Mrs. Fatmata Claire Carlton-Hanciles is the first Executive Director of the Sierra Leone Legal Aid Board. She has been credited with expanding access to justice, especially in the remote parts of the country where access to justice is fraught with serious challenges.
This has come as no surprise to many who have been following her works since she started her professional career in 1998 following her call to the Bar.
Since then she has devoted her career to promoting women’s rights issues, seeking justice for victims of the country’s decade-long conflict and now ensuring that the poor and marginalized are able to access justice and that they are not disadvantaged because they are poor.
Ms. Carlton-Hanciles was engaged in private practice for over four years, which she combined with civil society activism following her call to the Bar. She was a member of the executive of the Women’s Forum, which is a leading civil society organization that advocates for the rights of women and equal representation for same in all spheres of governance.
She joined the United Nations backed International War Crimes Tribunal, the Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2003 as Defence Counsel and rose to the enviable position of Principal Defender in 2009, a position she held until the closure of the Court in December 2013.
She is the only Sierra Leonean to have held that position and also the longest serving Principal Defender in the history of the Court. As the head of the Defence Office, she was responsible for ensuring that rights of suspects, accused and convicts were respected.
The quest for justice and a fairer society saw her join the Board in May 2015, which has scored remarkable successes under her watch. I will attempt to highlight the key ones.
One of her greatest strengths has been her passion for the job, her energy, hands-on approach to work, open door policy and capacity to form partnership with civil society organizations and justice sector institutions.
In less than four years of existence of the Board, she has been able to build a formidable team, which has established a reputation for delivering results. This could be attributed to the fact that recruitment is based on merit and not on tribe or region. This is why the Board continues to make steady progress even though majority of lawyers of the Board are from the South/East. This was the case even before the current government was elected into office.
Also, Ms. Carlton-Hanciles’ amazing capacity to keep the Board in operation with little or nothing continues to attract admiration. There have been instances under the previous government when the Board had gone for nearly six months without a subvention. That notwithstanding, work had gone on steadily. Also, landlords had shown incredible level of understanding by not evicting the Board even though rent is overdue by a couple of months. This is due in large part to the fact that people believe in and appreciate what the Board is doing and are ready to make sacrifices to accommodate the Board. In some areas of the country, partners from civil society and Local Councils have offered office space to the Board’s Paralegals for free.
It is therefore no surprise that Ms. Carlton-Hanciles has been credited with transforming the Board into the largest legal aid provider in the country. The Board has at least two Paralegals in fourteen of the sixteen districts in the country. The two newly created districts do not have Paralegals stationed in them. However, they have paralegals covering them as per period prior to their creation.
Also, the Board has sixteen lawyers, eight of whom are resident in seven of the fifteen districts outside the Western Urban. Each of the lawyers covers at least two districts with the exception of Kono District which has a lawyer stationed in the district. Also, it is the only institution with a resident lawyer in Moyamba, Port Loko and Kono Districts.
Another major achievement of the Board, under her watch, has been in the provision of legal services. 214,476 people, including non-Sierra Leoneans, have so far benefited from the scheme from its inception in May 2015 to December 2018. 106,655 people benefitted from the scheme in 2018. This includes 39,834 children and 30,009 women. The former accounts for 37% of beneficiaries of the scheme and the latter 28%. This is up 23,602 on last year when 83,053 people benefitted from the scheme.
A total of 20,807 benefited from the scheme in the first quarter of 2018. 16,592 of them from the Legal Empowerment Programme through community and school outreach. This number accounts for 80% of beneficiaries of the scheme. The fact that the Legal Empowerment Programme accounted for most of the beneficiaries of the scheme in the first quarter of 2018 is not a coincidence. Since the fourth quarter of 2017, the priority of the Board had been to engage the electoral processes in order to ensure the elections are free, fair, credible and peaceful through the Anti-Election Violence Platform Campaign.
One of the major successes of the campaign was the sensitization meeting for all the cliques in the Western Area. The only institution to have done so. Through this meeting, the Board was able to engage with the various cliques and assign a Paralegal to each to monitor their conduct and provide advice and legal assistance to those who are in contact with the law. The groups were encouraged to visit the office on Lamina Sankoh Street. It is during these engagements that the ‘Crime to Career Programme’ was born. The Board is currently working with the Ministry of Youth to deliver the programme.
During this period, the Board defended 257 such cases – 9 in the High Court and 248 in the Magistrate Court – accused charged with election related offences. Also, the Board provided legal assistance to suspects who were investigated for electoral offences. The Paralegals intervened directly in incidences of violence between supporters of political parties around the country.
Because the services are speedy, cost free and use the local language, the Board is the first port of call for many seeking justice around the country, even for criminal matters. This can be attributed to the fact that the Board has established a niche in the provision of primary justice services which has made it easier to address the justice needs of people particularly those in remote communities through Alternative Dispute Resolution service, legal empowerment through community and school outreach, referrals to the relevant justice sector institutions and provision of advice and legal assistance to both administrators and users of the Local Court and the informal justice system. This has brought about an increase in demand for the services of the Board. At the same time, it has lessened the pressure on the police and the courts.
Also, the Board is taking decisive action to end ‘casualization’ of workers through public interest litigation. This refers to the exploitation of workers by keeping them as casual workers for periods ranging from months to several years in order to deny them their rights to salary and benefits as provided by law.
One such is the legal action that has been instituted against GITEX Company on behalf of twenty-one (21) workers who were employed as casual staff for long periods, some for up to sixteen years. This is the system wherein employers use our labour laws which are obsolete and not fit for purpose to employ people for long periods, while denying them the minimum wage and their contribution to the National Social Security and Insurance Trust (NASSIT). It is also designed in such a way that workers are not entitled to Annual Leave, Sick Leave and Allowances and at the same time depriving government of revenue
Also, the Board is providing legal assistance to 140 former workers of the MSF Construction Company (MSF Engenharia) to ensure they get their backlog salaries and benefits. The owners of the company had left the country in July 2017 unknown to the workers after the company’s contract was terminated by the National Authorizing Office (NAO). Through the efforts of the Board there is a firm commitment on the side of Government to pay the workers five months backlog salary.
The Board also provided assistance to 80,000 War Widows by ensuring they get their long overdue Rehabilitation Grants. Following series of meetings with the National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA) and Ministry of Finance coupled with the possibility of legal action the latter agreed to release funds towards the payment of the grants. It was agreed that the War Widows will be paid in three equal installments in August, September and October 2018 respectively. NaCSA verified the beneficiaries and then trained them prior to the release of the funds for payment of the grant. We are happy to note that the first installment was paid last year.
The Board has established satellite offices called Community Advisory Bureaus in 20 wards in the Western Area. This initiative is aimed at making justice more accessible by empowering local communities to take ownership of their justice needs through mediation, legal education, referrals and advice and legal assistance to members of the community accessing the justice system. In the long term and based on the availability of funds, the Bureaus will be established in all the 446 Wards in the country.
The icing on the cake for the Board for 2018 was the move taken by the Board in collaboration with partners to stop a child marriage ceremony at the mosque in Lumley. The favorable publicity around the Board’s intervention and the statement of support from the Minister of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs, Ms. Baindu Dassama and the Commissioner for the Children’s Commission, Ms. Laggah, at a joint press conference held in the Conference Room at the Lumley Police Station in Freetown on August 10 speak to the commitment of government to ending child marriage.