Children and War in Sierra Leone: A West African Diary

In June 2001, Richard Wilson participated in a technical meeting on children's participation and protection in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Sierra Leone, organized by UNICEF and the Human Rights Forum of Sierra Leone. The Report 'Children and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Sierra Leone', will be delivered in late 2001 to the UN Security Council. This is his diary of the drafting process.     

Football in post-Conflict Sierra Leone

Abstract

As in all African nations, football is very popular in Sierra Leone. While there is a constant lack of equipment and the fields are far from perfect, boys and girls are practising the game with great motivation and dedication. Training starts with warming up. This warming up is characterised by rhythmic exercises, done in perfect synchrony. These rhythmic activities need to be acquired by practice. Young boys watch the older football players and try to imitate them. Also for the amputee football team, rhythm is an important aspect of the warm-up. Football in Sierra Leone is more than just a game. Football can be seen as a tool for rehabilitation and reintegration. It makes the footballers forget about the war. For the amputee players, football also brought back their human dignity and sense of recognition, making them feel part of society again. The rhythmic aspects during the warm-up can intensify this effect, increasing a sense of belonging to a group.     

‘It Was Necessary to Do Something With Those Women’: Colonial Governance and the ‘Disposal’ of Women and Girls in Early Nineteenth-Century Sierra Leone

The colonial archive offers comparatively few glimpses of the individual lives of enslaved African women and girls brought to Sierra Leone in the nineteenth century and ‘liberated’ under the terms of the British Abolition Act of 1807. This article sets out to do four things: first, to consider what colonial sources reveal about how women and girls experienced and responded to becoming ‘liberated Africans’, and to the ‘disposal’ practices of the Liberated African Department – including schooling, indenture and arranged marriages. Second, it considers what factors might have shaped those experiences. Third, it seeks to make a contribution to the literature on marriage in early colonial Africa by considering whether, and to what extent, British colonial policy towards liberated African women in Sierra Leone meets a modern definition of government-led coerced or forced marriage. Finally, it evaluates the usefulness and limits of official archives, missionary records, court records and the accounts of self-styled British Sierra Leone experts for studying the experiences of women and girls, and indicates potential avenues for further research.     

Heritage as future-making: aspiration and common destiny in Sierra Leone

This paper engages with an arising interest in heritage as a ‘future-making’ project, arguing that in a context such as Sierra Leone heritage work may be better understood as a reflection of aspirations for a ‘common destiny’, than the articulation of common pasts. It questions the centrality with which modern anxiety continues to frame heritage temporalities, drawing on anthropological engagements with contexts of development and social transformation to propose a non-linear model for mapping the relationship between the past and the present. Drawing on a recent surge in heritage work in Sierra Leone, I suggest that heritage has efficacy beyond the provision of emotional security in a context of rapid change, indeed that it may be implicated in the process of instituting and shaping change itself.     

Fearsome people and places,narratives of street and hideout children in Freetown,Sierra Leone

This article is based on a GOAL Global field study of street children in Freetown, Sierra Leone. It draws on narrative accounts given by street children who have migrated to Freetown from rural Sierra Leone. The study used the participatory ranking method to generate data about children’s street and hideout (a room, shack or part of a building where children live in groups) lives post-migration. These data contained much about children’s fears, and the article explores their experience of fearsome people and places, showing that fear is a dominant aspect of these children’s lives. Fear shapes their day-to-day choices and decisions: their agency. It also suggests that agency should be seen as complex, contingent and sometimes paradoxical. The article concludes by identifying implications for social policy and practice, suggesting that these necessarily entail risky engagement with fearsome people in the liminal spaces of children’s street and hideout lives.     

Cosmopolitan peacekeeping and peacebuilding in Sierra Leone: what can Africa contribute?

The article is organized into two main parts. First, it presents the termination of the conflict in Sierra Leone as a case‐study to examine the degree to which cosmopolitan values connecting peacekeeping and peacebuilding are (or are not) evident. The case‐study looks at the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) as a model of successful peacekeeping in the sense that everyday security was provided for the people of Sierra Leone through the deployment of a robust peacekeeping mission. This assessment needs to be qualified in relation to serious deficits still to be addressed in post‐conflict peacebuilding, yet the success of this mission does provide encouragement for those who see the construction of a cosmopolitan security architecture for Africa as both desirable and achievable. Second, it explores the degree to which an appropriate model of cosmopolitan peacekeeping might emerge at regional and continental levels in Africa through the development of the African Standby Force (ASF). What the case‐study presented here and the survey of the African Union (AU)/ASF in the second part of the article have in common is that taken together, they provide some evidence to suggest that, however fragile, the AU is beginning to define an agenda that represents a continent wide and, in that sense at least, a cosmopolitan response to African security issues.     

Women and Peace Building: Local Perspectives on Opportunities and Barriers

The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 has made strong provisions to include women in peace‐building interventions and actions. This is, however, rarely observed in practice beyond local‐level activities. This article discusses new qualitative evidence on the opportunities and barriers to women's participation in peace‐building processes, based on a comparative analysis of case studies conducted in Afghanistan, Liberia, Nepal and Sierra Leone. The findings show that women's engagement in peace‐building activities, beyond their immediate social relations, is restricted by institutional, economic, cultural and social obstacles. These barriers prevent the realization of gender equality objectives in peace‐building initiatives. Moreover, local understandings of peace typically place family relations at the centre of how women engage with peace‐building processes, and how other community members perceive women's roles in peace building.     

A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TIME SERIES APPROACHES TO MODELING INTERSECTORAL AND INTERCOUNTY EMPLOYMET LINKAGES IN RURAL REGIONAL LABOR MARKETS*

ABSTRACT. The performance of five criteria for identifying significant interregional labor market linkages is compared. The criteria suggest differential model specifications based on the implicit tradeoff between parsimony and specification bias. Models were specified using: Akaike's final prediction error; Schwarz's Bayesian information criterion; an input-output model; Aoki's time series algorithm; and a combined input-outputi/time series approach. Models of the changes in monthly employment for twelve industries in six regions in northeastern Utah were specified using each criterion. Models based on Schwarz's criterion and the input-output criterion were preferred to those based on other criteria.     

R.I.P. Paul the Octopus http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

During the 2010 football World Cup, Paul the Octopus became a global celebrity. From his aquarium tank in Oberhausen, Germany, he predicted with 100% accuracy the outcome of eight World Cup matches in a row. In acknowledgement of his striking achievement, German aquarium authorities built Paul the first‐ever octopus memorial after his death. Curiously, Paul's popularity crossed over into countries that are not known footballing nations. One possible explanation for this is that his uncanny knowledge of the outcome of future events resonated with an audience sensitive to the uncertainties and risks of high modernity. Another explanation draws on Michael Jackson's work among diviners in Sierra Leone. I argue that Paul's prophecies created ‘fields of relationship’ that transcended national as well as ethnic divides, both within Germany and globally.     

Building Peace with Conflict Diamonds? Merging Security and Development in Sierra Leone

This article examines the merging of security and development agendas in primary commodity sectors, focusing on the case of peace‐building reforms in Sierra Leone's diamond sector. Reformers frequently assume that reforming the diamond sector through industrializing alluvial diamond mining will reduce threats to security and development, thereby contributing to peace building. Our findings, however, suggest that the industrialization of alluvial diamond mining that has taken place in Sierra Leone has not reduced threats to security and development, as it has entailed human rights abuses and impoverishment of local communities without consolidating state fiscal revenues and trust in local authorities. This suggests alternative strategies for resource‐related peace‐building initiatives, which we consider at the end of the article: the decriminalization of informal economic activities; the prioritization of local livelihoods and development needs over central government fiscal priorities and foreign direct investment; and better integration between local economies and industrial resource exploitation.     

Satellite Remote Sensing of Archaeological Vegetation Signatures in Coastal West Africa

This article discusses how archaeological sites in Sierra Leone, and by extension much of West Africa, can be identified through vegetation patterns (vegetation signatures) detectable in very high-resolution (VHR) multispectral satellite imagery. Settlement sites typically have a differing pattern of vegetation from the surrounding landscape, including concentrations of very large trees with sociocultural and historical significance: cotton (Ceiba pentandra) and baobab (Adansonia digitata). These features are conspicuous elements of the landscape both from the ground and in aerial imagery. Two complementary methods of using VHR multispectral satellite imagery are discussed in this paper: visual interpretation and semi-automated subpixel classification. These techniques are aiding ongoing archaeological survey of the Sierra Leone River Estuary. The impact of recently renewed industrial activity at a site of probable archaeological significance is also assessed through visually interpreted VHR satellite imagery.     

Die Verowering van die Boere-Republieke

ABSTRACT

In a number of low-income countries the fisheries sector has been shown to be instrumental in meeting key development goals, specifically in combating malnutrition, but the crucial contribution of women within this sector has been largely overlooked. This is particularly true in Sierra Leone, despite gender featuring prominently in the country's poverty reduction strategy. This article therefore examines the history of female involvement in the sector, how this involvement was transformed by the civil war, and assesses whether the various current initiatives to support women in the post-harvest sector offer a realistic ‘pathway out of poverty’.     

Global Incorporation and Local Conflict: Sierra Leonean Mining Regions

Abstract: This paper draws upon a world‐system core–periphery framework to examine the nature and causes of persistent low‐level conflict in Sierra Leonean mining regions. Conflict is endemic because of asymmetrical power relations between global core‐state corporations and peripheral weak‐state Sierra Leone, which are mirrored locally within its mining regions. Structural constraints inherent in these relationships generate and sustain socioeconomic, cultural and environmental inequities. The paper reveals the complex web of micropolitics in the mining locale core‐periphery microcosm involving a weak state, exploitative corporations and oppressive traditional social hierarchies. The findings are relevant to effective policy making and conflict resolution.     

Right-Sizing International Criminal Justice: The Hybrid Experiment at the Special Court for Sierra Leone

In the decade since their establishment, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) have made great advancements in the development of international criminal justice. Nonetheless, the ad hoc tribunals have been roundly criticized for their expense, inefficiency and slowness. When the Security Council decided to set up a court for Sierra Leone, it wanted to find a new model. The hybrid Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) is an effort to right-size international criminal justice: it has a pared-down budget, tightly focused mandate, limited time of operation, and a lack of institutional links to the Security Council. The negotiations over these issues led to repeated clashes between the UN Secretary General and the Security Council, with the Security Council consistently favouring a more modestly sized court. The SCSL has much to recommend it but its promise is shadowed by the paltry resources available to it. In its efforts to avoid creating another over-sized tribunal, the Security Council swung too far in the other direction. The lofty goals of ending impunity and providing justice demand more than a court on the cheap.     

Insect Clay Geophagy in Sierre Leone

Field study in eastern Sierra Leone shows that 50% of pregnant women regularly consume clay found in the interior of termite mounds. Some 40 to 80 grams of clay are eaten per day. Another, but less commonly used, geophagical source of clay is the nest of the mud daubing wasp. Both clays provide important amounts of minerals and trace elements essential for fetal development. It is concluded that the practice is a cultural response to nutritional need.     

State reconstruction in Africa: the relevance of Claude Ake's political thought

Studies on post‐conflict reconstruction in Africa have glossed over the need for state transformation as a prerequisite for sustainable peacebuilding in post‐conflict societies. This article fills this gap and discusses the relevance of Claude Ake's political thought for state reconstruction in post‐conflict Africa. It underscores the need for the autochthonous transformation of the state as a central component of peacebuilding and post‐conflict transition in the continent as Ake had suggested. Drawing on Sierra Leone, it theorizes Ake's works on the state in Africa against the backdrop of externally driven state reconstruction projects hinged on hegemonic discourses of ‘nation‐building’ in post‐conflict situations. It presents Ake's corpus as a basis for critiquing ongoing state rehabilitation attempts and urges a return to endogenous initiatives of rebuilding the state from below as a condition for achieving a sustainable democratic reconstruction of the state in post‐conflict Africa.     

The Moral Politics of Gendered Labour in Artisanal Mining in Sierra Leone

Drawing on current anthropological approaches to labour, this article examines some of the moral politics mobilized around women and artisanal mining in policy-inflected scholarship with reference to particular gold mining zones in Tonkolili district, Sierra Leone. In so doing, the article proposes that such a focus on labour not only allows one to appreciate how sentiments concerning (im)proper behaviour infuse wider policy proposals to amend social arrangements in regard to what is called ‘artisanal mining’, but it also offers insight into some of the enduring moral politics helping to constitute women as ‘family workers’ in the actual artisanal gold mining zones. The article suggests that examining the overlapping moral politics constituting women's labour practices provides a more supple understanding of the contested economic possibilities for women in this livelihood practice.     

Combating light weapons proliferation in West Africa

Light weapons proliferation is a serious problem in West Africa. A regional moratorium on imports of small arms and light weapons has not worked and UN arms embargoes on Sierra Leone, Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire have had limited impact. The Economic Community of West African States is currently drafting a new binding legal instrument aimed at controlling flows in West Africa but this will only succeed if the heads of state and government seriously adopt it. This needs to include greater compliance of UN sanctions, international reform of the End User Certificate system, mapping the spread of artisan production and an examination of ammunition imports to West Africa. Better control of ammunition imports in particular may assist the combat of light weapons proliferation as well as the comprehensive destruction of weapons from disarmament efforts. The illicit weapons trade in West Africa is increasingly transnational and it requires regional and international cooperation and support to combat it.     

The Ebola Crisis in Sierra Leone: Mediating Containment and Engagement in Humanitarian Emergencies

This article explores how framings of the 2014–16 outbreak of Ebola as a crisis, its causes, nature and consequences gave rise to two seemingly contradictory types of interventions within affected communities in Sierra Leone: a militarized state of emergency on the one hand, and efforts to foster local engagement and ownership on the other. Teasing out explicitly the underlying logic of these two modes of response, we are able to discern the convergence between containment and engagement approaches that are at the heart of contemporary humanitarianism. Rather than being opposed or contradictory, the article shows how they were mutually constitutive, through negotiations between different ways of knowing and responding to the Ebola crisis. The resulting divisive practices, juxtaposing ‘Ebola heroes’ and ‘dangerous bodies’, re‐ordered the landscapes that individuals had to navigate in order to manage uncertainty. Tracing these logics through to the ‘subjects’ of intervention, the article tells the story of one traditional healer's ‘epistemic navigations’ in his efforts to survive both the epidemic and its response. Bringing these dynamics and their consequences to the fore in the Sierra Leonean case invites broader reflections on a humanitarian assemblage increasingly reliant on the mutual constitution of containment and engagement, security and resilience, in its approach to managing ‘at risk’ populations.     

Dystopian space in colonial representations and interventions: Sierra Leone as 'the white man's grave'

This paper explores the power of dystopian imaginations. It does so by examining the form and function of dystopias in colonial contexts, both in general and through one particularly salient and significant colonial dystopia, which was known widely in imperial England as 'the white man's grave'. A detailed analysis of the form and function of dystopian accounts of Sierra Leone, with particular attention to Richard Burton's negative appraisal of the colony, illuminates a particular form of geographical colonial discourse, and clarifies some of the power relations more generally associated with dystopian representations and interventions.