By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
The passing of the amended Sexual Offences Act of 2019 has been delayed by at least two weeks for further consultations by stakeholders.
Alhaji Mohamed Hajji Kella, Deputy Minister of Social Welfare Gender and Children Affairs, made the announcement in committee room one in Parliament on Monday following an engagement with the Speaker Dr Abbass Bundu.
“I have spoken with the Speaker and from what I gathered from him, it seems the bill will not be laid in Parliament on Thursday. But he said he hopes to lay the bill in the well before Parliament goes for recess,” Kella told a group of mainly women activists who had assembled at the parliament to discuss the details of the bill with the legislative community.
The amendment was necessitated by the revocation of the State of Emergency declared at the beginning of the year in response to high rate of sexual violence in the country.
This delay means the bill cannot be approved on Thursday, as it was anticipated. However, on the bright side, it also provides an opportunity for rights campaigners to make their inputs into the final document.
The Legal Access through Women Yearning for Equality Rights and Social Justice (LAWYERS) was one group that expressed concern over the urgency with which the bill was been processed.
LAWYERS President, Fatmata Sorie, said last week that rushing of the bill could deprive them of the chance to have their say on important issues that appeared to have been left out.
“There is no time for us to lobby and get any change we will want to see in the new bill,” she told Politico after news of the introduction of the amended bill to parliament.
Some of the sticky points discussed on Monday were the need for a clear definition of sexual gratification, the distinction between rape and sexual penetration and the section on punishment.
Some activists were also concerned about the penalty suggested in the bill for convicts. The amended document prescribes a minimum jail term of 15 years and life imprisonment.
Chernor Bah, Executive Director of Purposeful Production, one of the lead campaign groups against sexual violence, believes the bill in its current form is stiff when dealing with certain cases. He said circumstances of the crime should be considered during sentencing.
“This is the game, 90% of sexual offences in this country is perpetrated against minors. It is not the severity of the law, it is about the certainty of the law,” Bah said, noting that the whole law should help people come forward and convict perpetrators.
LAWYERS’ president, Sorie, supports Bah’s position.
“Mitigating circumstances should be applied,” she noted.
Without the mitigating circumstances that Bah and Sorie are advocating for, the current form of the amended law means that a 20-year-old boy who rapes a 23 year old woman could receive the same punishment as a 40 year old man who sexually penetrates a 6 months old baby.
This was a thorny issue in the revoked State of Emergency.
Monday’s discussion also brought to the fore the question of minor offenders. There is no provision to criminally hold minors responsible for rape or sexual penetration. The discussions focused on what to do with guilty minors between at the ages of 14 and 17.
There were suggestions to send them to remand homes for reformation.
The next two weeks will now give the advocates of this bill the much needed time to engage in broader consultation among themselves and the legislative committee in Parliament.
© 2019 Politico Online
