The Centre for the Coordination of Youth Activities (CCYA) and ActionAid Sierra Leone has ended a daylong advocacy and campaign strategy workshop with Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) from Bo, Makeni and Western Area Urban and Rural. The engagement was based on the outcomes in the second citizens’ report on the country’s status on the implementation of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG). Augusta Ademokula, Project Officer for Mobilising Civil Society Support project, said the European Union funded project capacitates CSOs to remind government about full ACDEG implementation and to popularise it knowledge among the citizenry.
She said their engagement is based on citizens’ scorecards on their level of understanding of the charter and how government has been implementing it. Ademokula said the CSOs were drawn from Bo, Bombali and the Western Area districts respectively after they developed an advocacy strategy to engage government on full implementation of the ACDEG charter.
She said they did the second citizens’ report with indicators that looked into governance and processes from 2013 to 2019 on full government implementation. She said the engagement is aimed at taking scorecards at community level to be validated by citizens to ensure a wider advocacy on full implementation of the African Charter on Governance by government. The scorecard is one of the indicators used, she said, adding that the community scorecard is the rating done by locals on the articles regarding the promotion of good governance, rule of law and women participation among others.
Jeneba Kainessie, Program Coordinator for the Community Action for Sustainable Development Initiative in Bo, said their organisation engaged community people on their knowledge of ACDEG and governance in the country. She said the citizens’ scorecard is a reflection of what the people expressed, disclosing that after their engagement they are going to their respective communities to validate with the people to ensure their views are captured in the final report.
She said citizens were engaged in district headquarter towns for the development of the scorecards, and that majority of those engaged were not knowledgeable of ACDEG but could however relate to governance issues. She pleaded with other CSOs to join forces with them to advocate to government for the full implementation of the articles in the charter.
It can be recalled that the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG) is an African Union document signed by member states to strengthen governance, elections and democracy in their respective countries.
The document has 53 articles that highlighted issues on democracy, rule of law and human rights, the culture of democracy and peace, democratic institutions, democratic elections, unconstitutional changes of government, political, economic and social governance, among other issues. At the end of the CSOs’ engagement, presentations were made by districts on their development and national advocacy strategy aimed at ensuring government and other stakeholders are focused on full implementation of the articles.
By Mohamed Kabba