Friday, July 3^rd, 2020

Statement on Child Sexual Abuse

To our Sudu community far and wide, as an organization, we are devastated to hear of the recent case of the minor who was sexually abused and passed away in Sierra Leone. As a children’s organization, such an act deeply concerns us and we feel obliged to not only condemn such an act, but to provide some education based on our work to help parents, guardians, and our larger community protect our children in Sierra Leone.

We call on the Sierra Leone government, civil society organizations, NGOs and all stakeholders to take actionable steps to reduce violence of any kind against children. We are advocating for educational campaigns in schools and in all organizations that work with children. These campaigns should focus on (1) how to identify signs of abuse and trauma (2) how to drive impactful conversations with children on such sensitive topics and (3) The rights of the child, the laws pertinent to child abuse of any kind. We are also advocating for transparent data sharing on offenders and subsequent penalties rendered by the law, number of cases and other pertinent data. We urge the government to create such a database and make the information public, in order to enable organizations like ours to understand where to best intervene.

Read Full Statement.