Sierra Leone Scores Another One for the Peace Team

There have been few tides of war more destructive and shocking than when Foday Sankoh's Revolutionary United Front retaliated against government corruption and militia games by storming the Sierra Leone capital of Freetown, killing, chopping off limbs, and kidnapping children as they went back in 2000.

The war included not only thousands of deaths but likely even more numbers of forced amputations. And much of the fighting seemed to be either about control over diamond fields or grievances which the government was not hearing.

Today, however, Sierra Leone is surprising everyone as one of the most durable canvasses for testing out new theories of peacebuilding, conflict mitigation, and the reintegration of former combatants. From a distance, one asks, how can an army of marauding arm-chopping rebels ever return to the population? Well, as the experts are showing us, the best theory so far is to ...

Offer a temporary unity government so that all sides can get their complaints out in the open and on paper, then indict with evidence those who prove to have committed war crimes, hold a reconciliation process which is public and encouraging of peaceful means for venting, prioritize jobs and support for survivors of violence, and then — pivotally and most delicately — drop judgment long enough to give the foot soldiers an opportunity to get employment and change their lives. From there, what most donors and planners forget, begins the long, long, ever so long process of the relationship building part of peacebuilding.

Recently, I had the chance to take a closer look at all these great forward hops in Sierra Leone while putting together a set of media stories. In a previous post, I quoted Black Nature, one of the singers of the Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars, who argued that music culture has a great capacity for healing a community, primarily because anyone with access to recording equipment or a radio can broadcast or rally around their messages through music. Banker White has now partnered with Black Nature to put cameras in the hands of war survivors for the same purpose in the new NGO, WeOwnTV.org.

However, if you want to learn more about the core case for peacebuilding in post-war Sierra Leone, look to Ms. Memunatu Pratt, a professor of peace and conflict studies at Sierra Leone University. The Auschwitz Institute recently took her and dozens of other leaders and officials to Oscwiecim, Poland, aka Auschwitz, as well as Buenos Aires, to rally for a better understanding of public policy in support of preventing genocide. Ms. Pratt shares some of the secrets from her native land.

For context on the "Lion Mountain" nation, please check out Adam Cohn's photo essay on Freetown and a literary tale updating the evolution of the diamond trade on the local level in Sierra Leone.

Photo credit: Play31