When Peace Means Nothing: Reflections on Youth Marginality and Agency in Postwar Sierra Leone

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The situation, agency, and actions of the youth remain central to the analyses of political, socioeconomic, and cultural dynamics of postwar Sierra Leone. This article returns to the youth question twenty years after the end of the war in Sierra Leone in order to understand the differing experiences that animate youth sociopolitical and economic reality in the country. It focuses specifically on the experiences of the present generation of youth, the spaces they inhabit, and what their experiences teach us about postwar peacebuilding in Sierra Leone. Using data collected through interviews, surveys, and focus group discussions from over 562 youth and other actors, between January 2019 and November 2022, this article argues that a significant proportion of the country's youth remain marginalized in society. These youth continue to deploy coping strategies, including creation of alternative social spaces, expressive popular culture, drugs and gangs, and migration to deal with their marginality. Significantly a proportion of marginalized youth remain trapped in cycles of violence as they clash with state security forces.