The Survivors Solidarity Fund grew out of a moment of collective grief and outrage in Sierra Leone. The fund is dedicated to thousands of survivor leaders across Sierra Leone and the families of the ones who died as a direct result of injuries sustained during their assaults. This fund is by and for all of us.

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One rape case in Sierra Leone is not an act of random violence or exceptional evil, but rather part of a continuum of violence that is the reality of the life of all girls and all women in Sierra Leone and around the world. This is why the Survivors Solidarity Fund is more that a simple response to a singular moment.

 

The Fund grows out of many years of organising work in community and nationally, including through the BlackTuesday movement, a feminist space for dialogue, healing, and direct and collective action. A movement that has gained unprecedented support and unparalleled wins in Sierra Leone over the last 2 years. As a movement we are clear that there will be no justice for one if there is no justice for all.

 

Together, we continue to call on the Government Sierra Leone, social institutions, traditional leadership and the international donor community to support:

 

• Comprehensive services for survivors of Rape and other forms of sexual violence, available free of charge at the point of contact for every girl and woman. To make this a reality, the Government and donor community must immediately commit resources to immediately scale up the work of Rainbow, Aberdeen Women’s Centre and other relevant service providers. That these critical life saving and life sustaining services continue to be underfunded is an act of vandalism on the lives and bodies of girls and women.

 

• Government to significantly increase the financial and other resources including professional training of the Family Support Unit of the Sierra Leone Police, to allow it to proactively and quickly investigate allegations of sexual offences in our communities. In tandem, the government must finally secure a Forensic Testing and Lab facility.

 

• A dedicated court with an expedited process to hear rape cases.​ It is simply unacceptable in a practising democracy that women and girls – even once they have made it through our punitive police system – are waiting for up to 5 year, to have cases against their abusers heard. Dedicated, specialist courts for rape and sexual violence related crimes – as piloted to great success in other countries – are needed in at least all of our 15 districts. Legal aid for survivors must be included.

 

• In the light of the COVID-19 crisis and shifting development priorities, we call on the Donor community to reaffirm their commitment to women and girls and to ring fence resources proportionate to the scale of the challenge - the emergency - that girls are  facing.

 

• Beyond these immediate interventions to support survivors of violence, we must make the commitments needed to transform the culture of sexual violence at its root. A National TaskForce on tackling rape and sexual violence - announced by the President at his United Nations Speech last September to lead the a citizens’s co-created national action plan would be one way forward.  What is clear is that there is no way forward without the women and girls who have been organising around this issue in the community for decades. Their visions for a new kind of world are our only hope.