By Elizabeth Costner
Impunity Watch Senior Desk Officer, Africa
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone – A confidential presidential audit commissioned by newly elected President Ernest Bai Koroma was released today by the BBC. The report details “grave inadequacies” in areas such as health care, tax collection and the security services and acknowledges that corruption is the “greatest impediment to the country’s development.”
President Koroma has made dealing with corruption a priority, and has said that Sierra Leoneans may now take and judge him at his word. Koroma will be formally inaugurated on Thursday, although he has been in office since September. Koroma has already taken several steps to addressing the corruption issues in the country, and response has so far been positive. However, Koroma still has much work to do.
Human Rights Watch issued a letter today to Koroma advising him to urgently address pressing human rights concerns, particularly the “striking deficiencies in the judicial system and ongoing corruption.”
Africa director Peter Takirambuddle said “The people of Sierra Leone have long suffered from a vicious cycle of corruption, economic decline, violence and immunity…President Koroma must articulate and implement a bold vision for improving Sierra Leone’s chronic human rights problems. There is no time to waste.”
Among the issues that Human Rights Watch asked Koroma to address are deficiencies in the national judicial system, prison conditions, abusive police conduct, and widespread corruption. They have also called on Koroma to abolish the death penalty.
Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries in Africa and is slowly recovering from a decade of brutal civil war that ended in 2001. The war began in 1991 when rebels crossed into the country from Liberia and took control of the diamond fields. After years of widespread human rights violations and atrocities, the rebels were eventually defeated by a United Nations peacekeeping force and a separate intervention by the British army. Sierra Leone has since created a hybrid international court with the UN in order to try those most responsible for violations during the war.
For more information, please see:
BBC News – S Leone ‘riddled with corruption’ – 14 November 2007
VOA News – Sierra Leone’s President Says Fighting Corruption is Priority – 14 November 2007
Human Rights Watch – Sierra Leone: New Leader Must Combat Injustice, Corruption – 14 November 2007
For more information on Sierra Leone, please see the following Impunity Watch reports: BRIEF: Special Court for Sierra Leone in Danger of Bankruptcy; Former CDF Leaders Sentenced in Sierra Leone; Sierra Leone Court’s Recent Verdicts Against Former CDF Leaders; Sentencing of Three Former Leaders of Sierra Leone’s Armed Forces Revolutionary Council; Forced Marriage a War Crime?
