CENTER FOR MEMORY AND REPARATIONS FACILITATES REMEMBRANCE AND TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE ISSUES IN SIERRA LEONE
With support from the African Transitional Justice Legacy Fund (ATJLF), CMR-SL has been able to reach out to vulnerable communities, stakeholders and more, to accomplish its goals.
The Principal, Center for Memory and Reparation, Joseph Kaifala explained in an interview to MRCG that every year they commemorate National Reconciliation Day by getting Sierra Leoneans involved in community service through a campaign called #DuSomtinfoSalone and also lobby the Government of Sierra Leone to officially declare a National Reconciliation Day (NRD).
Mr Kaifala stated that “in the #DuSomtinfoSalone activity, we urge Sierra Leoneans to use 60 minutes of their time for community service as a way of using the past to fix the future and also plan commemoration activities for March 23rd in remembrance of the country’s civil war.”
Mr. Kaifala further explained that one of the impacts of these interventions is that “we have identified and protected about 10 mass graves around the country in addition to the war monument in Bomaru, Kailahun District, where the civil war started.”
Mr. Kaifala pointed out that in spite of the successes achieved so far, there are challenges to implementing the projects, especially in rural areas of the country. Some of these challenges, he noted, are the issues of transportation and communication in the provinces. Due to the lack of electricity and poor mobile phone network in communities, he said it is difficult to communicate with community people to coordinate and implement some of their activities.
He concluded by calling on every Sierra Leonean and the government to be supportive to the CMR-SL because it is in the national interest.