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Financial Times Interview With Dr. Kadi Sesay
Published: March 25 2002 03:07 

As the development minister for Sierra Leone, Kadi Sesay has the difficult job of rebuilding a poverty-stricken African country that has been devastated by 10 years of brutal rebel war. A university lecturer in Freetown for 20 years after gaining a masters from the University of Sheffield (UK) and a doctorate at the University of London, she came to national prominence when she was asked to head the country's Commission on Democracy and Human Rights. The following is the complete transcript of an interview with Ms Sesay by John Authers and Alan Beattie in Monterrey during the UN Conference on Financing for Development, where she had become one of the most articulate voices representing the developing world.

FT: What first brought you into politics?

KS: During the period leading to elections in 1996 we had the responsibility of going around the country and letting people know what their rights were and why they had to vote and why it was necessary to get rid of the military regime. We went right around the country doing this. We invited the leaders of the political parties and got them to talk to the people to tell them what programs they had in mind and what manifesto they had for the electorate. That led to a fairly peaceful election. It was held during the course of the war when the war was at its peak. People were sensitized enough and they hated the military enough to take the chance to take part in elections and have a democratic government. Even during the election there were attempts b y the military to stop it. This was when people started cutting off limbs of people who were prospective voters, saying you could only vote when you had a hand to put on your ballot paper. And yet people in Sierra Leone stood firm and the election went ahead.

FT: But that election did not end the war?

KS: Later, in 1997, there was again an overthrow of the legitimate government of the country and the leadership had to run out of Sierra Leone and settled in Conakry, Ghana, and ran what was effectively a government in exile. I was then heading the Commission for Democracy and Human Rights and I was in Accra, Ghana, attending a human rights meeting when the coup took place. I was on my way back to Freetown and had got as far as Abidjan. Of course I knew straightaway, because of the role I had played during the transition period, that my house was going to be visited. And indeed it was visited and all the movable items were stolen. My mother and son were there when the armed men came into the house, and they threatened them, and I lost everything in the house. Everything I had, including what belonged to my children, was out of the way. My son was evacuated to London by the British, and I stayed with a friend. I did consultancy with the United Nations Development Program and other agencies.

FT: There's been a lot of talk this week about restricting aid to undemocratic or repressive regimes - did this experience leave you feeling in favor of this?

KS: Humanitarian aid will always be necessary because ordinary citizens will die. During military rule there were institutions in place which were fighting for the return of democracy. Institutions like those which are campaigning for the rule of law and human rights should be supported, and in fact they should be strengthened so that they will be free for the people inside the country to hear. There were a lot of well-meaning institutions which supported the government in exile, and that helped. We've had organizations like the European Union and the European Commission which have always been supportive of Sierra Leone. Great Britain has always been supportive.

FT: How did you get your current job as development minister? And how did you try to bring peace to the country?

KS: When the government was restored in 1998 I returned home and I went back to heading the Commission on Democracy and Human Rights. Again there was the issue of reconstruction and rehabilitation. A lot of rebels were still in the bush, so how do you bring them out? How do you try and bring peace to the country? There's a two-pronged approach, both through negotiations and force. Eventually the negotiations started in 1999. The military this time walked into Freetown and created one of the worst episodes in the history of the country in terms of destruction and killings, and that's the picture which became known to the whole world. Then it could be seen on television cameras around the world, the total destruction that Sierra Leone came under and the killing of thousands of people. You could see the corpses littering the streets of Freetown. This finally hit the international community. Originally they said we must talk. They thought the rebels might have an agenda which was good for the country, but after seeing the destruction of January 1999, the whole world realized that these people were killers, and something needed to be done to stop them. The government went back in 1998 and began to function as a government again, before it was temporarily thrown out of power once more in 1999. But fortunately that didn't last long because the troops came in and got the rebels out of Freetown.

FT: How did you go about building a consensus for change in this environment?

KS: We have a very vibrant civil society, which has grown during the wars in the country. We have people standing up and making themselves known. It was civil society that stood out during military rule and said openly that we didn't want military rule. We wanted them out. Trade unions, NGOs, community-based organizations, political parties and so on. It's a very strong and powerful group. Now they have an umbrella organization which speaks on behalf of civil society. This helped us and it helped our democracy. We worked on the IPRSP [Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper - a system encouraged by the IMF in which developing nations' governments consult all elements in their society before coming up with a clear list of priorities for growth] and it was claimed to be one of the best in Africa. And then we had to move on to the poverty reduction and growth facility. Sierra Leone, even in the middle of the war, has always had a very good relationship with the financing institutions. It's always been up to date with its debt-servicing. And so it was not very difficult for us to move on. All the reports which come out of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank speak very highly of Sierra Leone and its fiscal and monetary policies. It was easy to move to the PRGF [Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility].

FT: There must be a lot to be done. What are your priorities?

KS: It's on the consolidation of the peace. This is really the key. If we don't consolidate the peace in Sierra Leone our development efforts will falter. We want to put in place policies which will ensure that there's no reversal back into conflict in the country. The demobilization process for the ex-combatants and the reintegration of ex-combatants. We in Sierra Leone are being very careful to retain the balance between the reintegration and whatever other services are available to the ex-combatants to make sure that the victims of the war also have a program, for the resisters to these people. If we don't retain that balance it will look in the eyes of the victims as though we are rewarding the perpetrators, and punishing further the victims. Because of the massive destruction in the country, there's a lot of reconstruction and rehabilitation that needs to be done. There are a lot of big towns and villages that have been completely razed to the ground. They will need to be rebuilt. And then there's the issue of rural electrification. And then there were a lot of children who could not go to school during the course of the war.

FT: A lot of delegates are talking about education. What's your policy on rebuilding the education system?

KS: We are pursuing a policy of free primary education and so the schools' classrooms are really bursting with children. We haven't got 100 per cent . Now we really have started freeing primary education and our plan is to move on to free basic education - which is the first 9 years, up to the third year of secondary school - and we believe this is the key to developing a strong human resource. [Ex-combatants] are being trained and given different skills. Some of them are given some resources for them to go into private employment. Some start trading, some are going into fishing projects, or carpentry. Some we hope can be used in the rural reconstruction projects. The most important thing is to create skills for them, train them, and then ensure that they get jobs. A lot of young people have for a long time felt marginalized. .They didn't get skills. We need to ensure that all the young people feel that they are stakeholders in the society and they will have something to lose if anything goes wrong.

KS: The issue of the increase in the volume of aid is important. For me, it's also a moral issue. Our development partners have a responsibility to ensure that they provide some support to these developing nations whose populations are steeped in poverty, simply because I think it's also in their interests as developed nations. There are 20 per cent of the world who are having increased wealth every year. A lot of conflicts around the world now have an underlying cause, which is poverty. If they want to see global peace and stability, they should see this as something which should concern them very seriously. There are 20 per cent of the world who are having increased wealth every year. A lot of conflicts around the world now have an underlying cause, which is poverty. Unless we ensure that these countries are strengthened so that people can choose the government they want and keep them in power, we will allow some military government to wake up some morning and say: "I don't like the look of your face." We need support from the international community to strengthen the democratic process. It's in the interests of the developed countries to ensure that stability reigns in all of the world because crises in any part of the world, it's now been shown to be true, could have global implications for any country. It's true that commitments have been made during this conference - the EU will increase to 0.39 per cent. The US has made a commitment to an extra $5bn. That's fine. We welcome this. But there's no doubt that this is nowhere near enough compared to what's required. I think they should give a little bit more. But this is an issue which goes beyond just giving more. Let me read one quotation from the World Development Report of 2000: "Without equity we will not have global stability." Without a better sense of social justice, our cities will not be safe and our societies will not be stable. That conclusion to many of us will be doomed to live separate and frightened lives.. Whether you approach this from the social, economic or moral perspective, this is not a challenge we can afford to ignore. We share this same world and we share the same challenges. The fight against poverty is a fight for peace, security and growth for all of us. Conflicts, instability and social disintegration are directly a result of poverty, inequity, marginalization and exclusion, poor governance, the failure of human rights and the breakdown of the rule of law. Investing in improving the living conditions of a country's population is far less expensive than managing the conflict that results from not being there. All of these resources should therefore be used in the management of sustainable growth in countries which are threatened by or emerging from conflicts in order to sustain global stability.

FT: But do you accept that there should be accountability? That the developing world should be prepared to meet certain conditions if it is to receive aid?

KS: The issue of mutual accountability comes in. It's not enough in the developed countries to talk about corruption in the developing world and to talk about the effectiveness of aid and put blame just on the developing countries. I believe that the developed countries also have a responsibility to ensure that there's transparency, effectiveness, timeliness and quality aid when it's given to the developing country. Mutual accountability means that they should be more open in the disbursement of the aid. They should allow the developing countries to take the lead in identifying the priorities which need to be achieved. The people of the recipient nations should be consulted in identifying those priorities. I think this is wrong - in many cases these resources are given through agencies which are agencies of the donor nations. They determine which programs they want to fund, it's their own agencies which do the implementation on the ground, and most existing governments aren't aware of what's coming in. There's no way of monitoring whether these resources given in the name of these countries are actually being properly utilized. Even in terms of the NGOs, in our country NGOs have played a very, very critical role. They've been very supportive and they've been to different parts of the country. They've risked their lives. But even when you want to give money to your agencies it has to be done in consultation with the government and it has to be done in accordance with the identified priorities of these governments. You don't want to do something which isn't a priority need. We have enormous needs. They aren't accountable directly to the governments. The aid agencies and the NGOs through whom these resources may be channeled - they have to be accountable to these governments. Then we can monitor the resources. If we know that Great Britain has given a huge amount of resources for a particular project and we know we will be able to monitor it on the ground to make sure these resources are actually utilized. This is what we've been stressing. There should be more transparency. There should be accountability on both sides.

FT: But although the accountability should be mutual, you accept that the developing countries should also be accountable?

KS: My concern is that conditionality or any criteria that are being developed by any country should be done consultation with the recipient countries. I and a lot our colleagues find it unacceptable if conditionalities or criteria are developed from outside and then imposed. When you talk about governance, it's ambivalent. There are the details that we want to see happen which are equivalent to good governance. We have to agree on these We have to determine these criteria and implement them. And all of this should be done in a transparent manner. The IPRSP is a framework which should be used by all donors simply because it has gone through intensive consultative processes on the ground. Before the IPRSP document is accepted, consultations would have been held at different levels of the country, and there's an evaluative process also that that it goes through, where people look at it and say "Does this fit with the priorities that you have in mind?" Once you go through that, I believe any country should take that process seriously, because it's the voice of the people.

KS: People will say that the consensus here is toothless, but the most important thing is to move beyond the conference and the talking to implementation and action. If we can get our development partners and our countries to start implementing some of the decisions within the consensus we will get somewhere. It's not just talking. A lot of these issues have been raised before. We've attended every conference possible. What we want is the implementation of the commitments that have been made within these documents. We should not bring to bear too many burdensome conditionalities.

FT: Do you believe that there should be special exemptions or gradings of conditions for post-conflict countries? You were in quite a heated debate with [US Agency for International Development director] Andrew Natsios on this subject earlier in the week.

KS: I listened to him talking about the various conditionalities and criteria which are going to be used in determining which countries will gain access to these additional resources and I would say even countries in the developing world aren't at the same stage of development. This is why I believe that countries emerging from conflict must be treated as a special case. You can't have a one-size-fits-all set of criteria or conditionalities. Post-conflict countries will approximate towards certain criteria. So I believe there is a need for a graded set of criteria for different countries. The point is that the intention and the attitude of the government towards reform and doing the right thing is as important as the action itself. How much action will these countries put in place to move the country forward? If we see that moves are being made to address the issue of corruption, then that is the most important thing. We've established an anti-corruption commission with the support of Britain, which has functioned fairly well, and is taking people to court. But if you say Sierra Leone has to have at least 60 per cent of its children of school age gaining access to schools and affordable healthcare, that's not fair. It's unfair. Our problem is rebuilding these facilities. Post-conflict countries can start at the bottom and be treated as a special case, so that we can come up to the level of other countries within the least possible time. We aren't asking for charity. We are a very rich country in terms of human resources and what we need to do is put our house in order and make sure democracy is sustained and harness our resources well. It should not take long, as long as the peace holds. We have enough resources in Sierra Leone to be able to stand on our feet within a couple of years to come. We can move from the emergency phase to the construction phase. Corruption is a valid question. There's no doubt that it's wrong. Even we believe that our natural resources should be equitably distributed. We don't need people from outside to tell us that. We know that. Even the way the donor countries issue out ODA to groups - in many cases these groups aren't accountable. These groups aren't accountable, we don't know how they arrive at some of the programs which are implemented. We see them riding very luxurious vehicles in our cities and paying very high salaries to their expatriates in our countries. To me, this is a form of corruption. A lot of those resources go back to developed countries. The issue of corruption is to be looked at from the point of view of mutual responsibility - from the point of view of recipient countries and also the point of view of the donor countries.

CADS Chief Executive, Kenday Samuel Kamara, promoting the Arts and Craft/Batik Industry of Sierra Leone. October, 1999.

Financial Times

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