Sierra Leone

Musicians Unite for Peaceful Elections

A vibrant peace rally through the streets of Sierra Leone’s capital city, Freetown, on 3 July concluded the successful nationwide peace tours which saw a collaboration of the country’s top musicians, dramatists and comedians perform and preach messages of non-violence to fans across the nation.

The peace rally and ‘Go Vote! No Violence’ tours have been supported by BCPR in a project formulated to promote peace in lieu of Sierra Leone’s Local Council Elections which took place on 5 July last. BCPR joined forces UNDP Sierra Leone and with two popular artist associations; Artists for Peace and the Sierra Leone Female Musicians Association, to tour the country singing and preaching messages of non-violence to the public in the run-up to the elections.

The Local Council Elections are the first since unprecedented success of the Presidential and Parliamentary Elections held in August 2007. Although those elections were internationally recognized to have been conducted free and fair, tensions mounted around the country in lieu of the Local Elections, and cases of intimidation and violence were widely reported.

In addition to performing for fans free and preaching messages of peace, the artists traveled to the hotspot ghetto areas in the towns they visited, speaking directly to troubled youths, convincing them to refrain from engaging in electoral violence. According to the spokesperson for the Artists for Peace, popular musician Wahid, ‘Sierra Leone has a fragile peace which needs to be consolidated. As artists we are using our influence to come together and speak to youths, to sustain our country’s peace.’

The ‘Peaceful Election Campaign’ intends to increase participation of eligible voters, particularly youths, women and the physically challenged, in electoral activities. It aims to promote conflict prevention through music and drama to educate, inform and persuade citizens from engaging in violence before, during and after the Local Council Elections. The campaign engages with the Single Leg Amputee Sports Club which is campaigning for non-violence through outreach to marginalized amputees across the capital. The campaign also aims to promote a post-election reconciliation agenda that can overcome violence, through targeting issues including attitudinal change, food security and ethnic and political tolerance.

The artists’ commitment to a violence-free Sierra Leone will continue long after polling day. Vicky Fornah, one of the country’s leading female musicians, stressed, “securing peace is not something you can achieve overnight. Now that we have toured the country we better understand the problems of youth violence, and we are ready to return to the hotspots to focus in on working with troubled youths’.

Captions
Above left: Female musicians perform in Freetown
Above right: Artists for Peace perform in Kono (2)
Below left (1): Voter education being performed at peace concert in Makeni
Below right (2): Artists for Peace rally through Kenema
Below right (3): Single Leg Amputee Sports Club speak at Peace Ceremony in Freetown