By Brian James –
More than 20 years ago, the sound of explosions and gunfire were a constant reminder of a raging civil conflict. Francis Y Turay was a schoolteacher in the northern community of Kemedugu, Tonkolili District. With the end of the conflict came the impact of an economy in freefall. Mining companies were encouraged to do business in Sierra Leone with the hope that a vibrant extractive industry would turn the economy around.
Today, Francis is in his seventies, retired with a small fruit garden. As he struggles to pay his grandchildren’s school fees with the proceeds from his garden, the explosions return. This time, they are a testament to ongoing activity in the second largest iron ore mine in Africa. Francis has seen mining companies come and go, carting away enormous wealth from the region. Yet, little has changed in Kemedugu as desperate poverty prevails. Added to that, Francis has developed a heart condition. Sometimes the community is prewarned before the blasting starts. Other times, Francis is caught off guard. The shock to his weakened heart puts his very life at risk.
Variations of Francis’ story abound across the nation. Mining and agribusiness companies are given licenses to operate on lands that are subject to customary law; owned by indigenous Sierra Leoneans. Promises of fair pay and development are made to the poor, mostly uneducated landowners. Due to lack of proper land lease documentation, the promises are largely reneged upon. By the end of the project, the environment has suffered enormous and irreversible damage.
Land administration in Sierra Leone has often been described as chaotic and increasingly unsustainable. For over a decade, Namati Sierra Leone, a land and environmental justice organization, has been working to reverse this trend. “Negotiations between investors and the communities whose land they seek are fraught with deep power imbalances and undermined by weak regulations,” says Namati Director, Sonkita Conteh. “The results can be devastating — for people and for the planet.”
Namati’s efforts culminated in the drafting and passing of twin laws – the Customary Land Rights Act (CLRA) and National Land Commission Act (NLCA) – in 2022. Among other things, these laws:
- Grant all local communities the right to Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) over all industrial projects on their lands;
- Ban industrial development, including mining, timber, and agribusiness, in old-growth forests and other ecologically sensitive areas;
- Incorporate public environmental license conditions into binding legal agreements between communities and companies; and
- Establish local land use committees to make decisions about how community lands are managed, and mandate that those committees are at least 30% women.
“To our knowledge, there is not a legal regime anywhere, in either hemisphere, that grants such robust rights to communities facing environmental harm,” affirms Conteh, who helped draft the documents.
Namati has teams of paralegals stationed around the country to ensure that, moving forward, land lease agreements are fully in line with the laws. In many cases this requires the drafting of entirely new lease agreements. “We ask the community landowners to tell us what they want to see in the new agreement,” explains Namati Programme Officer in the Eastern Region, Baindu Koroma. “We offer guidance as to what is feasible under the law.”
The negotiations processes can be arduous, often lasting several years of back and forth between investor companies and the communities whose lands they need. So, every time Namati is able to negotiate an agreement successfully, it is considered a major step towards peace and justice in the land sector.
