafrica.com to highlight the work of CESMYCO ; and, developed a blog page for CESMYCO to increase visibility of its work. The proposed community by-law to regulate FGM addresses three primary elements: (1) setting an age of consent; (2) requiring informed consent; and (3) imposing punishments for violations.
Female Genital Mutilation (Spring 2008)
Project Description: In spring 2008, the Leitner Clinic partnered with Timap for Justice, a grassroots justice organization in Sierra Leone, to design a pilot project that focuses on the eradication of female genital mutilation (FGM) at the grassroots level. 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.
The dedication of Timap’s paralegals is remarkable and deeply moving. Timap’s justice work in communities throughout Sierra Leone should serve as an example for other organizations throughout the world where the formal justice system is not easily within the reach of ordinary people.
–Helen Shin (’08)
Description of Fieldwork: In Sierra Leone, FGM is a widespread cultural practice. Over 90% of Sierra Leonean women have undergone FGM. Because FGM in Sierra Leone is performed within female secret societies, known as the Bondo, FGM remains an intensely taboo subject and challenging terrain for human rights advocates. The Leitner Clinic spent months researching successful anti-FGM grassroots initiatives and anti-FGM legislation in Africa. In order to ensure that the anti-FGM pilot project proposal for Timap would reflect the reality on the ground in Sierra Leone, the Leitner team traveled to Sierra Leone in March 2008 in order to incorporate ideas, information, and recommendations from human rights activists and community members in Sierra Leone. Specifically, the Clinic team interviewed Timap’s paralegals, as well as some of Timap’s clients, in Magburaka, Yele, Kaniya, Bumpeh, Bo, and Freetown. They also interviewed human rights activists and medical practitioners who are working to eradicate FGM in Sierra Leone as well as girls who have fled their villages to escape the practice. In addition, the Clinic team met with young girls who have undergone FGM and were in the process of being initiated into the Bondo secret society.
Project Outcome: The Leitner Clinic produced an internal organizational strategy document for Timap that explored concrete ways that Timap can begin to tackle FGM at the grassroots and policy level in a manner that genuinely includes the voicesof rural and less powerful citizens. The document includes 1) a detailed roadmap for the creation of a pilot community based anti-FGM initiative; 2) an analysis of successful anti-FGM legislation in similarly situated countries; and 3) an analysis of FGM’s negative health and human rights implications. Timap will use the document to implement an anti-FGM community-based pilot initiative in one or two communities in Sierra Leone. In addition, Penetrating the Silence in Sierra Leone: A Blueprint for the Eradication of Female Genital Mutilation, will appear in a forthcoming volume of the Harvard Human Rights Journal.
Child Maintenance (Spring 2008)
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.
- Compiled notes from these meetings and used them to inform drafting a proposed community by-law to regulate FGM at the community level.
- Researched funding sources for CESMYCO to continue its efforts, particularly to promote alternative employment for soweis.
