By Augusta Osmatu Bangura

For many women and girls in Sierra Leone, gender equality is experienced not through the laws written in their name, but through the opportunities they can access, the decisions they can influence and the barriers they encounter in everyday life.

Three years after the Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE) Act became law, Sierra Leone has introduced a new framework intended to measure whether those legal commitments are producing meaningful change.

The Gender Accountability Framework and the 2025 Annual Report on the implementation of the GEWE Act 2022 were launched on August 19 by the Ministry of Gender and Children’s Affairs (MoGCA), in partnership with UN Women.

The initiative is designed to strengthen monitoring, reporting and accountability around Sierra Leone’s commitments to gender equality and women’s empowerment. Its introduction raises a question that goes beyond whether legislation exists: are the rights and opportunities promised to women and girls actually reaching them?

The GEWE Act 2022 was introduced as a major legislative measure to address gender inequalities and increase women’s participation in leadership, governance, employment and economic activities. President Julius Maada Bio described the law as a significant intervention in addressing longstanding gender disparities.

The new framework is expected to provide a structured system for monitoring commitments under the GEWE Act, the GEWE Policy 2020 and the Sustainable Development Goals. According to UN Sierra Leone, it will help track progress, identify challenges and strengthen institutional accountability. For women, however, the value of such a system will depend on what its measurements reveal, and what institutions do with the information.

Dr. Isata Mahoi, Minister of Gender and Children’s Affairs, described the GEWE Act as one of Sierra Leone’s most transformative pieces of legislation. She said the framework and annual report provide tools to strengthen transparency, coordination and accountability in implementing the country’s gender-equality commitments.

That shift from promises to measurement is significant. Because a law can establish rights, a policy can set targets. But neither automatically changes the circumstances of a woman struggling to access economic opportunities, a girl facing barriers to education or a woman seeking a greater voice in leadership and decision-making. The framework is therefore intended to make those gaps more visible.

UN Women Regional Director for West and Central Africa, Dr. Maxime Houinato, said the launch demonstrates Sierra Leone’s determination to move beyond commitments and focus on measurable results, stressing that accountability is essential to sustainable progress on gender equality.

Sierra Leone has made progress in strengthening its legislative, institutional and policy frameworks for gender equality. According to the United Nations, the country has recorded progress across the 12 critical areas of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action since 2018. But progress at the policy level does not necessarily mean that women experience equality in the same way.

Representing Iceland at the launch, Karl Fannar Saevarsson said transformative legislation requires sustained political commitment, strong institutions, adequate resources, accountability and the active participation of women and girls.

Those conditions will be particularly important as the framework moves from paper to implementation.

Minister of Planning and Economic Development Kenyeh Barlay described the framework as a tool for providing data and performance indicators to track progress on national development priorities. She said it is intended to turn aspirations into measurable targets and strengthen accountability to citizens.

The launch brought together government institutions, Parliament, civil society organisations, development partners, women’s rights organisations, the private sector, traditional and religious leaders and other stakeholders. Representatives from Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo also attended.

Stakeholders reviewed findings from the 2025 Annual Report and discussed priorities for implementing the GEWE Act.

For Sierra Leonean women and girls, however, the significance of those discussions will ultimately be determined outside the conference room.

It will be seen in whether more women gain access to economic opportunities, whether women participate meaningfully in decision-making, whether institutions respond to gender-based inequalities and whether girls grow up with greater opportunities than the generations before them.

The Gender Accountability Framework now provides a mechanism for measuring those changes and identifying where commitments are falling short.

But its success will not be determined simply by the number of indicators tracked or reports produced. The real measure will be whether a woman or girl in Sierra Leone can eventually point to a change in her own life and say that the promises made in law have finally become reality.

Copyright –Published in Expo Times News on Monday, 31st August 2026 (ExpoTimes News – Expo Media Group (expomediasl.com)