Famous on the internets!

Go team!

Thanks to Voice of America for writing two great stories about my awesome team in Rumbek, South Sudan!

South Sudan Women Think Outside the Box [VOA]
Sold, Abused - The Plight of South Sudan's Forgotten Women [VOA]

Hello South Sudan!

I've left the comforts of Ottawa to rejoin field life. Working in policy research is a different kind of challenging, and although I really appreciated the experience, I was beginning to become rather bored. It was really hard to break out of a programming mentality and focus on academia.

On a field research trip I realised - when interviewing NGOs and CSOs - that I was incredibly homesick for projects, and programs, and "doing things". This feeling translated into my work when I returned to Canada, leaving me desperate to get back to implementing and designing projects rather than researching policy alternatives. I needed to get back to there. Not necessarily "in the field", but back in that line of work.

Policy research is extremely important, and I have been so fortunate to have the experience, but there are so many people that are academically focused and would have killed for my job. I, on the other hand, saw it as a stepping stone to gaining experience in a niche area.

So I'm back with the old org. Back in the thick of it. No longer in the Middle East, but in East Africa.

Hello South Sudan!

Posters and GBV

In Sierra Leone, there is a clear public campaign to counter sexual exploitation and assault of women. This is in the professional and domestic sphere. I saw a number of posters and billboards with women being harassed or in imminent danger of being beaten - I particularly enjoy the use of posters from the Ghanaian Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (my old stomping ground) - reminding us that sexual abuse and exploitation is not acceptable and is punishable. Some are in Krio -possibly much more useful then straight up English for billboards at least - and seem to act as a reminder to men not to prey on women. I did not see any posters in Salone with men being abused by women, unlike in Ghana.



Gender based violence and exploitation is endemic in Sierra Leone, from cultural initiations into secret societies that involve genital cutting to human sacrifices (there's concern of this increasing in the lead up to the elections next year). I'm working with the police, and sexual harassment and exploitation is more than just common place. Fortunately this is an area that is heavily supported programmatically and institutionally (for example the SLP has a new Sexual Harassment Policy and a complaints division), but as of yet it's difficult to tell if this is making a difference. Or whether this is just lip service. I didn't really see many posters IN police stations or headquarters reminding people that sexual exploitation, assault, or domestic violence is wrong (there were large billboards beside or in front of some police stations in Freetown at least). I only conducted a basic search for information on how effective the posters are. Obviously many poster campaigns are coupled with use of other media (radio discussions/adverts, television, comic strips, public protest, training and workshops etc). But I couldn't really find anything - I'm not sure if anyone has any suggestions.



While we're on this topic, there was an interesting article in Foreign Affairs on the reliability of rape reporting numbers during war.