Dear
President Barrow,
Welcome.
It’s your first day behind the desk and you have an enormous job on your
hands. Former President Yahya Jammeh has
finally left the country after a tense stand-off; many of the people who fled
in fear of violence last week are returning; businesses reopening; and the
whole nation is preparing to listen to what your first moves will be.
Your
Excellency, I’d like you to take a moment to think about that. I’d like you
to imagine a little girl standing
alongside her parents in the crowd listening to you address the public. This little girl’s future is now in your
hands.
For
the past 22 years, her parents, like all of our citizens, have been forced into
silence. They were unable to complain when they could not access basic services
such as healthcare or education and saw their rights being derailed by a
dictator. If they did have the courage
to speak out they may well have faced arrest, disappearance or torture. This
silencing, this fear, this terrible way of operating must stop. Now.
We
need to build a new civil society. And
create the space for that civil society to operate. You must ensure that the
Gambian people have an unequivocal, protected space to voice their concerns
about your administration and how it is dealing with the massive problems of
violence against women and girls, food shortages, economic migration and
corruption.
But
to create a truly democratic nation you need to urgently tackle our education
crisis. For too long our children and young people have been denied access to a
good education, denying them the opportunity to fulfill their potential or find
a way out of poverty.
I
hope you will promise that little girl staring up at you that you know she has
the right to grow up as an educated and politically engaged young woman, free
from violence and fear. I want you to reassure her you will do all you can
within your power to make a better future for her and others like her a genuine
reality.
But
that isn’t going to be easy. Currently half of your 1.8 million citizens are
illiterate and only two thirds of primary age children are enrolled in school.
Most schools across the Gambia lack qualified teachers or basics like
textbooks, paper and pens. Girls in The
Gambia are less likely to complete their education than boys and if they do
manage to break the stereotype, they can suffer stigma and even sexual violence
on their journeys to and from class.
This
isn’t acceptable in 2017. Not if we aspire to be a modern forward facing
African nation. The power to help change this, and the hopes of a young
generation, now rests with you.
In
your first budget as president, you must re position greater funds for education
and teacher training, and build feedback systems so that children - our
country’s future - can play a real role in shaping their local schools and
claiming their right to learn. For the
brave girls who go to school only to be raped or assaulted on the way home, you
need to make sure improved government services, from the police through to
health centres through to the judiciary, know how to both support victims and
punish offenders.
And
let’s not forget that our children need to eat.
Currently
60 per cent of your country doesn’t have enough to eat. Food production in The Gambia you have
inherited relies on small subsistence farming, powered by women who do the
majority of the work but are still not able to own the land on which they farm,
which means they are less able to control whether they have enough of the right
kinds of food to eat. Uncertain rains and the growing impact of climate change
make their lives even harder. Right now 94 per cent of land in The Gambia has
no irrigation. Measures to improve water
supply will increase harvests and create a stronger supply of food.
Improving
agricultural production will help to create new jobs, something which is
urgently needed to help stem the flow of young men leaving our shores and
taking dangerous journeys to uncertain futures in North Africa, Europe and
beyond.
People
from your country, mainly young men, represent the fifth largest group of
asylum seekers to land on Italy’s shores.
They are people who have been failed by the education system, have few
skills and cannot find employment in the Gambia’s towns and villages.
To
keep this lost potential in our country, you must show our youth that you are
listening to them, really listening. Through education, sport, apprenticeships
and freedom of speech you have to convince them that home is a better
alternative.
Only
when these tasks are done will that the old Gambia be no more and a new Gambia
- a better, happier nation - can emerge.
If that little girl watching you in the crowd
grows up in this vision of a nation that she deserves, you will have passed
your test and served us well.
At
ActionAid we look forward to working with you and helping girls, boys, women
and men across The Gambia to voice their concerns and to work with you to build
a better country. We might not always agree with you. But through continued
dialogue and mutual respect we will be with you every step of the way.
Yours
sincerely,
Omar
Badji
Executive
Director
ActionAid
International
The
Gambia
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