Engaging the Voices of Girls in the Aftermath of Sierra Leone's Conflict: Experiences and Perspectives in a Culture of Violence

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

The public prominence of hunters and their organizations is a striking phenomenon in West Africa. Whether on the streets or rural byways of the countries stretching from Sierra Leone to Cote d'Ivoire, or in media, internet, or policy debate, hunters seem to be everywhere: as security guards, civildefense fighters, environmental guardians, spokesepeople for rural development projects, actors in party politics, and articulators of emergent regional and ethnic identities. In the warfare that beset the region in late 2002, hundreds of hunters were fighting in COte d'Ivoire in a conflict with strong potential, according to some commentators, for spread into Guinea (http://www.irinnews/org/webspecials/ClCrisis/, 4 December 2002). As the Kamajor civil-defense force, hunters had played a decisive role several years earlier in Sierra Leone's civil war (Muana 1997). In the environmental arena, hunters are now forefronted as the key force to guard national parks and implement global conservation objectives. A suggestion that European donor agencies might inadvertently be building in Guinea an armed rebellion (Leach 2000) may prove to have been alarmingly prophetic. The papers in this collection expose and reflect on the new roles that hunters are playing in West Africa's political and social affairs, in a variety of national and local settings. Most of the papers were first presented at the 2002 African Studies Association Meetings in Washington, D.C., on the panel Mande Hunters, Nation-States, and Civil Society in Contemporary West Africa, co-organized by Joseph Hellweg and Thomas Bassett and sponsored by the Studies Association. I served as discussant. Mariane Ferme and Danny Hoffman subsequently completed the collection with their contribution. Joseph Hellweg coordinated and edited the papers into the present issue. In these articles, Thomas Bassett and Joseph Hellweg focus on different aspects of hunters' roles in political and military security in Cote

This article concerns post‐conflict interventions as technologies of future making, and their intersection with children as temporalised figures. Global concepts of childhood undergird a discourse of ‘lost childhoods’ as endangering both children and liberal time itself. After Sierra Leone's civil war, child protection agencies and its Truth and Reconciliation Commission sought to restore children ‘out of sequence’ to a presumed childhood origin and thereby re‐set the timeline of both children and nation. A politics of future‐making emerged in the unequal encounter through which children and post‐conflict interventions each sought to achieve a desired future through the other.

ABSTRACTIntergenerational solidarity and reciprocity are fundamental building blocks of any society. Simultaneously, socio-generational groups constantly struggle for influence and authority. In Africa, disproportionately male, gerontocratic and patrimonial systems governing economic, social and political life lend a special explosiveness to the social cleavage of generation. This paper draws on the concept of the generational contract to explore whether Sierra Leone's civil war – labelled a ‘revolt of youth’ – catalysed changes in the power asymmetries between age groups. I argue that youth question fundamental norms of intergenerational relations, and challenge local governance structures demanding changes to the generational contract. Amidst a strong continuity of gerontocratic dominance and counter-strategies from elders, youth draw on organisational forms and a local human rights discourse to create spaces for contestation and negotiation. These openings hold potential for long-term rearrangements of societal relations.

The atrocities of civil wars present us with many difficult questions. How do seemingly ordinary individuals come to commit such extraordinary acts of cruelty, often against unarmed civilians? Can we ever truly understand such acts of 'evil'? Based on a wealth of original interviews with perpetrators of violence in Sierra Leone's civil war, this book provides a detailed response. Moving beyond the rigid bounds of political science, the author engages with sociology, psychology and social psychology, to provide a comprehensive picture of the complex individual motives behind seemingly senseless violence in Sierra Leone's war. Highlighting the inadequacy of current explanations that centre on the anarchic nature of brutality, or conversely, its calculated rationality, this book sheds light on the critical but hitherto neglected role played by the emotions of shame and disgust. Drawing on first-hand accounts of strategies employed by Sierra Leone's rebel commanders, it documents the manner in which rebel recruits were systematically brutalised and came to perform horrifying acts of cruelty as routine.In so doing, it offers fresh insight into the causes of extreme violence that holds relevance beyond Sierra Leone to the atrocities of contemporary civil wars.

Abstract: This article extends recent academic debates about the sociohistorical entanglements between neoliberalism and human rights by exploring transitional justice processes in Sierra Leone, which followed the country's decade-long civil war (1991-2002). It analyses the ways both the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) and the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SLTRC) drew on 'economic' discourses, variously using the concepts of 'greed', 'corruption' and 'governance' to explain the broader context of the human rights violations with which they were concerned. By critically tracing how these discourses were mobilised, this article shows that neither the SLTRC nor the SCSL challenged the neoliberal vision of human rights. Rather, each process produced a narrative about Sierra Leone's civil war that not only effaced the deleterious role of neoliberal policies in the history of the conflict but also reproduced neoliberal ideas both about conflict and the economy. In this respect, my exploration of the Sierra Leone case demonstrates the importance of paying closer attention to how 'the socioeconomic' is conceptualised and accounted for within transitional justice and broader human rights processes, especially if they are to pose a more adequate challenge to the neoliberal order. Shorter abstract: This article extends recent academic debates about the sociohistorical entanglements between neoliberalism and human rights by exploring transitional justice processes in Sierra Leone after the country's decade-long civil war. The article focuses on the ways both the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission drew on discourses of 'greed', 'corruption' and 'governance' to explain the broader socioeconomic context of the human rights violations they were concerned with. The article demonstrates these discourses did not challenge but instead reinforced neoliberal visions of human rights.

IDS Research Report Research Summary 75: A Village‐up View of Sierra Leone's Civil War and Reconstruction: Multilayered and Networked Governance

Under what conditions can faith leaders influence peace in civil wars? The ongoing conflict in Congo, Syria, and Yemen indicate that faith leaders can fuel sectarian divide, but also intervene on the side of peace. Drawing on experiences in Sierra Leone's civil war, this paper highlights the role of faith leaders as moral guarantors of peace processes, with respondent former rebels indicating that without interfaith delegations personally bringing the peace accord to their remote jungle camps, they would not have trusted the UN-led process. Ethnographic analysis and over 60 field interviews with former combatants and religious leaders, presents a model for answering why faith leaders were central in terminating this conflict. Combatant's personal experience with a diverse mixture of Christian, Traditional, and Islamic leaders contributed to high confidence in peace accords, due to interfaith practices deeply embedded within the culture and shows the dispositions, rituals, and interfaith practices that provided the cultural foundations for successful interfaith intervention. The paper ends with generalizations for other interfaith groups seeking to intervene in conflict.

Journal Article Sexual violence in Sierra Leone's civil war: 'Virgination', rape, and marriage Get access Zoe Marks Zoe Marks * *Zoe Marks (zoe.marks@ed.ac.uk) is a Chancellor's Fellow in the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 113, Issue 450, January 2014, Pages 67–87, https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adt070 Published: 16 December 2013

Capturing the scope and trajectory of changes in land use and land cover (LULC) is critical to urban and regional planning, natural resource sustainability and the overall information needs of policy makers. Studies on LULC change are generally conducted within peaceful environments and seldom incorporate areas that are politically volatile. Consequently, the role of civil conflict on LULC change remains elusive. Using a dense time stack of Landsat Thematic Mapper images and a hybrid classification approach, this study analysed LULC changes in Kono District between 1986–1991, 1991–2002 and 2002–2007 with the overarching goal of elucidating deviations from typical changes in LULC caused by Sierra Leone's civil war (1991–2002). Informed by social survey and secondary data, this study engaged the drivers that facilitated LULC changes during war and non-war periods in a series of spatial regression models in exploring the interface between civil conflict and LULC change.

Atrocities cast a long shadow. In post-intervention societies, reestablishing security, reconstructing governance institutions, and reforming the justice system are all crucial steps in promoting the rule of law, but important as they are, they are rarely sufficient to grapple with the legacy of past abuses. In most of the post-conflict societies discussed in this book, severe abuses were widespread in the period prior to intervention. The Balkan wars, for instance, were characterized by brutal massacres, mass rapes, and ethnic cleansing. Sierra Leone's civil war was characterized by the forced recruitment of child soldiers, widespread rapes and murders, and the gruesome mutilation of civilians. Afghanistan, Iraq, and East Timor also have had bloody pasts marked by severe abuses. In such societies, the traumatization caused by widespread past atrocities does not end when the guns fall silent. Although nothing can undo the suffering caused by atrocities, ensuring that perpetrators face some reckoning may be critical to moving forward in countries recovering from violent conflict. Ensuring accountability may help victims move on and can also help signal to all members of post-conflict societies that, henceforth, such abuses will not be permitted to recur. Just as important, the process of ensuring accountability may, in some circumstances, reinforce broader efforts to reform the justice system. As with every challenge discussed in this book, however, “ensuring accountability” is more easily said than done.

In the diamond-rich Kono District, 90% of all buildings were burned or looted during Sierra Leone's civil war. The physical and human resources of the primary health care (PHC) system...

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) were created to deliver accountability for the atrocities committed during Rwanda's genocide of 1994 and Sierra Leone's civil war of the 1990s. The capacity of these courts, however, like other international criminal tribunals, is limited in terms of the number of persons they can prosecute. If most perpetrators evade justice, the ability of international tribunals to deliver accountability may be seriously undermined. To mitigate this risk, national justice systems should deal with the perpetrators who are not addressed by international tribunals. When national systems do not do so (or fail to do so effectively), international tribunals are well placed to encourage (or improve) national atrocity-related judicial proceedings, thereby increasing their chances of delivering accountability.This article assesses empirically the impact of the ICTR and SCSL on national atrocity-related judicial proceedings in their target countries, thus contributing to an overall assessment of these tribunals. The article also compares the national impact of the ‘pure international’ ICTR to that of the ‘hybrid’ SCSL and tries to identify features that affect the national impact of an international tribunal. Understanding the interactions between international and national justice systems, and the features that affect the national impact of international tribunals, is particularly important given the shift to ‘positive complementarity’ at the International Criminal Court.

A range of seemingly rival theories attempt to explain why some individuals take extraordinary risks by choosing to participate in armed conflict. To date, however, competing accounts have typically not been grounded in systematic, empirical studies of the determinants of participation. In this article, we begin to fill this gap through an examination of the determinants of participation in insurgent and counterinsurgent factions in Sierra Leone's civil war. We find some support for all of the competing theories, suggesting that the rivalry between them is artificial and that theoretical work has insufficiently explored the interaction of various recruitment strategies. At the same time, the empirical results challenge standard interpretations of grievance‐based accounts of participation, as poverty, a lack of access to education, and political alienation predict participation in both rebellion and counterrebellion. Factors that are traditionally seen as indicators of grievance or frustration may instead proxy a for more general susceptibility to engage in violent action or a greater vulnerability to political manipulation by elites.

SummaryIn Sierra Leone, as in most of Africa, states have not only a direct relationship with their citizens as individuals but also a mediated one through rural governance systems that usually pre‐date colonialism and may have greater legitimacy than the central state itself. And these local governance structures generally persisted through the country's collapse and civil war more successfully than the central state did. This report therefore offers a ‘bottom‐up’ review of the post‐war reconstruction of the Sierra Leone state.I have conducted research on these and related questions throughout the country since 1996. For the present study I have supplemented this experience with a qualitative data set based on my own unstructured interviews during 2010–11 in 38 communities in 28 chiefdoms in eight of the 12 districts in the three rural provinces of the country.The impact of the civil war on human security and governance in the rural areas was devastating. Random killings, maiming and rape were widespread; food production as well as formal health and education services collapsed; and local chiefs and other representatives of the state were assassinated when they could be identified by the rebels.Despite (or perhaps because of) the devastating impact of the war on human security, rural communities remained intact. The pre‐war (traditional) leadership structures continued informally to provide whatever degree of governance response was possible. In the chiefdoms I visited, a third of the chiefs remained with their people (even if in hiding) throughout even the most difficult part of the civil war, and most of the rest fled only briefly. During the war chiefs made a major change to include youth and women in their governance practices and this more participatory approach to governance has persisted. Although a large number of chiefs died during the war period, their positions were easily refilled afterward.During the war most communities in the South and East created local Civil Defence Forces (CDF) to defend themselves. Chiefs retained at least some degree of direction over 71 per cent of the CDF forces in the areas I visited, with the consequence that only a third of these CDFs gave trouble to their communities. Because of the abuses that did occur, however, CDF leaders were not able to challenge chiefs for community leadership after the war. In only 19 per cent of our study communities was there any challenge to the return of the traditional chiefs at the end of the war.Despite the restoration of chieftaincy and its general popularity, there are three signs that the government was concerned about its lack of broad responsiveness before the war. First, elected district councils have been brought back. Second, chiefs also have to share their revenues with the Councils, which both find a major problem and source of tension. Third, the Native Administration (NA) courts also are in disarray. In the present day circumstance, most communities are now using the alternative dispute mechanisms created by donors as they are still afraid of the very high fines that the court chairmen used to levy. In addition the magistrates’ courts are more accessible and extended. The consequences of the three changes are that the post‐war chiefs seem to be more moral leaders than authoritative decision‐makers and are much more responsive to their communities.From the perspective of multi‐levelled governance not only was NA changed by the war, but the role of international donors increased significantly as well. Donor impact was notable on Security Sector Reform (SSR), democratisation, decentralisation, and women's rights. And there were many large‐scale international activities for humanitarian relief and development. Nonetheless, these initiatives have strengthened, not threatened, the legitimacy of the state because the army, police and health services have improved and as local citizens do not know how to access the donors directly they tend to credit their activities to various government actors.The consequences of SSR are that the SL Police are much improved coming out of the war. But unlike the SL Army it would be a mistake to say that they have been wholly transformed. Also their presence is still thin. The SLP was still absent or barely present in 29 per cent of the areas I visited. The old ‘tribal police’ are needed but unpaid.The various reforms that have come in the wake of the civil war are incomplete and the institutional boundaries of the newly reconstructed multilayered governance system are unclear. The result is that most of the component parts – chiefs, district councils, native administration and magistrates’ courts, SL and NA Police, are not functioning as well as they might. Not enough attention has been paid to how governance at the ‘periphery’ is to be conducted.