When the mountain broke: disaster governance in Sierra Leone

Samantha Melis,Dorothea Hilhorst

doi:10.1108/dpm-03-2020-0076

Abstract

PurposeWhen a major landslide and floods devastated Freetown, Sierra Leone had just overcome the Ebola crisis, which had left its mark on socio-political relations between different disaster response actors. With international disaster response frameworks increasingly shifting to local ownership, the national government was expected to assume a coordinating role. However, in “post-conflict” settings such as Sierra Leone, intra-state and state–society relations are continuously being renegotiated. This study aimed to uncover the complexities of state-led disaster response in hybrid governance setting at national and community levels in the response to the 2017 landslide and floods.Design/methodology/approachDuring the four months of fieldwork in Freetown in 2017, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with various state, aid and societal actors were conducted.FindingsThe findings show that a response to policy building on the idea of a uniform state response did not take into account intra-state power politics or the complexity of Sierra Leone's hybrid governance.Practical implicationsThis paper argues for a more nuanced debate in humanitarian governance and practice on the localisation of aid in post-conflict and fragile settings.Originality/valueThe study's findings contribute to the literature on the disaster–conflict nexus, identifying paradoxes of localised disaster response in an environment with strong national–local tensions. The study highlights intra-local state dynamics that are usually overlooked but have a great impact on the legitimacy of different state authorities in disaster response.

Highlights

Worldwide, 318 disasters were recorded in 2017, affecting 122 countries and 96 million people (CRED and IRSS, 2018)
The Sugarloaf Mountain disaster hit a country still impacted by the civil war that ended in 2002 and recovering from the Ebola epidemic that lasted until 2016
Disaster response is generally organised in a top-down manner, but the international disaster governance literature has questioned the reliability of authorities and formalised response organisations (Comfort, 2007; Norris et al, 2008), increasingly emphasising that disaster response should involve multiple actors

Summary

Introduction

318 disasters were recorded in 2017, affecting 122 countries and 96 million people (CRED and IRSS, 2018). One of these disasters had not attracted much attention but had impacted many lives. On 14 August 2017, Sugarloaf Mountain in Sierra Leone “broke”. The ensuing landslide and floods swept through a densely populated area in Freetown, killing over 1,000 people and destroying hundreds of houses within minutes. The Sugarloaf Mountain disaster hit a country still impacted by the civil war that ended in 2002 and recovering from the Ebola epidemic that lasted until 2016. The internationally recognised preferred response model proposed in the Sendai Framework for Action (UNISDR, 2015) views the state as the central coordinating body, working closely with civil society, communities and other

Objectives

Findings

Methods