Sierra Leonean President Julius Maada Bio on Tuesday promulgated a law banning child marriage in a country where hundreds of thousands of girls are married before turning 18.
“Freedom has come for our women,” Bio said during a ceremony organized by feminist groups and west African first ladies in the capital Freetown.
The Sierra Leonean Parliament approved the law last month, passing a bill that criminalizes marrying girls below 18 with jail terms of at least 15 years or a stiff fine of more than US$2,000.
Photo: AFP
“This is an accomplishment that will define my administration,” Bio said, calling it a “beacon of hope in Africa where women have boundless opportunities to be and determine their own future and inspire the world.”
He urged the country to “nurture” equality “by eliminating all forms of violence and exclusion vices against our own women.”
The Save the Children nongovernmental organization lauded the “historic” law.
The law also bans men from living with underage girls and sets out a compensation package for those who are married or fall pregnant before turning 18.
In Sierra Leone, a country of 9 million people, there were 800,000 wives younger than 18 in 2017, including 400,000 younger than 15, according to UNICEF.
Child brides face lifelong disadvantages, which include being excluded from future educational and economic opportunities, Save the Children director Patrick Analo said.
However, the rate of child marriage has been slowly dropping over the past few.
According to UNICEF, 30 percent of girls had been married before their 18th birthday in 2017, down from 37 percent in 1992.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
RSS