Tackling the blight of economic misgovernance and mismanagement and the resultant violation of the right to food

While our country is suffering profuse economic bleeding as a result of bad economic governance by the A .P .C government, political Gurus in all walks of life continue to shower praise on the President for work well done for Sierra Leoneans. While a large portion of the population of Sierra Leone do not have physical and economic access to a single meal daily, we hear praise-singers in every part of the country blindly praising the president for his generosity to the people of Sierra Leone. (Photo: Mohamed Kunowah Kiellow)

While the prices of basic commodities that should allow people to live in dignity are rising at an astronomical level, there are voices in every corner of this country who continue to beat the praise-drum of the president claiming that all is fine under the regime of EBK.

While many Sierra Leoneans go to bed with empty belly, the president used every means in his might to spend an exorbitant amount of money (in dollars) on the 50^th birthday celebrations of Sierra Leone. 

This group of praise-singers still continues to argue that the present economic crisis in Sierra Leone is a result of the “global economic crunch.’ They are woefully failing to face the realities on the ground. One deplorable trait of the APC government is their propensity to shift the blame of the bad economic governance to the citizens whom they are supposed to govern. They make the people believe that they bear no blames for any economic woes in Sierra Leone during their reign.

At the height of the global crisis the newly-installed APC regime used this crisis as perfect excuse for its bad economic policies. But does that argument still hold as I write this piece?

We have now started to see APC’s innate propensity to bring the economy of Sierra Leone in the doldrums. They neglect policies and regulations that will lift the people out of poverty and concentrate on white elephant projects. I call this economic governance “the Korkornomization’ of the economy of Sierra Leone. A large number of Sierra Leoneans now know that “the root cause of the inflation in Sierra Leone is home-grown rather than the result of the ‘global crisis’ resulting from the ‘credit crunch.’ “  Sulaiman Banja Tejan Sie , in an article, advised that “ only striking a remarkable balance between our development needs and meeting the growing social services demands of our impoverished people can create a less hurtful roadmap to wealth creation.”

It is rather unfortunate that the government has lost track of engaging sound fiscal and monetary policies even in the face of ‘global crisis’ to cushion the suffering of the people of Sierra Leone. Simply put, our government is insensitive to the clamour of the people for economic and social change. Rather the government has put in place regulations and policies that will aggravate and worsen our socio-economic woes.

In this article I will argue that government’s neglect of putting sound economic policies to alleviate the penurious state of majority of Sierra Leoneans so that they can live in dignity is a violation of the human rights of people of Sierra Leone. I will base my argument on the violation of the right to food.

The right to food is a human right. It protects the right of all human beings to live in dignity, free from hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition. This human right ‘is not about charity, but about ensuring that all people have the capacity to feed themselves in dignity’.  The right to food is a “human right and not a political option that governments can choose to implement or to ignore”.

This right is protected under international human rights and humanitarian law and the correlative state obligations are equally well-established under international law. The right to food is recognized in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), as well as a plethora of other instruments. Moreover it is worth noting that this right is recognized in numerous national constitutions.

The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Committee on ESCR) in its General Comment 12 defined the right to food thus: “the right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone and in community with others, has physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement”

The Committee further asserts that: “the right to adequate food is indivisibly linked to the inherent dignity of the human person and is indispensable for the fulfillment of other human rights enshrined in the International Bill of Human Rights6. It is also inseparable from social justice, requiring the adoption of appropriate economic, environmental and social policies, at both the national and international levels, oriented to the eradication of poverty and the fulfillment of all human rights for all.”

According to Special Rapporteur on the right to has concluded that the right to food entails: “the right to have regular, permanent and unrestricted access, either directly or by means of financial purchases, to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and sufficient food corresponding to the cultural traditions of the people to which the consumer belongs, and which ensures a physical and mental, individual and collective, fulfilling and dignified life free of fear.”

The right to food has two essential components: the availability of food and access to it. In the first place, ‘a culturally acceptable diet, sufficient in both quantity and quality to satisfy the nutritional needs of the individual, must be available to each person’. In other words, each person should be able to obtain it either directly from the land or other natural resources or from distribution systems that purvey the food to those who require it’.

In the second place, ‘every person must have access, physically and economically, to food. Physically means that every person, including those physically vulnerable such as infants and young children, the aged, the handicapped, the sick in terminal phases of their illnesses and the infirm suffering from persistent medical problems, must have access to an adequate diet. Economically means that the spending of a person, of a household or of a community to ensure an adequate diet should not jeopardize the enjoyment of other human rights, such as the right to health, the right to adequate housing, the right to education, etc’.

The right to food imposes three types of state obligations – the obligation to respect, protect and to fulfill. These types of obligations were defined in General Comment 12 by the Committee on ESCR and endorsed by states, when the FAO Council adopted the Right to Food Guidelines (Voluntary Guidelines) in November 2004.

The obligation to respect requires governments to desist from taking  any measures that arbitrarily deprive people of their right to food, for example by measures preventing people from having access to food.  The obligation to protect means that states should enforce appropriate laws and take other relevant measures to prevent third parties, including individuals and corporations, from violating the right to food of others. The obligation to fulfill (facilitate and provide) entails that governments must pro-actively engage in activities intended to strengthen people’s access to and utilization of resources so as to facilitate their ability to feed themselves. As a last resort, whenever an individual or group is unable to enjoy the right to adequate food for reasons beyond their control, states have the obligation to fulfil that right directly.

In short, the right to food means that governments must not take actions that will lead to decrease in levels of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition. Further, it means that governments must protect people from the actions of powerful states and non-states actors that might violate the right to food. States must also, to the maximum of available resources, invest in the eradication of hunger.

Furthermore, under article 2(1), 11(1) and 23 of the ICESCR, states agreed to take steps to the maximum of their available resources to achieve progressively the full realization of the right to adequate food. They also acknowledge the essential role of international cooperation and assistance in this context.

The two components of the right to food are the availability of food and access to it. By availability of food is meant ‘a culturally acceptable diet, sufficient in both quantity and quality to satisfy the nutritional needs of the individual, must be available to each person.’  The culturally acceptable diet which is rice and the various “plasas” and soups that are consumed in this country must be available in both quantity and quality to satisfy the nutritional need. However, as a result of inaction by the government to put in place sound economic policies which has as consequence the high price of basic commodities,  a large portion of the population does not enjoy a culturally acceptable diet, sufficient in quantity and quality to satisfy their nutritional needs. A plate of cooked rice with only mashed boiled pepper and palm oil is not a culturally acceptable diet, sufficient in quality that satisfies nutritional needs.

Moreover, food must be accessible. This means that every person must have access, physically and economically, to food. Physical access entails that every person, including those physically vulnerable such as infants and young children, the aged, the handicapped, the sick in terminal phases of their illnesses and the infirm suffering from persistent medical problems, must have access to an adequate diet. In Sierra Leone not everyone has physical access to food. A huge number of the populace, including the disabled, young children, the aged do not have physical access to food. This is caused, inter alia, by the absence of workable social security, low salaries and high employment rate. Economically means that the spending of a person, of a household or of a community to ensure an adequate diet should not jeopardize the enjoyment of other human rights, such as the right to health, the right to adequate housing, the right to education, etc. In Sierra Leone, owing to economic misgovernance and mismanagement the employed and unemployed are suffering serious economic and social problems. It is unimaginable that a large number of the population cannot afford even a single meal a day and they cannot cater for their school-going kids, they cannot pay their school fees or even give them good medical care.

Having analyzed the extent to which the people enjoy right to food in Sierra Leone, I will now turn to giving arguments that will support my thesis statement that the government is violating the people’s right to food. My arguments will take into account the obligations of the state to protect, respect and fulfill the people’s right to food.

Obligation to protect the human right to food

According to (General Comment 12, para.15) ,the obligation to protect requires measures by the state to ensure that enterprises or individuals do not deprive individuals of their access to adequate food.

States, including Sierra Leone, are required ‘to protect those living within their jurisdictions from the activities of non-state actors, whether those activities originate from within or from outside the country’. They should be protected against fraud, dumping, labour abuse, and unsafe food. It is good to know that ‘responsibility is assigned to non-state actors including both domestic and foreign companies, foreign governments, land-owners, private security forces and other actors who interfere in specific ways with the enjoyment of human rights. Moreover, states are required States are to protect populations’ access to natural resources.

The FAO Guidelines state that states must create opportunities for work that generates sufficient income for an adequate standard of living (Guideline8.8). This requires at the very least, enforcement of an adequate minimum wage. The minimum wage In Sierra Leone was raised from twenty-one thousand Leones to forty thousand Leones in 2005. It was the first ever adjustment since 1997 when a minimum wage act came into being. Since this adjustment there has not been any mandatory rule that stipulates the minimum wage, by which the private and the public sector should abide. Moreover, despite inflation having risen sharply since 2008, minimum wage has not been increased in a manner that will cater for an acceptable livelihood. It is evident that the minimum wage is too low to provide workers, many of whom have numerous dependents, with the means to live in dignity. This is the reason why many employees in the private sector continue to earn wages that cannot lift them out of poverty.

Moreover, there is insufficient protection of access to land especially for women in the rural area. Women in the rural area who outnumber men in subsistence farming have little access to land. This has created adverse effect on the achievement of food security and the enjoyment of the right to food.

One other main deterrent to the access to adequate food is the lack of consumer protection ensuring the affordability and safety of food. The ruling APC party has failed to protect consumers from the high cost of food. Affordability is an obstacle to obtaining adequate food for poor families in the country. Every Sierra Leonean is aware that there is complicity of the private sector in the rising cost of basic commodities. This can be described as profiteering because it is not the market that fixes the price but the cartels.  These problems have certainly not been addressed by the state either through investigation or by regulations. The state has woefully failed to protect its domestic market from monopolies, dumping or other illegal practices that negatively impact consumers. It is really sad to know that in Sierra Leone there is no active and sober consumer protection agency, which is why many people complain of unsafe food in the marketplace.

Obligation to respect the human right to food

The obligation to respect existing access to adequate food requires states parties not to take any measures that result in preventing such access.

The obligation to respect ´requires that the state abstains from interfering in the existing enjoyment of a right — in this case the human right to food. This includes direct interference by the state in the enjoyment of the right but also the withdrawal of existing programs or processes that facilitate enjoyment of the right.’ The government led by Ernest Koroma has, since coming to power, taken measures that result in preventing people’s access to food.

More than a year ago, the government introduced the Goods and Services Tax in Sierra Leone. This tax led to the escalation of prices of basic commodities and the salaries of workers in the private and the public sector remained the same. As a result of this tax people now spend 15% more than what they earn. Consequently, the people’s right to food was threatened and many could no longer afford single meal a day. This action by the government has caused untold suffering to the people of Sierra Leone. In addition, the government has also cut off all measures in the form subsidies that were put in place by the former SLPP government meant to reduce the prices of basic commodities.  As far as I am concerned, these are retrogressive measures that are not in favour of the suffering majority in Sierra Leone.

Second, the much trumpeted government agricultural policy has not contributed much to poverty alleviation. Most of the projects being undertaken by the government are marred with corruption or lack coordination in their implementation. The projects end up not contributing to poverty reduction, especially in the rural areas.  For example, “extension services that are meant to provide guidance to small-holder farmers on issues such as soil management, animal health, scientific innovation and market trends have become ineffective to such an extent that farmers now consider them redundant.

It is an indisputable fact that Sierra Leone has one of the most liberalized economies in the “Sub-Sahara Africa but openness has not been accompanied by appropriate safeguards or regulation in the interest of protecting human rights, including the right to food.”

Obligation to fulfill the human right to food (facilitate)

The obligation to fulfill (facilitate) means the state must pro-actively engage in activities intended to strengthen people’s access to and utilization of resources and means to ensure their livelihood, including food security. (General Comment 12, para.15)

The weakness of the institutions in Sierra Leone makes it almost impossible for the government to implement laws, policies and other measures that will help it overcome its numerous challenges. One can also notice that to a larger extent there is an  ‘absence of legal measures designed to help the government on such issues as food security, agriculture, employment, sustainable development, water management, and basic social services’. There is democracy but no rules, which describes better the legislative vacuum. There is also a lack of coordination and efficacy in the state’s interventions.

Further, the government fails to guarantee secure and sustainable access to drinking water. Adequate access to drinking water is integral to enjoyment of the right to food. In Sierra Leone there is an agency that caters for the supply of water to Sierra Leoneans. However, many Sierra Leoneans do not enjoy regular access to water. Due to poor maintenance of the network, the available water does not meet even basic sanitary requirements

Obligation to fulfill the human right to food (provide)

Finally, whenever an individual or group is unable, for reasons beyond their control, to enjoy the right to adequate food by the means at their disposal, states have the obligation to fulfil (provide) that right directly. This obligation also applies for persons who are victims of natural or other disasters. (General Comment 12, para.15)

In times of great need, “the state must act quickly and without bias to mobilize all available resources to provide food to those in need. Sierra Leone is prone to economic disasters and “the vast majority of her population is constantly on the brink of extreme poverty”. The continuing rise in prices which began at the start of 2008 is undoubtedly driving more Sierra Leoneans into poverty every day. The government’s slow response to this crisis is undoubtedly is going to lead to social unrest in the not too far future. In most instances, the intervention by the government and NGO’s are based on the degree of poverty of the region rather than on the vulnerability of particular groups.

The groups of people that suffer more in this present economic malaise are people with cumulative vulnerabilities such as poverty, illness, age and gender. The government has no policies that mainly   target vulnerable groups. This inaction by the government has led to insurmountable poverty amongst these groups. The institutions and programs providing basic “social services, such as school feeding programs, healthcare and vaccination campaigns are managed mainly by NGOs and UN agencies with financial support from international donors. These programs are aimed primarily at children, pregnant women, and people living with HIV/AIDS. There are no equivalent programs aimed at helping the other vulnerable groups, such as elderly people, handicapped people, the unemployed and other at risk segments” of  Sierra Leonean society.

According to General Comment 12, paragraph 17, violations of the Covenant occur when a State fails to      ensure the satisfaction of, at the very least, the minimum essential level required to be free from hunger. It further states that, in determining which actions or omissions amount to a violation of the right to food, it is important to distinguish the inability from the unwillingness of a State party to comply. Should a State party argue that resource constraints make it impossible to provide access to food for those who are unable by themselves to secure such access, the State has to demonstrate that every effort has been made to use all the resources at its disposal in an effort to satisfy, as a matter of priority, those minimum obligations.

The APC-led government cannot argue resource constraints make it impossible to provide access to food and for those who are unable by themselves to secure access to it.  The present government has broken all records when it comes to collecting taxes that should be used for the development of Sierra Leone.

The government of Ernest Bai Koroma has not respected, protected and fulfilled the people’s right to food ever since he took power in 2007. The government has shown no regard for the suffering of the people who have no access to food even though the resources are available through taxation and other government’s sources of revenue generation. Rather the government is bent on bogusly and extravagantly spending state fund on projects that are considered a white elephant by the majority of Sierra Leoneans.

The APC-led government should now realize that the populace is no longer going to sit by and allow it trample on their right to food. It is high time the government took steps to allow the people of Sierra Leone enjoy their right to food by giving due regard to the obligations it has to respect, protect and fulfill the people’s right to food.

By Mohamed Kunowah Kiellow, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

The author is a Dutch-Sierra Leonean human rights lawyer. He recently returned from Sierra Leone after having worked there as a human rights Expect. He is the Executive Director of Human Rights and Democracy Alert (HuRiDA).

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