Abstract
This article explores how female agency and experience manifest in a local Sierra Leonean peacebuilding program known as Fambul Tok. While post-conflict literature, namely transitional justice and peacebuilding, has become more critical in recent years, there is still a tendency to generalize both the ‘local’ and ‘women’. There is, however, much greater scope to delineate how local programs shape and are shaped by women in these settings. While Fambul Tok was, at least theoretically, meant to better align with the needs and priorities of Sierra Leoneans, including women, the empirics suggest that female engagement ultimately results in a wide range of outcomes, which are not necessarily more ‘empowering’, ‘transformative’ or ‘good’ than international programs. Drawing on original empirical data from Fambul Tok, this article highlights the complexity of gendered power relations within these programs and how individual women have multiple, diverse and contested forms of agency and experiences within local settings.
Highlights
There has, in recent years, been a critical engagement with literature on post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation processes, peacebuilding and transitional justice
The ‘local’ in post-conflict settings has been subject to significant scrutiny in recent years and, while the literature has theoretically pointed to notions of diverse and multiple experiences, they have not necessarily been empirically examined, especially in relation to gender
Looking at female engagement with Fambul Tok, which was founded and run by Sierra Leoneans and worked in very rural areas, provides insights into more marginalized experiences, as well as the gender dynamics that operate in the functioning of a self-acclaimed local peacebuilding operation
Summary
There has, in recent years, been a critical engagement with literature on post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation processes, peacebuilding and transitional justice. Drawing on empirical analysis of a local peacebuilding organization in Sierra Leone, and focusing on women in rural communities, whose experiences are often marginalized, this article engages with critical, feminist, literature, to better understand the diversity and fluidity of female roles in local programs.
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