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Showing posts from March, 2020

While the world is busy getting through the pandemic, this happened in Freetown

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The world is seeing unprecedented events during the global pandemic, as the hunt for COVID-19 treatment and vaccines continues. While Sierra Leone, which was adversely affected by the Ebola epidemic in 2014, now struggles to protect people and prevent the coronavirus from spreading, there's fear and anxiety regarding personal security. Read today's blog written by Tracey Marke.   W e were told that this new direction with the lands ministry would be a force for good— make things better. But instead, it appears that the lands ministry is a law unto themselves, seizing and molesting, disadvantaging and dispossessing and downright stealing lands from communities who have legal title to private land. Time and time again we have watched as people with legal long-held title have been targeted, bullied and harassed and yet we have seen no change or halt to the lands department's modus operandi of pouncing on people’s legally held land.  In November I became one such a t

Sunday, March 8, 2020 | International Women's Day

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On Women's Day, enjoy this archive photo of Haja Zainab Hawa Bangura and a group of women as you celebrate the day. Currently, Zainab is the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Nairobi. She was appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres in December 2018. Bangura became a social activist when Sierra Leone was ruled by a military junta. She began with consciousness-raising efforts among urban market women, reminding her followers that her own mother was a market woman. In 2007, Bangura became Sierra Leone's foreign minister. She was the second woman to serve in that post, following Shirley Gbujama who held that position from 1996 to 1997. She served as Minister of Health and Sanitation from 2010 to 2012. The daughter of an imam, Zainab Hawa Bangura was born "Zainab Hawa Sesay" in Yonibana, Tonkolili District in the Northern Province of British Sierra Leone. She attended secondary school on a scholarship that was awarded to he