USAID/Sierra Leone: Interview with Saran Daraba

JULY 15, 2004

MARWOPNET: Interview with Saran Daraba

Hadja Saran Daraba Kaba, a dynamic Guinean leader and the founding President of the Mano River Women's Peace Network (MARWOPNET), tells us here about the organization, which won the United Nations Prize forHuman Rights in 2003.

From its inception, MARWOPNET has worked to get women a place at the table during high-level decision-making, playing a critical role in promoting human rights in the Mano River subregion which encompasses Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

As conflict raged in Sierra Leone and Liberia and as refugee flows from Liberia and Sierra Leone into Guinea reached unprecedented levels at the beginning of the decade, MARWOPNET prevented the outbreak of hostilities between the three countries by bringing their leaders back to the negotiating table. Through early intervention, MARWOPNET impeded the erosion of human rights which occurs in wartime and furthered the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325, which specifically addresses the impact of war on women, and women's contributions to conflict resolution and sustainable peace.

Daraba has also been the recipient of numerous short-term training scholarships both in Guinea and in the U.S. offered by USAID. An advocate of both training and civil society education in Guinea, Daraba says that a USAID-sponsored study tour in organizational management, which took Guinean women leaders through eight states in the U.S. in 1991, was so informative that it became a pivotal point in her own career.

LL: What is your view on the situation now in Guinea?

SD: Guinea's situation is quite specific -- though we"ve not experienced civil war, the bad governance, and the social, economic and political problems have led us into a crisis, and we are not really at peace. Everybody is worrying about the internal political situation right now. And in Sierra Leone, the UN put in a peacekeeping force that was very, very expensive, but the reconstruction is not going fast enough to take care of the refugees -- some steps have been made, but they have lost everything -- their houses have been destroyed, families have been divided, so they go back to their homes in Sierra Leone, and then they end up coming back to Guinea.

People cannot stay for long in Sierra Leone because the international community has put money into the peacekeeping, but not enough money into the reconstruction. The country has been at war for ten years, and the impact of the war is not only material--there is also mental trauma, and it will take time for people to heal. Our griots -- our traditional communicators -- will tell you that the peacekeeper soldiers can stop the war but they cannot bring peace.

LL: So who brings peace?

SD: Civil society, who also need enough resources to enable them to play the role they should play to weigh in between the government and the opposition. In this sub-region, we have enough organizations, unions, and religious leaders who could've played a better role and could've been more involved in the peace process. I think that not giving civil society a big enough role was one of the failures of the peace process in Sierra Leone, and that we should learn lessons from that and apply them to the peace process in Liberia, and eventually in Côte d'Ivoire.

LL: So that is your recommendation for the peace process in Liberia?

SD: Yes, but it is difficult for the UN to adapt. The DDR (Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration) program is a UN-shaped program that is applied all over the world and has very little flexibility. There is also a great discrepancy between the money they are spending in Europe, and the money they are spending here to help refugees. So those are the problems we have in the sub-region, and I'm happy to hear that USAID is looking at all this from a subregional perspective. That is why we set up our organization, MARWOPNET.

LL: For the first time in a long time, peace is coming to the Mano River Union countries. What was your organization's role in bringing that about?

SD: We came into the picture in 2001 when the situation was really dramatic in the sub-region, and the three governments would not meet--political dialogue was completely blocked, and people were dying from violence only because the governments could not create dialogue within the political framework they put into place. They were some protocols, some treaties, but they were not respected.

NGOs working in the field could not even move because of armed groups--they continued uncontrolled because a criminal economic system has developed in this sub-region. Trafficking of drugs, children, women, arms -- a kind of parallel economy has been set up and in that some people have no interest in peace.

LL: So the war situation helped advance certain people's interests?

SD: Yes, and when the governments won't talk to each other, it is an ideal situation for them to act. That's why people were dying, that's why women were raped, that's why children were really forced to be engaged in armed groups. So there were all kinds of violations of human rights.

LL: So what were you trying to do?

SD: We were trying to get at the seat at the table at the sub-regional level. Everybody was talking about the peace process in Sierra Leone and Liberia but no women were there.

LL: So fifty percent of the population was being excluded?

SD: More than that. They had a summit of heads of State, ministers, expert consultants, but no women were there, so the concerns of women were not raised. So we lobbied, and advocated to be at the right place at the right time, because we were seeing some facts that leaders were completely blind to. They did not want to face the facts, and we were telling them what was really happening.

LL: So what did you want to call people's attention to?

SD: We told them that we must work to bring peace because we are all connected in the sub-region. We are all related. The borders are quite porous whether you are Guinean, Sierra Leonean, or Liberian. You can't say, 'I don't care about what's happening in Sierra Leone or Liberia because I'm Guinean,' no way! What is happening next door will come to you, and vice versa. We did not move fast enough to stop the war in Liberia. Liberia was going down in flames, then Sierra Leone, and then it was coming into Guinea. So we said, 'Okay, this must stop. We can't destroy the entire sub-region because of lack of vigilance and really bad governance.' Our countries don't understand accountability--everybody wants to say, 'I'm sovereign in my country.' In the global context, with the Internet and cell phones, what does that mean?

LL: So you're saying the countries are all connected, right?

SD: Yes, and concretely, for people in the city of N'Zérékoré, at the Southeast corner of Guinea, events in Liberia have more of an impact on their lives than what happens in the rest of Guinea. They are four hundred kilometers from Monrovia, and one thousand two hundred kilometers from Conakry. They often don't care about what is happening in Conakry, but they are following on a daily basis on what is happening in Monrovia.

>Gueckedou is the same -- it is a city in Guinea, but the social, economic and cultural situation of these cities is more closely-related to cities in Sierra Leone and Liberia than those in Guinea, so people there are more connected to Sierra Leone and Liberia to the rest of Guinea. We have drawn our leaders' attention to that.

It's the same in Sierra Leone. In cities like Koindu, they don't care about what's happening in Freetown--they are related to Faranah, Guéckédou and Kissidougou in Guinea. In Wondjama, in Liberia, they don't care about what is happening in Monrovia. They are connected to Guéckédou and Macenta. These were the points we raised during discussions.

LL: So how did you get your foot in the door?

SD: We started by working at the national level where there were already strong women's movements. We worked in all three countries with national women's organizations, women lawyers, media professionals, women ministers and parliamentarians, and businesswomen. So at national level, we had women groups that were strong enough to stand up and say, 'Okay, we must be heard.' And these women began to struggle for peace at the national level.

Women had a very big impact on the peace negotiations in Sierra Leone before the warring factions went to Lom Togo to sign a peace agreement.

LL: How did you have an impact on the signing of a peace agreement?

SD: By organizing protest marches, sit-ins in front of parliament, writing articles, and discussing issues on the radio. The women have sometimes spoken directly to rebels groups, saying, 'Why are you using guns against us?' They have challenged the rebels groups, as well as the government.

At the grassroots level, in Guinea, for example, we gave space to women refugee groups to use our office space to have their meetings, do their computer work, or to type letters or documents. We did that so they would be visible, and to raise their concerns to UNHCR or to the UN systems.

Also, each year on national day, and on women's day, we give these women refugees the opportunity to explain what has happened and is happening in their countries. They explained to us the violence they have experienced--sexual violence, they have been raped, some women were killed, mutilated, some have suffered amputations. They explained that to us. And then we organized a very big march here.

LL: What do you consider your organization's greatest accomplishments?

SD: I think that women have played a great role in the making of the Mano River Union. Today everybody is talking about Mano River Union, but in 2000-2001, it was not easy to conceive of it. That and the fact that internationally today it is recognized that peace and security in West Africa can only be achieved by taking a regional perspective. We are an example of what you can do when you work together.

The second accomplishment I want to point out is that we have saved lives by intervening at the highest level of the three countries and at the summit of ECOWAS in 2001, 2002, and 2003. We were there to lobby, to push, and to say, "Okay, this is what you have said, but these are the facts -- this is what we have seen on the ground--so now what you are going to do?"

LL: Can you give me a specific example?

SD: We stopped the media wars, for example, "la guerre des ondes," ("the war of the [radio] waves&") between the governments. The media was being used to send out aggressive hate messages. We were the ones who said, 'That is enough, you can't do that.' But we also worked at the grass roots level by telling people, "Don't listen to those people, they are politicians. You have been living there with your parents for centuries. Don't take up guns now to solve your problems--you can sit and talk.

LL: What is the biggest problem you see with regard to violations of human rights?

SD: That"s another problem -- women's rights must be seen through a cultural lens. Something may appear to you as strange, but for me it is normal. When I go the USA, something may appear strange to me, but for you it is common. Way before colonization, the Mandingo empire, the Fulani, Mossy, Houssa, Baoule and Kele kingdoms were political entities where law was set and written even. That's one thing from a historical perspective. But then you have different religions, Christians, Muslims and others religions that have their own sets of laws. So you have traditional laws, local laws, these religious laws but you also have laws inherited from the United Kingdom, the U.S. and France.

LL: In the sub-region where you have between 50-80% illiteracy, where those laws have not been disseminated and understood by people, what do you do?

SD: With regard to women, I think all laws related to citizenship must be given to women. If they are a citizen, they have to ask for their rights. But to know their rights, they must have civic education. They should also know the international conventions like CADAW (the Convention Against all kind of Discrimination Against Women)-- they must know that. If your rights are violated in your daily life, I think you should know that you have somewhere to go to complain.

We have translated CADAW into national languages, and have trained lawyers to translate it into national languages so that it can be useful to women who are not highly educated. We also trained paralegals at village level, so that they can recite the law when necessary. We are now working with Africare (a USAID-funded NGO) in Dinguiraye, Guinea--we are training women there.

LL: What is your organization doing right now?

SD: We've just had the Mano River Union summit here in Conakry, which went well, but we must keep the pressure on our leaders so they will continue to keep things moving forward. If we don't keep the pressure on, they'll do as they like. We are, of course, looking for support.

LL: What's your biggest challenge right now?

SD: The new challenge for MARWOPNET now is to participate fully in DDR programs
in the three countries in crisis--Cocirc;te d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

LL: Keep the pressure on. Thank you!

Story and photo by Laura Lartigue