By Joseph Dumbuya
The Legal Aid Board will mark its 10th anniversary in May 2025. As someone who has been part of this journey even before joining the Board in 2016, I am excited to share how the Board evolved from a humble beginning in a small office in the Guma Building on Lamina Sankoh Street in Freetown into the largest legal aid provider by the end of 2016. This part covers the activities of the Board from May to December 2015.
Before and during the eleven-year conflict in Sierra Leone, there was no organized legal aid scheme. Human rights and civil society organizations provided some form of legal aid as part of their work, including court, police station, and prison monitoring to provide advice and legal assistance to suspects, accused persons, or inmates. They also offered human rights education to empower people to assert their rights while accessing justice at both formal and Traditional Justice Mechanism (commonly called Informal) levels. A handful of lawyers, such as Osho Williams of blessed memory, provided pro bono services to indigent accused persons.
Legal aid organizations began to emerge following the end of the war in January 2002. These include Lawyer’s Center for Legal Assistance (LAWCLA) founded by human rights lawyer Melron Nicol-Wilson, TIMAP for Justice, ADVOCAID, and Legal Access through Women Yearning for Equality, Rights, and Social Justice (LAWYERS). TIMAP for Justice operated based on the Paralegal model, training hundreds of Paralegals around the country. Some of these Paralegals were among the first crop recruited by the Legal Aid Board between 2015 and 2017.
With funding from the Department for International Development (DFID), the Pilot National Legal Aid Programme was set up in 2009 under the Justice Sector Development Programme (JSDP). The pilot programme laid the roadmap for institutionalizing the Legal Aid scheme, which was actualized following the passage of the Legal Aid Act on May 10, 2012.
The Legal Aid Board is the first legal aid scheme established by the Government. The Board opened its first office in the Guma Building on Lamina Sankoh Street in Freetown. The scheme was launched by former President Ernest Koroma on December 19, 2015, at the Miata Conference Centre.
Ms. Fatmata Claire Carlton-Hanciles is the first Executive Director of the Board. She joined from the U.N.-backed tribunal, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, where she rose to Principal Defender in 2009, a position she held until the Court’s closure in December 2013. She was the only Sierra Leonean to hold that position.
Justice Ansumana Ivan Sesay of blessed memory was among the first lawyers to join the Board as Legal Aid Manager. He brought a wealth of experience from private practice, earning a reputation as a good defense lawyer, which earned him the name “Ivan for the accused.”
The biggest challenge the Board faced at inception was managing expectations from indigent or poor persons who qualified for the scheme and deserved to be assigned a lawyer when in conflict with the law. Additionally, there was pressure from politicians for the Board to open offices upcountry. This was evident at the first workshop for parliamentarians to introduce the scheme and the Legal Aid Act 2012 on July 8, 2015. Parliamentarians wanted to know why the Board had not established offices outside Freetown and, by extension, in their constituencies. Despite the cost implications of expanding the scheme, the parliamentarians were silent on how they could ensure funds were provided by the government to realize this dream.
Lawyers, too, had their concerns. There was a feeling the scheme would threaten their jobs. Julian Cole, an executive member of the Sierra Leone Bar Association (SLBA), publicly questioned the effectiveness of the ‘Means Test’ for qualification for legal aid at an event organized by the Board. He sought assurances that the Board’s clients would fall within the ‘Mean Test’ bracket and warned that failing to scrupulously apply the ‘Means Test’ would affect private legal practitioners’ livelihood. The Executive Director, Ms. Fatmata Claire Carlton-Hanciles, addressed this concern during a presentation on the Board’s work at the SLBA Annual General Meeting in Freetown.
The inadequacy of resources meant the Board could not cater to all those who qualified for the scheme in the Western Area, let alone establish offices outside Freetown in 2015. With only five legal aid counsels at inception, the Board focused on decongesting the Pademba Road Correctional Center, which had a prison population of between 1,500 and 1,800, despite its capacity of 324. The facility housed hundreds of remand inmates not on trial due to a lack of indictment, some having spent over a decade without trial. The decision to prioritize remand inmates over other indigent persons for legal aid was part of a strategy to target the most vulnerable group, given the overcrowded prisons and associated health risks.
Moreover, the Board invested time and resources in forging partnerships, training staff, lawyers, and partners, and organizing workshops to finalize a draft two-year Strategic Plan and a draft Legal Aid Guide. The Guide sets out the processes and procedures for accessing legal aid, including application criteria based on the ‘Means Test,’ forms for accessing services, and documentation of indigent persons.
The Board forged partnership agreements with the Sierra Leone Police, the Sierra Leone Correctional Service, and the Sierra Leone Bar Association within two months of its establishment. The partnership with the Sierra Leone Bar Association aimed to have lawyers on a roster providing legal representation for a token fee.
To build the capacity of lawyers, the Board organized a one-day training workshop on September 24, 2015, for twenty-four Sierra Leonean lawyers who would be assigned indigent clients by the Legal Aid Board. This was followed by the distribution of 50 files at a ceremony at Santano House on Howe Street in Freetown. The current Legal Aid Manager, Ms. Cecilia Tucker, was among the lawyers who benefited from the training and was consequently given two files. She was the first lawyer to conclude her cases in court. She was subsequently recruited by the Board and rose to the position of Legal Aid Manager following the departure of Ansumana Ivan Sesay of blessed memory to the bench in August 2017.
The Committee with the Sierra Leone Police, comprising senior officers, met with the Board once a month to address challenges around suspects’ rights and legal assistance. The Committee with the Sierra Leone Correctional Service addressed the huge prison population and inmates’ legal aid needs, especially those on remand.
The Board had partnership agreements with several organizations, including the Council of Tribal Heads in the Western Area, the Sierra Leone Labour Congress, and the General Workers and Motor Drivers Union. The partnership with the Council of Tribal Heads focused on addressing public concerns regarding excessive fines, illegal arrest and detention, and handling matters outside their jurisdiction. The partnership with the Labour Congress aimed to discuss workers’ rights issues. The partnership with the Drivers Union catered for legal assistance to union members who committed traffic offenses while providing free transportation for legal aid clients wishing to return upcountry or to Guinea upon their release by the court. Prior to this partnership, the Board had to provide fare to clients released by the court to return home or risk their being stranded in the office.