The National Sowie Council and Sierra Leone Women are Free to Choose Speak out Against the "Child Rights" Bill in the Sierra Leone Parliament FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: THE CHILD RIGHTS BILL IS RECOLONIZATION: WE WON’T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN Freetown, 24th October, 2024 The National Sowie Council is publishing this press release and position statement to formally reject the Child Rights Bill and to call on all Members of Parliament and The Council of Paramount Chiefs to condemn this anti-Bondo Bill as well as all public and media discussion on Bondo and Sande Matters This Press Release/Position Statement is a call to all true and proud Bondo and Sande members to make your voices heard loud and clear to your sowies, your village and town chiefs, your section chiefs and especially your Paramount Chiefs seated in the Well of Parliament, and your MPs representing your district in Sierra Leone. This is the time to say a clear NO to the anti-Bondo Bill that this Government is masquerading as a Child Rights Bill in the House of Parliament. To summarize our position, the purported Child Rights Bill introduced to Parliament last week Tuesday is an anti-Bondo Bill for the following reasons:
Summary of our Position Statement to the Sierra Leone Government, Global Press and International Community: The National Sowie Council (aka) The National Council of Sowies, which is made up of the undersigned representatives, is informing all Sierra Leoneans at home and abroad, our Government officials and Members of Parliament, the diplomatic community, UN Agencies, ECOWAS and European Union representatives, local and international media, Civil Society and Human Rights Organizations, the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists, the Sierra Leone Bar Association and other stakeholders that we know nothing about and have nothing to do with the Child Rights Bill that was tabled in the House of Parliament by the Minister of Gender and Children’s Affairs, Honorable Dr. Isata Mahoi last Tuesday 15 October, 2024. Further, we condemn in the strongest terms that Honorable Mahoi would have the audacity to bring to the Well of Parliament in the presence of our Paramount Chiefs, both male and female, proposed legislation under the guise of protecting children’s rights that refers to so-called female genital cutting and so-called harmful practices. Additionally, in this most recent sham of an attempt to yet again slide in a Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting ban in Sierra Leone, Hon. Mahoi and other anti-Bondo Cabinet Ministers have demonstrated the unmitigated temerity to include a legally mandated role to UNICEF in this Child Rights Bill to enable UNICEF to secretly monitor and police Bondo and Sande women in our villages and local communities. This internationally prohibited UN interference in the local governance and existing traditional structures in the villages is designed to undermine the authority of Bondo and Sande women in our local communities. The inclusion of Section 25 and other dubious provisions in the Child Rights Bill is part of the End FGM by 2030 agenda that President Maada Bio’s Cabinet Ministers under the leadership of Chief Minister Dr. David Sengeh and Information Minister Chernor Bah have signed on to with the promise of millions of dollars from western donors and UN Agencies. We wish to immediately clarify the following issues in relation to the propaganda and social media disinformation efforts of Honorable Mahoi and her anti-Bondo Cabinet colleagues (we will publish a formal position paper later this week): 1. The Fabrication of a new “National Sowie Council”. The so-called “National Sowie Council” that Hon. Mahoi refers to and has been parading around Parliament and social media was created by herself this past January 2024 and her anti-Bondo Cabinet colleagues to try to divide the sowies in Sierra Leone and confuse Sierra Leonean citizens at home and abroad through social media disinformation. 2. The National Sowie Council aka National Council of Sowies. We, the undersigned, the legitimate executive and representatives of our sowies and traditional female heads of lineages and villages in Sierra Leone are not a secret group. We are officially recognized in our communities; many of us are descended from the very same ruling lineages as our village chiefs, section chiefs, and Paramount Chiefs. Those legitimate sowies who are vocational practitioners within Bondo and Sande are known to themselves and to us, and to our chiefs. Hon. Mahoi’s latest attempt at subterfuge is clearly aimed at the gullible western media and the diplomatic community that is financially underwriting this Government’s “Bondo-without-cutting” agenda. This age old tactic to use willing, western educated male, and now female, political elites in Government to divide and conquer “natives” will not work in Sierra Leone. The neocolonial strategy to use “tied aid” and other means to divide and conquer the head sowies of Bondo was recommended by American scholars at Harvard University and published as a white paper in 2016. Following this Harvard model, Hon. Mahoi has hand-picked so-called sowies who are mainly traditional herbalists and practitioners of medicinal leaves as well as local dancers and performers. Her fabricated “National Sowie Council” is part of the many fabulous disinformation tricks mastered by the current anti-Bondo Cabinet. Our organization already held a Press Conference last July 2023, that exposed the actions of the Minister of Information, Chernor Bah. As the former head of the anti-FGM NGO, We are Purposeful, Hon. Chernor Bah was personally involved in the staging of a hoax “FGM” kidnapping case and promoting fake “Bondo-without-cutting” ceremonies for the global media. What should be more concerning to all Sierra Leoneans is the fact that Hon. Bah filed a frivolous FGM human rights abuse lawsuit at ECOWAS against the Government of Sierra Leone in April 2023 just months before being appointed by President Bio himself to serve in his second-term Cabinet. Our organization also exposed Hon. Mahoi’s connivance earlier this year with local anti-FGM activist Nenneh Turay, freelance journalist Umaru Fofanah, CNN and UNFPA’s Global Media Campaign to propagate around the world a false and horrific claim that five girls died from FGM during Bondo initiation in Kambia District. Hon. Mahoi and her anti-Bondo colleagues in Cabinet have engaged in all these FGM hoaxes, fabricated FGM crimes, fake Bondo ceremonies, secret “strategic litigation” and other antics to instigate an FGM/C ban in Sierra Leone and, thus, the release of millions of dollars of funding for their own pockets. No traditional sowie with any decency, self-respect, or regard for her sacred role and status would dare support the current Child Rights Bill that criminalizes fellow sowies, that enables further public humiliation of our mothers and grandmothers, that openly references so-called “female genital cutting” or refers to our tradition as “harmful practices” and allows for the UN policing of girls’ genitalia in Sierra Leone. 3. Consultation with Paramount Chiefs. Hon. Mahoi asserted that she consulted with the Paramount Chiefs that were present on 15th October, 2024. No Paramount Chief that we are aware of has openly declared support for this Child Rights Bill, particularly its reference to “female genital cutting” and “harmful practices” and the policing role of UNICEF among other issues. In fact, Hon. Mahoi knows that as an initiate herself it is an egregious taboo for any male or female Paramount Chief, or any initiated male or especially any initiated female to openly and publicly speak about the genitalia of Sierra Leonean women and girls or so-called “female genital cutting” - let alone in front of the global media and the world’s cameras. We are aware of the very sad fact that our sitting President Maada Bio - who professes to be a Paramount Chief and son of a sowie - in a public, televised, town hall meeting this past August 2024, just prior to assuming Sierra Leone’s one month Presidency at the UN Security Council used the term “FGM” and “Harmful Practices” and misled the audience that there are laws in place in Sierra Leone prohibiting so-called “FGM” on underage girls. If this is President Bio’s position he has every ancestral authority at his disposal to consult with his head sowie and together they can sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to be in place to “protect” underage girls who he believes are being “harmed” or “mutilated” by Bondo and Sande sowies in his chiefdom in Bonthe District. 4. The Signing of MOUs: Hon. Mahoi indicated before our Members of Parliament that there were signed MOUs in place, presumably entered into either recently or years ago by certain individual sowies who either now (or then) are hoping to receive funds from the Government. MOUs are not legally binding documents. Any party to a Memorandum of Understanding can withdraw from an MOU at any time without any given reason as long as there is no longer an agreed understanding from one or both parties. In Sierra Leone’s first and only countrywide Bondo and Sande summit sponsored and organized by Sierra Leone Women are Free to Choose in 2018 at the launch of the first Madam Yoko Festival, the actual, true sowie heads of each and every chiefdom in every single District in Sierra Leone, came together and unanimously rejected all MOUs that were entered into by a few individual sowies. If there are Paramount Chiefs, including the President of the Republic of Sierra Leone, who choose to use the pejorative and offensive term Female Genital Mutilation or FGM or Female Genital Cutting or FGC or the hybrid FGM/C even though we have condemned this language, and who have openly expressed support for this Child Rights Bill and the inclusion of Section 25, then this breach of their code of honor is between them and their subjects. And, certainly the sowies in Bonthe, Bo, Moyamba, or any other chiefdom or district has the right to enter into an MOU for their own jurisdictions and regulate “female genital cutting” in their own chiefdoms. Our position is that no self-respecting Pomansu or Sandemusu will get in the way of these chiefs and their so-called sowies performing the idiocy of “Bondo-without-cutting” ceremonies for the pleasure and amusement of white people and their western financiers. 5. We, the undersigned, the actual daughters of the soil, the female heads of our lineages, villages, sections and chiefdoms answer to our matriarchal laws that govern initiated women. We uphold our sacred spaces where we deliberate as initiated women and we make decisions concerning our bodily practices - the very genital aesthetics that are now desired and highly sought after by white women and girls who willingly choose to undergo so-called “labiaplasties” and “clitoroplasties”, and other so-called “female genital cosmetic surgeries”. We are the ones that make decisions about the future of our tradition, our daughters and female descendants. 6. As such, we remind our MPs that Sierra Leonean women are not colonial or neocolonial subjects. Americans and Europeans have their laws legitimizing same-sex marriages, endorsing the “transition” of males into females and vice versa, the hormonal treatment of “trans” children to alter the development of their genitalia, reshaping of genitalia of “intersex” children, the growing popularity of “female genital cosmetic surgeries” even among teenagers, not to mention neonatal or underage male circumcision. With the exception of male circumcision, many of these trending cultural practices are anathema to our cultural and religious beliefs, values and social structures in Sierra Leone. Yet, we respect the rights of citizens in western and other countries to do what is in their best interest with regard to their bodies and the children under their care. We expect no less as mothers in Sierra Leone. We, the undersigned and the initiated women we represent, will never relinquish to NGOs or the UN, WHO or western governments or even the Government of Sierra Leone, our ancestral or religious responsibilities as mothers to transmit to our daughters our gender identity as circumcised or initiated Bondo and Sande women. We will not be denied, especially in our own country, our fundamental human rights to dignity and equality with circumcised men and the tiny minority of uncircumcised women in Sierra Leone. We intend to exercise our Constitutional rights to define for ourselves what is bodily integrity. We intend to peacefully enjoy our right to self-determination, to individual and parental autonomy, to culture, to religious and gender expression – our basic constitutional and human rights that are guaranteed to all other adults in this country and around the world. Finally, we will no longer be gaslit by self-serving anti-FGM campaigners in the Bio Cabinet and beyond or give ear to misogynoir invectives against circumcised African and Muslim women. For further information on this Press Statement or any matters relating to Bondo and Sande or the sowies we represent, please contact me personally, Dr. Fuambai Sia Nyoko Ahmadu, the authorized spokeswoman for the National Council of Sowies and The National Sowie Council on 232.88.360.212 or email me at [email protected] or visit our website www.awafc.org or my own website www.fuambaisiaahmadu.co National Sowie Council/National Council of Sowies:
Executive Committee 2024-2025 Adama Tobe Kamara, President Fanta Filie, Representative and Coordinator - Provinces Hawa Kamara, Secretary Fatmata Kargbo, Deputy Secretary/Youth Coordinator Oya Kamara, Financial Secretary Kadie Kamara, Treasurer Gaima Bangura, Organizing Secretary Baby Kamara, Deputy Organizing Secretary Gumbu Lawo, Coordinator - Freetown Urban and Rural Areas Rosalind Peter, Deputy Coordinator, Freetown Urban and Rural Areas Saffa (Dopojoe) Munu, Public Relations Officer Haja Jalloh, Membership Liaison Yabudu “Oil”, Deputy Membership Liaison Dora Kamara, Internal Auditor Nana Kosoh , Whip Memuna Turay, Whip ADVISORY BOARD *Yalimamy Sesay, Advisor: USA *Fuambai Sia Nyoko Ahmadu, PhD Advisor and Spokeswoman: Sierra Leone/USA Founder and Executive Director Sierra Leone Women are Free to Choose [email protected] WhatsApp +232.88.360.212
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Sierra Leone Women Are Free to Choose and The National Sowie Councils Press Release 6 February, 2024 RE: Response to The Guardian Article “3 Girls Die After FGM Rituals in Sierra Leone” 3 February, 2024  As a rule, the National Sowie Council does not respond to alleged police investigations involving supposed deaths linked to Bondo in Sierra Leone. Notwithstanding, given an unfortunate pattern of misinformation, kidnapping hoaxes, and fabrications of post mortems orchestrated by certain anti-FGM campaigners, we would like to use this opportunity to inform Sierra Leoneans, our policymakers, the Bio administration, and the international community of the following: Since 2016, the Guardian UK has colluded with high profile anti-FGM campaigners in Sierra Leone, such as Nenneh Turay of Amazonian Initiative and Hon. Chernor Bah, the current Minister of Information, to fabricate stories of FGM kidnappings and Bondo deaths. (Note: Hon. Chernor Bah, as the former head of We Are Purposeful, filed a frivolous FGM human rights abuse case against the Government of Sierra Leone at ECOWAS in April 2023 - see press release August 18, 2023). In addition to instigating the harassment, defamation and false imprisonment of sowies in the past, the Guardian UK and their local anti-FGM campaigners exploit the annual occasion of the UN’s Zero-Tolerance Day for FGM on February 6 to invent new claims of so-called FGM deaths in Sierra Leone. We contend that these previous outrageous allegations, and colonialist representations of our matriarchal sodalities, are deliberately designed to elicit global outrage and importantly, funding. More significantly, we view these most recent allegations as part of the Guardian UK’s attempt to reignite its failed anti-FGM campaign in Sierra Leone in anticipation of millions of dollars of external funding earmarked for Sierra Leone to implement a national anti-FGM policy and criminal legislation. Despite this attempt to demoralize and divide sowies and traditional women leaders in Sierra Leone, we are united in our opposition to any national policy or legislation that circumvents the democratic process of the Republic of Sierra Leone as well as the human rights of Bondo women to gender equality, self-determination and bodily autonomy. In the upcoming weeks, we welcome a thorough police investigation of the alleged deaths in the Northwest and, if any charges are warranted, we expect a robust prosecution (and we will ensure an equally vigorous defense representation) for anyone or persons charged with criminal offences. Our organizations are categorically opposed to forceful initiations of anyone – males and females – in Sierra Leone. In the meantime, in honor of our organizations’ Female Circumcision Awareness Week (February 6 – 13, 2024 ), we will publish our own national policy proposal for the preservation and modernization of our traditional Bondo and Sande sodalities (including formal clinical and literacy training for practitioners). We will also publish our position statements on the proposed Child Rights Act, the status of the ECOWAS case, the “radical inclusion” of sowies in national politics as well as other matters of concern to the preservation of our globally renown, female owned, masked societies. In a world where the aesthetics of Bondo excision have become popular and normalized in western female genital cosmetic surgeries, where gendered genital alterations are now a given in sex reassignment, intersex and gender “affirmation’ surgeries – even for non-consenting, underage children – it is high time for the UN, EU, WHO, African Union and western controlled global media to rethink the singling out, vilifying and infantilizing of African women as well as the open cultural appropriation of our bodily practices. For a list of references on the need for global approaches to ALL forms of genial alterations - irrespective of sex, gender, culture, ethnicity, religion, nationality, and socioeconomic class - please refer to the links on our website www.awafc.org. For further information on this press release, Female Circumcision or Bondo/Sande in Sierra Leone and West Africa, please contact:  Fuambai Sia Nyoko Ahmadu, PhD (she/her)
Spokeswoman, The National Sowie Councils Executive Director, Sierra Leone Women are Free to Choose [email protected] www.awafc.org WhatsApp +(1)202.904.0023 |
Fuambai Sia Nyoko Ahmadu, PhDI am an anthropologist, an advocate and activist. I am passionate about African sex and gender systems/ideologies. My research has focused on the symbolic meanings of female (and male) initiation and circumcision rites in West Africa and beyond as well as related issues of human rights, bodily autonomy, female sexuality and postcolonial feminism. ArchivesCategories |
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