The witnessess of two HURRARC women rights activists from Sierra Leone

Hawa fights to protect children from genital mutilation, even after having been threatened.

Josephine is involved into the question: she’s a victim.

Shooting and editing: Francesca Gentile

Sights and sounds from Kono district

Eight years after a civil war, this is everyday life in one of the richest diamonds mines area.

A preview of Francesca Gentile’s documentary on Sierra Leone. Shooting on February 2010 following the activities of Hurrarc NGO around the country.

Sierra Leone fragments from Francesca Gentile on Vimeo.

Sahr GMP Fania, executive director, introduce the activities of Hurrarc NGO Sierra Leone.

GWIDA – Gbogboafeh Women’s Integrated Development Association is a HURRARC CO-GENDER Commission branch in KONO.

As a part of jhrs Fellowship program, jhr trained journalist Mohamed Massaquoi investigated the conditions of the Kenema state prison in Sierra Leone. He discovered that the prison had no medical facilities and inmates were afflicted with multiple diseases, including chicken pox, scabies, piles and others. Inmates were sleeping on the bare floor, had insufficient food and were using a single bucket between 4-5 people as a toilet. Overcrowding meant there were 150 people in a space designed for 70.

via jhr fellow helps government improve conditions of state prisons in Sierra Leone.

A video by Piero Ferraris with thirty ink drawings, coloured with pastels, by Raffaele Palma

La Stampa, the main newspaper of Turin (Italy), has published an article on HURRARC website.

Here a SimpleViewer Flash gallery should be displayed. Click here to open the post in your browser to see the gallery.

Thirty ink drawings, coloured with pastels, in solidarity with the problems of this great continent. By Raffaele Palma

In Palma’s work, Africa’s profile is in continuous metamorphosis, and becomes a starting point for stimuli and reflections which are sometimes ironical and sometimes satirical, and sometimes simply poetic.
Ten pictures to say that Africa lives, hopes, fights, suffers; and is born, dies and then is reborn again.
Pictures that underline not only Africa’s most urgent and grave needs, but also underline its most beautiful and wild aspects.
Because Africa has a lot to teach the West, if the “evolved” peoples know how to listen with attention and humility.
Africa … for love, brotherhood, solidarity, sympathy, empathy … for Africa.

On the morning of the 17th November, 2009, HURRARC had a brief meeting with Pangaya from Germany, who were represented by or in the persons of Madam Anja Lher, and Mr. Aruna Samura.

On the 17th November, 2009 by 10 am, most of the senior HURRARC Members have converged to meet with them, as they were in the office the previous day, to see the National Executive Director, Mr. Sahr GMP Fania, in an impromptu visit.

However, they were able to meet with the HURRARC’s Tuition and Research Director, Mr. Ishmael Abu Kamara with whom they reaffirmed their appointment for the following day (Tuesday). Anja maintained that they were moving much closer to our office and therefore decided to see us briefly.

On that day, as the rest of the members were painfully crossing the Terrific Traffic from the Eastern part of Freetown to the West at Shelter for Africa House, at the National Stadium Compound. By 11 am, Madam Anja Lohrer and Aruna Samura halted at the entrance of the Clay Building under the Cotton Tree, and were welcomed by the National, Executive Director, the Secretary General and the rest of the members and Staff present. They were ushered in, and the rest of HURRARC flowed behind them to take their seats.

Mr. Fania Formally greeted them and made a brief Introduction. He thanked them for their respects for the appointments and the efforts from both HURRARC and Pangaya, in the need to cement this inevitable inter-Continental Relationship, for the benefits and common interest of promoting Educations and mutual Relationships between us, in the all aspects that surrounds our cordial interests.

Mr. Fania told them that they were welcome to tell us their position with HURRARC, since the day we first met. Anja said that they were very happy to see us, as well as appreciates the efforts of all. We explained to her the determinations of HURRARC to carry out its works in both Advocacy and Empowerments, targeting the General aspects of Human Rights Respects, and specific areas that must be focused like, the Rights of a Woman in Co-Gender, The Rights of the Child, and the empowerment of all including the Youths in HINYA (HURRARC’s Integrated National Youth Actions).

He gave her a brief explanation about the past activities, the current activities and challenges like the OLPC, the School Tours, The HURRARC’S School of Internship Project, The Establishment of a Newspaper, the Radio Station etc.

Lohrer said that it is her duty to carry out the reechoing of our present works and capacity needs to those concerned.

She welcomed the live manuscripts of our written books, The Vicious Agony for Power and Blood Diamonds, the African Lions’ Vicious Circle, the Liberian Bloody Reign of Terror, Who Trust the Law. She was said to be very impressed with the works, as Mr. Fania explained the way the manuscripts were written (out of the collections of the reports from members).

Mr. Fania explained also about Co-Gender and the need to help the women in Sierra Leone, as they were nudging them out of the race for the Paramount Chieftaincy in Kono, which is said to be only for men because, unlike the Mendes Poro Secret Society, (which is much democratic than the Kono’s) for allowing the women to join the Poro Society and become Eligible to be Paramount Chieftaincy, which is not only unlawful in the traditional setting, but considered to be an offence, for which attempt alone, will let a woman incure a lot of fines to pay.

With all, Anja showed a very deep interest in the plights of the women and promised to send our voices outside to Germany and the rest.

We left the office by 12:45 pm. to see the Proposed Residence for Oliver Muller and Madam Sophie Erchen. We reached Kissy Road by 1:30 pm after much by passing of the terrific traffic to the former place of our for the past seven smashed telecenter, which we have just finished out of our weekly contributions, for the domestic management of the organ, if we should maintain integrity and independence in our works.

Mr. Samura, the Regional Coordinator of Pangaya (arunasamura@googlemail.com) who took the front of the cab, while Anja Lohrer (anja@pangaya.de), HURRARC’s National Secretary General and National Mr. Sahr GMP Fania took the back seat, descended in front of road transport, crossed the street to the Telecenter, situated in front of Bottlers; a burnt down building of TChiotram Supermarket, which serves as a gray area before, but where the presence of HURRARC has induced fear in them, as our weekly psychological healings and conscientisations have brought in good results.

But we told Anja the situations, as they don’t even have homes to lay their heads, which is the confirmation of the need for the supports of our Youths Hand’s Worth Revolution Project.

Mr. Fania took Anja and Samura into the building, where he was painting the sign board and teaching some of these boys to do the Arts works for their survivals at least to go through. Mr. Fania even gave some money to the little boys to sell cold water and make their daily breads, than the stealing. Anja liked the Signboard and took a snap of it.

At 26 Race Course Road, my home, where Lena has decided to live with my sister and the room proposed for Muller. Although it was raining, Anja seemed to like it as it never disturbed her works on that day. From there, they moved to Mr. Kombay in the East, who used to Lodge the entire Humanist and other European Guests. Kombay and his mother, who instituted the Yani Memorial Primary School Compound welcomed us and took both Anja and Samura with the HURRARC members around, to see the proposed lodgings, which they seemed to like, more than the Race Course. Kombay told and assured them about the Security and the measures they put in place for both the Guest and the Security.

As soon as the talks were completed, they moved off after shaking of hands and smiles, with the promise to get on to one another.
Mr. Fania and the Secretary General, Mohamed Kaindaneh were dropped down at their Tele centre, as Pangaya drove off with waving.

Written by National Secretary General: Mohamed Kaindaneh
Edited by the National Executive Director: Sahr GMP Fania

Since July, HURRARC has recently received letters from postgraduate students in Holland, England and Germany who would like to work in Sierra Leone as interns.
They are examples of a new generation of anti-poverty campaigners – the many volunteers from all over the world, just like modern pilgrims, who are now visiting Sierra Leone (literally – Lion Mountain) and other African countries – who are dedicating a part of their lives to the cause of Peace and Freedom in Africa.

This includes the freedom from poverty, to help uplift millions of people in Africa and elsewhere out of the Slough of Despond, as John Bunyan, the writer of “Pilgrim’s Progress”, called the poverty of his own days.

September was an important month for Sierra Leone, as Irene Khan, the General Secretary of Amnesty International spent a week there last month to focus world attention on the country’s terrible mother and child death rate, one of the highest in the world.

This month, her new book on the struggle against poverty is being published. This raises for many African mothers and children the most basic of all human rights – the right to live. One in 8 Sierra Leone women dies in childbirth, and one in 5 Sierra Leone children die before the age of 5.

For many of its people, life in Sierra Leone is a survival course, and many people don’t survive it for long.

The main causes of the country’s death rate among expectant mothers and children appear at first sight to be simple to recognise – the almost complete lack of accessible, good quality prenatal health care in Sierra Leone; the disastrous underfunding of the country’s health service in general, and the chronic poverty that is omnipresent in a country that is still, despite the efforts of nearly 300 NGOs in Sierra Leone, at the bottom of the United Nations’ economic and human development indicators.

So when we‘re looking at the problem of corruption in Sierra Leone, we also need to bear in mind both the absolute nature of the country’s poverty, (and how much money the country would require to secure both economic growth, and the foundation of a welfare state); and the ongoing worldwide struggle against the phenomenon of corruption that has engulfed us all over the decades following the struggles of the 60s and 70s.

Sierra Leone, like Liberia, Rwanda, DR Congo, Sudan, Algeria and Somalia, has been recently a symbol of human suffering from war. This small and beautiful country is only six years on from a conflagration that engulfed it in bloodshed, cruelty and death for eleven years – a human experience more terrible than any earthquake anywhere within our lifetimes: especially so because the destruction was wrought by human beings.

In consequence, many human beings in Sierra Leone – having been forced to ask themselves what it is to be human in the face of so much inhumanity, are searching for a faith to live by.

The HURRARC – founded mainly by refugees from the civil war in Sierra Leone, at the outbreak of the war in 1992, seventeen years ago, have found a new faith: Human Rights’ Respect Awareness Campaigning – the meaning of the acronym “HURRARC” and have the same type of evangelical faith in human rights as the early black and white campaigners against slavery.
Human Rights for many Africans has become a basic survival question.

by George Charlie Wright,
HURRARC’s International Consultant, Turin, Italy
Email: geowrit@etabeta.it