Cultural practices buttress Sierra Leone poverty: U.N. (Reuters)

FREETOWN (Reuters) - Harmful cultural practices such asfemale genital mutilation are hampering efforts to reducepoverty in Sierra Leone, which has the world's worst child andmaternal mortality rates, a top U.N. official said.

Discrimination against women is also partly responsible forthe social problems that have persisted since the 1991-2002civil war, said Ann Veneman, executive director of child agencyUNICEF, after a three-day visit to rural clinics and schools.

"Sierra Leone needs to change a number of the harmfultraditional and cultural practices," Veneman told reporterslate on Friday, citing female genital mutilation (FGM), childmarriage and pregnancy, and under-age labor.

According to the United Nations, more than a quarter ofchildren die before their fifth birthday in the former Britishcolony, and one in eight women die in childbirth.

Seventy percent of the population live below the povertyline and fewer than 30 percent are literate.

Veneman criticized the high rates of sexual violence thathave continued since the war when thousands of women wereraped, kept as sex slaves and forced into marriage by rebels.

"A tremendous amount of sexual violence still goes on inthis country," Veneman told Reuters after the news conference."It has to be unacceptable in this society to allow sexualviolence against women and children to continue."

Ignorance due to a tradition of not sending girls to schoolwas contributing to problems such as feeding newborns withdirty water and rice milk instead of breast milk, which booststhe immune system, and the failure to use bednets againstmalaria.

"Poverty is the big problem," Veneman said. "But the younggirls have a double problem: they are highly discriminatedagainst and there is a total disregard for women and girls."

She also said girls were prey to secret societies -- closedtraditional groups solely for women, that meet in the bush.

"They have secret societies where you learn how to be awoman and how to take care of a man and this is where you getyour FGM," she said.

"These women who do this are running a business and have aneconomic interest in doing it. But it is a harmful practice: itcan cause infection, bleeding and HIV/Aids."

UNICEF estimates 90-94 percent of women in Sierra Leone arecut and Veneman says attitudes are not changing quickly enough.

"There are still young people out there who have sufferedin such terrible ways," said Veneman. "It's a special burden."

(Editing by Daniel Flynn and Robert Woodward)