HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS CALLS FOR URGENT ATTENTION TO SITUATION IN SIERRA LEONE

25 June 1999




Sierra Leone requires urgent international attention if it is to overcome its recent history of horrendous human rights abuses, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson said today in Freetown.

Ending a two-day visit to the war-torn country, Mrs. Robinson, who was accompanied by a high-level delegation of African and international personalities, said she was "deeply-shocked" by the extent and cruelty of the violence against civilians committed for the most part by members of the RUF group during a January assault on the Sierra Leonean capital. This morning Mrs. Robinson visited victims of that incursion and of other attacks carried out during the country's eight-year armed conflict.

"Having seen the suffering of so many women and girls held as virtual sex slaves, of children and men young and old who have lost limbs as a result of a deliberate policy of amputation, I am more determined than ever to ensure that we focus international concern and attention on Sierra Leone", said the High Commissioner.

Mrs. Robinson said that with peace talks in Lome at a crucial stage, this international support was vital. Among the measures that could be taken in the short term, she said, were international assistance to document the human rights violations as a step towards establishing accountability; increasing the number of human rights monitors in the country, and working with the Government and Sierra Leonean civil society to create a "human rights infrastructure" in the country".

Mrs. Robinson commended the stated intention of the authorities to building this infrastructure, as evidenced by the signing yesterday of a "Human Rights Manifesto of Sierra Leone". The Manifesto reaffirms the commitment of the Government and the country's civil society "to the unwavering and non-discriminatory promotion of all human rights for present and future generations in Sierra Leone". It also contains provisions on the establishment of an independent national human rights institution and of a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission". In the Manifesto the Government reiterates its commitment to raise the age of recruitment into military service to 18 years.

Mrs. Robinson was accompanied in Sierra Leone by the former President of Botswana, Ketumile Masire; by Ambassador Kemal Morjane of Tunisia, chairperson of the African Group at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights; by Ambassador Catherine Von Heidenstam of Sweden, chairperson of the Working Group on children in armed conflict, and by Gay McDougall, head of the International Human Rights Law Group and member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.