Global Inequalities and Peace in Postwar Sierra Leone

Abstract

Scholars have argued, from various angles, that the interaction of bad governance, global economic shocks, the exacting demands of structural adjustment, and the deleterious impacts of implementing such policies on the population of Sierra Leone since the 1980s led to the outbreak of the ten-year civil war from 1991 through 2001 (Richards 1996; Abdullah 1998; Kandeh 1999; Zack-Williams 1999; Chege 2002; Rashid 2004; Riddell 2005; Grant 2005; Keen 2005). Since the Lome Peace Accord of 2000, Sierra Leone has been in a state of negative peace—a situation characterized by the absence of direct violence (Ramsbotham, Woodhouse, and Miall 2005)—having failed thus far to put in place the conditions for sustainable, positive peace. Studies on the challenges of achieving positive peace in postwar nations like Sierra Leone have focused almost exclusively on the internal dynamics of structural violence1 (Lamin 2003; MacIntyre and Thusi 2003; Conteh-Morgan 2004; Rippon and Willow 2004). Such studies have neglected, to a large extent, the broader impacts of global capi-talism—and its attendant forms of inequality—that is reflected in these internal dynamics that perpetuate structural violence and frustrate the achievement of positive peace.