War, Women, and Post-conflict Empowerment: Lessons from Sierra Leone 9781786996930, 9781350237513, 9781786996961

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War, Women, and Post-conflict Empowerment

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Politics and Development in Contemporary Africa Published by one of the world’s leading publishers on African issues, “Politics and Development in Contemporary Africa” seeks to provide accessible but in-depth analysis of key contemporary issues affecting countries within the continent. Featuring a wealth of empirical material and case study detail, and focusing on a diverse range of subject matter – from conflict to gender, development to the environment – the series is a platform for scholars to present original and often provocative arguments. Managing Editor: Max Vickers Already published: Mobility between Africa, Asia and Latin America: Economic Networks and Cultural Interactions, edited by Ute Röschenthaler and Alessandro Jedlowski Agricultural Reform in Rwanda: Authoritarianism, Markets and Spaces of Governance, Chris Huggins Liberia’s Female Veterans: War, Roles and Reintegration, Leena Vastapuu and Emmi Nieminen Food Aid in Sudan: A History of Power, Politics and Profit, Susanne Jaspars Kakuma Refugee Camp: Humanitarian Urbanism in Kenya’s Accidental City, Bram J. Jansen Development Planning in South Africa: Provincial Policy and State Power in the Eastern Cape, John Reynolds Uganda: The Dynamics of Neoliberal Transformation, Jörg Wiegratz, Giuliano Martiniello, and Elisa Greco AIDS in the Shadow of Biomedicine: Inside South Africa’s Epidemic, Isak Niehaus Negotiating Public Services in the Congo: State, Society and Governance, Tom De Herdt and Kristof Titeca BRICS and Resistance in Africa: Contention, Assimilation and Co-optation, edited by Justin van der Merwe, Patrick Bond, and Nicole Dodd Ironies of Solidarity: Insurance and Financialization of Kinship in South Africa, Erik Bähre Africa’s Shadow Rise: China and the Mirage of African Economic Development, Pádraig Carmody, Peter Kragelund, and Ricardo Reboredo Malawi: Economy, Society and Political Affairs, edited by Matthias Rompel and Reimer Gronemeyer Entrepreneurs and SMEs in Rwanda Conspicuous by Their Absence, David Poole Politics of Fear in South Sudan: Generating Chaos, Creating Conflict, Daniel Akech Thiong Decolonizing Civil Society in Mozambique, Tanja Kleibl Forthcoming titles: Youth on the Move: Views from Below on Ethiopian International Migration, Fana Gebresenbet and Asnake Kefale Angola’s Securitized State: Reframing Hegemonic Power and National Identity, Paula Roque Economic Diversification in Nigeria: Fractious Politics and an Economy Beyond, Zainab Usman

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War, Women, and Post-conflict Empowerment: Lessons from Sierra Leone Edited by Josephine Beoku-Betts Fredline A. M’Cormack-Hale

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Zed Books Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY and Zed Books are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2022 Copyright © Josephine Beoku-Betts and Fredline M’Cormack-Hale, 2022 Josephine Beoku-Betts and Fredline M’Cormack-Hale have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Series design by Burgess & Beech Cover image: A woman in Kroo Bay displays the ink on her finger from voting in Sierra Leone’s 2018 general elections. (© Tommy Trenchard/Panos Pictures) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: M’Cormack-Hale, Fredline Amaybel Olayinka, 1976- editor. | Beoku-Betts, Josephine A., 1951– editor. Title: War, women and post-conflict empowerment : lessons from Sierra Leone / edited by Josephine A. Beoku-Betts and Fredline A. O. M’Cormack-Hale. Other titles: Politics and development in contemporary Africa. Description: London ; New York : Zed,[an imprint of] Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022. | Series: Politics and development in contemporary Africa | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021033604 (print) | LCCN 2021033605 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-7869-9693-0 (hardback) | ISBN 978-1-7869-9695-4 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-7869-9696-1 (pdf) | ISBN 978-1-3502-3751-3 Subjects: LCSH: Women and war–Sierra Leone. | Women–Sierra Leone–Social conditions. | Women in peace-building–Sierra Leone. | Postwar reconstruction--Sierra Leone. | Sierra Leone–History–Civil War, 1991–2002. Classification: LCC HQ1816.5 .W37 2022 (print) | LCC HQ1816.5 (ebook) | DDC 305.409664—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021033604 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021033605 ISBN:

HB: 978-1-7869-9693-0 ePDF: 978-1-7869-9696-1 eBook: 978-1-7869-9695-4

Series: Politics and Development in Contemporary Africa Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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Contents List of Contributors Map of Sierra Leone Acknowledgements Josephine Beoku-Betts and Fredline M’Cormack-Hale Foreword Filomina Chioma Steady Thematic Organization

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Part 1 Conceptual Frameworks 1

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Understanding the Politics of Women and Gender Equality in Sierra Leone: Opportunities and Possibilities Josephine Beoku-Betts and Fredline A. O. M’Cormack-Hale Transformative Narratives: The Empathetic Imagination, Empowerment, and Women in Post-war Sierra Leonean Novels Arthur Onipede Hollist

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Part 2 Women in Politics 3 4 5

Zainab Hawa Bangura’s Early Career as an Activist in Sierra Leone, 1994–2005 LaRay Denzer “Bastards” in Politics: Violence Against “Political” Women in Sierra Leone’s Post-war Politics Hussainatu J. Abdullah Women Chiefs, Women’s Empowerment, and a Feminist Agenda in Contemporary Sierra Leone Lynda R. Day

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Part 3 Issues in Women’s Empowerment: Legal, Social, and Economic 6 7 8 9

Women and Law Reform in Post-war Sierra Leone Peter A. Dumbuya Barriers to Girls’ Education in Rural Sierra Leone: Findings from Participatory Research Susan Shepler Where Does She Enter? (Re) Defining the Role of Traditional Birth Attendants in Sierra Leone Fredanna M. McGough Gender-Based Violence Post-war to Post-Ebola: “One Step Forward, Three Steps Back” Lyn S. Graybill

99 113 129 145

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Part 4 Mobilizing to Advance Women’s Empowerment: Internal and External Actors 10 UNHCR’s Gender Policy for Refugees and Returnees in Sierra Leone: Health, Well-Being and Political Agency Claudena Skran 11 From Local Discussion Groups to Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp: Sierra Leone Women Mobilizing for Women’s Rights in Sierra Leone (An Activist’s Approach) Amy Smythe 12 The Politics of Religion and Women’s Activism: Women’s “Choices” in the Abortion Bill and Constitutional Review Debates Aisha Fofana Ibrahim 13 Sierra Leonean Women Mobilizing for Change: Revising the Sexual Offenses [Amendment] Act of 2019 Fredline A. O. M’Cormack-Hale References Index

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175 193 211 237 271

Contributors Josephine A. Beoku-Betts Josephine Beoku-Betts is Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Sociology at Florida Atlantic University. Her research focuses on the educational and employment experiences and perspectives of African women scientists and women’s political activism in Sierra Leone since the 1990s. She is Co-editor of Women and Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Power, Opportunities and Constraints (1998). She has published in Gender & Society, NWSA Journal, Ghana Studies, African and Asian Studies, Africa Today, JENdA, Journal of Technology Transfer, Meridians, and Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering. She was co-regional editor for Women’s Studies International Forum, and co-Book Review Editor for Gender & Society. She is a recipient of the Sociologists for Women in Society Feminist Activism Award, Fulbright Scholar, Florida Commission on the Status of Women Florida Achievement Award, former co-President of the Research Committee on Women, Gender, and Society of the International Sociological Association, and past President of Sociologists for Women in Society. Fredline A. O. M’Cormack-Hale Fredline M’Cormack-Hale is an Associate Professor with the School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University in the School of Diplomacy and International Relations. She holds an MA and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Florida, and an MA in Gender and Development Studies, University of Leeds. Her research interests include gender, politics, and development, and the role of the international community in post-conflict reconstruction and democratization in Sierra Leone. As a scholar activist, Fredline is committed to bridging the gap between academic work and policy and applying research for social change. She is currently Vice President of the 50/50 Group, a Sierra Leonean women’s advocacy organization, and is affiliated with the Institute for Governance Reform in Sierra Leone, a national think tank specializing in public policy and governance challenges. She has consulted for numerous international NGOs on a variety of issues including women’s political participation, SGBV, health systems strengthening, and social accountability in heath and education. She is a former Fulbright Scholar (2013–2014) to Sierra Leone. Hussainatu J. Abdullah Hussainatu Abdullah, an independent researcher and consultant, is a member of the Board of the Agency for Research and Cooperation in Development (ACORD) in Africa. She recently completed a multisectoral Country Gender Profile of Liberia for the African Development Bank and served as a consultant with the Millennium Challenge Cooperation Compact in Sierra Leone as a social and gender constraints analyst. vii

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Lynda R. Day Lynda Day is Professor of Africana Studies at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She holds a Ph.D. in African History from the University of WisconsinMadison and a B.A. in Comparative History from Howard University. Her attention to women in leadership positions in pre-colonial African locations led to her interest in Sierra Leone’s many women chiefs. She is the author of Gender and Power in Sierra Leone: Women Chiefs of the Last Two Hundred Years (2012) and her articles on precolonial women political leaders have appeared in the Journal of African History, Africa Today, and the International Journal of African Historical Studies among other periodicals. She conducted research in Sierra Leone from 1981–1982, during the war in 1995, and several times since the end of the civil war. She also served as a Fulbright Scholar at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, where she conducted research on Nana Yaa Asantewa. LaRay Denzer LaRay Denzer is a historian. She has taught in various universities in the United States and Nigeria, including 17 years at the University of Ibadan. She specializes in Englishspeaking West African sociopolitical history and biography. She has published many journal articles, including studies of Bai Bureh and the Hut Tax War, I. T. A. WallaceJohnson and the West African Youth League, Constance A. Cummings-John, women’s participation in Freetown politics, the role of Yoruba women, and other topics. She recorded and edited Constance Agatha Cummings-John: Memoir of a Krio Leader (1995). She also published Folayegbe M. Akintunde-Ighodalo: A Public Life (2002). In addition, she is co-editor and contributor to Engendering the Diaspora: Women, Culture and Historical Change in the Caribbean and the Nigerian Hinterland. (2010) and Money Struggles and City Life: Devaluation in Ibadan and Other Urban Centers of Southern Nigeria, 1986–96 (2002). Peter A. Dumbuya Peter Dumbuya is a professor of Department of History and African Studies at Fourah Bay College, Sierra Leone and a licensed attorney. He has published five books, several book chapters and peer reviewed journal publications focusing on US policy on Africa, US–African relations, Civil War and erosion of State Sovereignty in Africa, and more recently, gender, violence, and reconstruction in post-war Sierra Leone. He was a Fulbright Scholar to Sierra Leone from 2013–2014 and a Fulbright Specialist in Law and History. He was associate editor of the Journal of Third World Studies until Spring 2018. Aisha Fofana Ibrahim Aisha Fofana Ibrahim, is a former president of the 50/50 Group and former Director of the Institute for Gender Research and Documentation (INGRADOC) at Fourah Bay College. She is a feminist scholar, researcher, activist, and senior lecturer in Gender Studies at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone. Born in Freetown, she was raised in Freetown, Kambia and Kano, Nigeria and did her primary and secondary schooling in Sierra Leone, undergraduate studies in Nigeria and graduate studies in the

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USA, respectively. Aisha has over 20 years of experience working as a women’s, gender, literature and peace-building researcher and activist and continues to work as an advocate for gender equality and women’s increased political participation and representation. As a consultant she provides technical support to the state government and national and international non-governmental organizations in the area of women’s empowerment and gender analysis. Lyn Graybill Lyn Graybill is an independent scholar whose research has centered on peacemaking in Africa. She has written extensively about the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SATRC), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and most recently the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SLTRC) and its relationship to the Special Court. She is particularly interested in indigenous methods of conflict resolution, the role of religion in conflict and conflict resolution, and the impact of war on women. She is the author of three books: Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Miracle or Model?; Religion and Resistance Politics in South Africa; and Religion, Tradition, and Reconciliation in Sierra Leone (forthcoming). She is the coeditor of Africa’s Second Wave of Freedom: Development, Democracy, and Rights. She has published articles in diverse journals such as Ethics & International Affairs, Third World Quarterly, Africa Today, Peace Review, Human Rights Review, Women’s Studies International Forum, and Current History. Arthur Onipede Hollist Pede Hollist (Arthur Onipede Hollist), a native of Sierra Leone, is a professor of English at The University of Tampa, Florida. His interests cover the literature of the African imagination—literary expressions in the African continent as well as in the African diaspora. So the Path Does not Die (Langaa Press, 2012, Cameroon) is his first novel. His short stories, “Going to America,” “BackHomeAbroad,” and “Resettlement” have appeared in Ìrìnkèrindò: A Journal of African Migration, on the Sierra Leone Writers Series Website, and in Matatu 41-12, respectively. Fredanna D.M. McGough Fredanna McGough is Professor of Public Health in the Department of Health Sciences at Coastal Carolina University ( CCU) in Conway, South Carolina, where she has been on faculty since 2008. Originally from Sierra Leone, McGough lived in Nigeria and Kenya before pursuing an undergraduate degree at the University of North Florida. McGough went on to earn her masters and doctoral degrees from Southern Illinois University Carbondale in Illinois. McGough’s research interests focus on addressing social injustices, tackling social inequities and exploring socio-ecological factors that affect health care access and maternal health outcomes. McGough is involved with local and international endeavors. Locally, she is involved with CCU Women and Gender Studies Program and currently sits on a couple of local boards that support community development endeavors. Internationally, McGough is on the board of Social Workers Sierra Leone to address the needs of disenfranchised peoples in Sierra Leone.

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Susan Shepler Susan Shepler is an Associate Professor at American University, with the School of International Service. Her research interests include youth and conflict, reintegration of former child soldiers, post-conflict reconstruction, refugees, education and economic development, NGOs and globalization, transitional justice, and childhood studies. In addition to her academic work, Dr. Shepler has conducted research for UNICEF, the IRC, and Search for Common Ground. Her work has appeared in The Journal of Modern African Studies, Africa Today, Anthropology Today, and the Journal of Human Rights. Her book on the reintegration of former child soldiers in Sierra Leone, Childhood Deployed, was published by NYU Press in June 2014. Claudena Skran Claudena Skran is Professor of Government and Edwin and Ruth West Professor of Economics and Society at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, and founder of KidsGive, a scholarship program for children in Sierra Leone. She was the first US Fulbright scholar to Sierra Leone after its 1991–2002 Civil War and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where she earned her doctorate in international relations. She is the author of Refugees in Inter-War Europe: The Emergence of a Regime and is at work on Ebola Time, a book about children, schools, and the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone. Amy Smythe Amy Smythe is an Educationist, development programmer, and former diplomat from Sierra Leone presently residing in the USA. She is married, with two children and four grandchildren. Mrs. Smythe has over fifty years of experience working as a civil society advocate, and continues to be actively involved in development in Sierra Leone and the diaspora. She is an active member of the Women’s Response to Ebola in Sierra Leone (WRESL) Campaign. She is retired from the UN where she served as the first Senior Gender Advisor in a multi-dimensional peacekeeping mission, MONUC, in the DRC. She was also Sierra Leone’s first Minister of Gender and Children’s Affairs following the country’s return to democratization between 1996 and 1998. Her interest in the implementation of UNSC resolution 1325 and her many years of experience in local and international NGO operations as well as in policy formulation dominate her work as an activist and professional. Filomina Chioma Steady Filomina Chioma Steady is professor emerita of Africana Studies, Gender, Studies, and Environmental Justice at Wellesley College. She is former deputy director of the United Nations’ Division for the Advancement of Women. She is author of numerous books, including Women and Leadership in West Africa: Mothering the Nation and Humanizing the State (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), Women and Collective Action in Africa (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), and editor of the award winning book, The Black Woman CrossCulturally (Schenkman Books, 1981) which is in its third edition.

Map of Sierra Leone

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Acknowledgements This volume is the result of a labor of love—love for Sierra Leone and its people, and respect and admiration for the resilience of its women, despite ongoing challenges. It took several years for us to produce this volume, but at each step of the way, whether through informal conversations, conference presentations, symposia in the United States and Sierra Leone, and a journal publication, we moved closer to accomplishing our goal. In many ways, this book is a culmination of a confluence of dialogues between the two co-editors, who are both of Sierra Leonean origin and have shared points of connection in our professional journeys as US-based faculty in the social sciences (one a sociologist and the other a political scientist) and women’s and gender studies. While we are located in the United States, we are privileged to have the opportunity to work in Sierra Leone for extended periods of time; teaching, conducting research, and participating in the activist work of various civil society and women’s organizations. Similarly, we wanted a book that provided space for a plurality of voices and perspectives. Academia, activism and policy are too often separate – we wanted to bring these voices all together. Likewise, we believe that truth is not held by any one discipline and our contributors reflect a variety of disciplines, and walks of life—from historians, and political scientists, to award-winning story tellers and former ministers, a reflection of our desire to be transdisciplinary. Finally, we are aware of the danger, as Chimanda Adichie has warned, of a single story. We wanted to decolonize knowledge production and to provide a space for multiple voices, incorporating gender, racial and cultural diversity. Thus, our contributors include many Sierra Leonean scholars and activists telling their story, in conversation with American scholars and activists, all united by a joint passion for the country and involved in some area of research and advocacy on the advancement of women’s rights and gender justice in Sierra Leone. This volume emerged out of a special panel sponsored by the African Studies Association Women’s Caucus at its 2014 annual meeting. The title of the panel was “The Politics of Women’s Empowerment in Post-war Sierra Leone.” Papers presented at this conference were later published in a special issue of African and Asian Studies in 2015. In 2016, a symposium with the same title was held at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), sponsored by the Center for Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies under the directorship of Dr. Barclay Barrios and the Walter and Lalita Janke Foundation. Lalita Janke is a founding member of the Advisory Council of the Center for Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and we are most grateful for her support of the symposium from which this volume has been produced. Funding from these sources provided support to bring all the contributing authors in this volume from Sierra Leone, Senegal, and different locations in the United States. The keynote speaker for the symposium was Madam Zainab Bangura, then Special Representative of the UN Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict. Her presentation culminated in an honorary doctorate xii

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granted by Florida Atlantic University to Madam Bangura for her outstanding achievement in advocating for women’s rights, governance and political reform, conflict resolution, and reconciliation in Africa. Some of the papers presented at the symposium are published in this volume while others are newly written. Symposium presenters represented different disciplines ranging from literature, political science, sociology, education, law, health sciences, as well as gender justice advocates and consultants. This volume is a testament to the symposium’s success in as much as there was a general consensus of all who participated to produce an edited volume. One of the reasons why the co-editors responded to this call was to highlight the long history of women’s involvement in the political, socioeconomic and cultural development of Sierra Leone, and the particular role they played in helping to bring peace and a democratically elected government post-war. Another reason was to examine challenges women still face in advancing their rights and gender justice and to locate the structural and institutional factors at the state and global level and ways in which women activists have shown resilience, agency and accomplishments. Even as COVID-19 continues to rage throughout the world, and in Sierra Leone, we see women rising to the fore as they did during Ebola, yet, still having to fight for their voices to be heard and to be represented. In 2018, both co-editors were in Sierra Leone at the same time and decided to organize a panel discussion at Fourah Bay College, sponsored by the Institute for Gender Research and Documentation (INGRADOC), University of Sierra Leone. Drs. Aisha Fofana Ibrahim, Susan Shepler, Fredline M’Cormack-Hale and Josephine BeokuBetts were panel presenters. Dr. Shepler participated virtually from the United States by Zoom. We were fortunate to have Dr. Filomina Steady, world-renowned Sierra Leonean feminist scholar visiting Sierra Leone at the time. She was invited to moderate the session and later write the foreword to this volume. We are most grateful for her participation in this publication project. This publication would not have been possible without the generous support and sustained collaboration of committed colleagues, institutions and our families. Indeed, it took a village to produce this book. In Florida, we are extremely appreciative of the generous support of Florida Atlantic University’s Center for Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, The Walter and Lalita Janke Foundation, The Advisory Council of the FAU Center for Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, particularly Lora “Skeets” Friedkin and Lisa Armbrust, former co-chairs of the Advisory Council. Thanks also go to the Sierra Leonean Community in South Florida (extending from Miami to Port St. Lucie and Gainesville) for their generous hospitality and material and moral support of the symposium. We especially want to thank Dr. LaRay Denzer for serving as consultant to the historical background section of this volume and to Shanique Mothersill, MA graduate student in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic University who served as research assistant for the production of this volume. Thanks also for the generous support of the US Fulbright Scholar Program for Josephine to teach and conduct research at the Institute for Gender Research and Documentation at Fourah Bay College in 2011–2012 and 2018–2019. In New Jersey, special thanks go to supportive colleagues at the School of Diplomacy of Seton Hall University for their probing questions and insights during formal faculty

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brown bags as well as informal conversations that helped in the framing of sections of the book. Thanks are due also to Seton Hall’s University Research Council for summer research grants that provided time and resources to conduct field work in Sierra Leone. The Fulbright US Scholar Program also provided generous support that enabled Fredline to teach in the Department of Political Science and the Institute for Gender Research and Documentation, at Fourah Bay College. MA Grad students in the School of Diplomacy, Andrew Manzi, Will Draves and Patricia Zanini Graca provided valuable research assistance that aided the project as did undergraduate student volunteer, Mark Wood. Thanks also go to our sterling editorial assistant Mary Buchanan for all her hard work and to Seton Hall University and the Center for Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at FAU for their contributions toward the editorial process. We greatly appreciate as well, all the contributors who believed in the project and stayed the course. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers whose challenging but helpful comments greatly enriched the quality of all the chapters. Thanks also to Bloomsbury Press for giving us the opportunity to showcase the activism of women in Sierra Leone in the contemporary period. Finally, these acknowledgements would not be complete without recognizing our families. Fredline is deeply grateful for her husband and rock, Aaron Hale who has worked alongside her, serving as a sounding board in thinking through and polishing ideas. His unwavering support on the home front, taking care of the children and giving her the space needed to meet deadlines and juggle tasks is appreciated beyond words. Special thanks also to her children for their understanding! She also appreciates the support of her parents—Fred M’Cormack, her first example of an African feminist dad who taught his four daughters there was nothing they couldn’t do and raised a son to think the same—as well as her late mother May M’Cormack, who embodied strength and compassion and was truly a force of nature. They, along with her siblings and many other cherished family members, friends and colleagues have all provided support in immeasurable ways. Josephine extends her heartfelt thanks and appreciation to the Beoku-Betts and Taylor-Camara families for their unconditional love and support throughout this journey. She is especially grateful to her two mothers Lady Milly Beoku-Betts and Mrs. Sophie Taylor-Camara (both deceased), whose love and support of her personal and professional goals were unwavering and steadfast. Their confidence in her ability to achieve her career goals was at the heart of all that she has accomplished. Josephine also thanks her extended family and friends in Sierra Leone, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, who have all been part of her support network over the years. She will remain forever grateful for their support and encouragement as well as their varied and immense contributions towards her accomplishments. As we reflect on the issues raised by the contributing authors of this volume, a common theme that runs through is that no matter the challenges women’s activism has faced historically in Sierra Leone, women have demonstrated resilience, flexibility and adaptability in navigating ways to advance gender justice and women’s rights in Sierra Leone. This book is our small way of saying thank you for these efforts.

Foreword Filomina Chioma Steady Professor Emerita, Wellesley College, USA Former Deputy Director, Division for the Advancement of Women, United Nations

This ground-breaking anthology written by eminent scholars, distinguished diplomats and women’s rights activists, is a welcome addition to the literature on Women Studies, Gender Studies, African Studies and Peace Studies. It adds to our understanding of the participation of women in advancing peace and security in post-conflict situations. It also examines opportunities and constraints at the macro level of international standard-setting norms and the micro level of local action. Women’s involvement in activism for peace is well recognized throughout Africa but their attempts at postconflict reconstruction and rehabilitation show varying degrees of success in the promotion of gender equality and the improvement of women’ s lives. The Sierra Leone Civil War lasted from 1991 to 2002. This book examines the many reasons for the limited success of women’s post-conflict work in helping to rebuild their nation. These include a fragmented women’s movement; patriarchy and the inadequacy of the “women’s empowerment model” inspired by neoliberal policies. “Empowerment” is problematic because it presupposes that women have the means to empower themselves and an enabling policy environment to facilitate it. As the articles show, women are often taking on some of the responsibilities of the state as a result of poor governance, weak institutions and endemic corruption. The result is the disempowerment of women and a return to the pre-war status quo, without solving the root causes of the war or providing sustainable livelihood and security for the population, especially women. The authors, many of whom are from Sierra Leone, argue for a context-oriented approach, including transformative narratives, with due regard for variations in interpretations, investigative approaches and methodologies. They rightfully opt for a fluidity of approaches that is “context-dependent and that bridges the nexus between research, theory and praxis.” This is an ambitious goal but the contributors and their able co-editors are up to the task and have broken new ground in some important areas. For an example, their analyses bring out the complexities of the lived experiences and realities of women in Sierra Leone, not so much in the manifestation of intersectionality, but in internal differentiation, even within clearly defined categories such as class, ethnicity, age, religion and cultural differences. Although a monolithic analysis of women in Sierra Leone is unrealistic, the authors demonstrate that cross-cutting needs, concerns and interests exist upon which to build bridges leading to common goals, including combating the consequences of devastation of the Civil War and the Ebola epidemic. What is difficult is the lack of support and xv

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frustration that women continue to experience, despite numerous international standard-setting norms for gender equality and the advancement of women. These include The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW;) The Beijing Platform for Action and Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and gender equality. At the national level, these have been bolstered by three Gender Acts; The Sexual Offence Act and its 2019 amendment and continuous activism for women’s rights by women’s organizations. One major challenge for women working on post-conflict rehabilitation is that the policy framework for post-conflict reconstruction gave priority to disarmament of the rebels, military and police reform and training with less emphasis on strengthening the social sectors and building institutions that meet the needs of every citizen, especially women. Furthermore, post-conflict programs did not eliminate the root causes for war which The Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Sierra Leone described as “years of bad governance, endemic corruption and the denial of basic human rights that created the deplorable conditions that made conflict inevitable.” The international community poured huge sums of money into the country to achieve four objectives, namely, repatriation, reintegration, rehabilitation and reconstruction, totaling 16.4 billion leones a year from the United Nations; 100 million pound sterling a year from the British government and $45 million from the United States. According to reports, some reconstruction efforts were successful such as resettlement of 300,000 displaced people; disarmament of 70,000 mostly male excombatants; police training and reform of the military as well as the building of schools and clinics and relatively successful elections. But not much of this money went to women’s organizations working at the grassroots level to improve women’s lives and protect them from gender-based violence. Women’s organizations have not been able to effectively include the monitoring of national budgets through the application of the gender audit methodology of the United Nations to ensure that adequate resources flow to activities and programs that will benefit women in the post-conflict efforts at rehabilitation. Without the oversight of women’s organizations, in collaboration with civil society organizations, much will remain unchanged. In addition, the post-war Paramount Chief Restoration Program has apparently reinforced some of the customary laws that led to the discontent which fueled aspects of the Civil War. These are likely to continue to violate human rights and marginalize women and youth. Women chiefs have been viewed more positively, some of whom continued to rule with difficulty during the war, having endured physical violence and threats themselves. Despite these challenges, one article in the book shows how women chiefs provided much needed governance and leadership necessary to guide people out of the war and into the post-war rebuilding efforts. Some of the articles discuss the discrepancy between legal frameworks and their implementation and enforcement, which require a number of actions. One is the building of women’s legal capabilities through legal literacy so that they can understand the law and know their rights. Second is having financial and other resources to use the law and access the courts. Third is eliminating the “culture of silence and impunity”

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that uses family relationships and cultural repression to cover up sexual abuses and circumvent the courts. Obstacles to implementation also exist within the United Nations system itself. Global international laws and Plans of Action have resulted in the bureaucratization of feminism through women’s bureaux that tend to be poorly resourced and operate within a political structure that is often male-dominated, static and hierarchical. Despite the prevailing rhetoric at the United Nations and among governments that patronize women at the grassroots, the implementation of many global mandates tend to benefit elite women, resulting in empowerment of a small minority of women within the constraints of Western-designed institutional frameworks. In addition, there is a plethora of global norms emanating from various United Nations conferences on women, population, environment, human rights and so forth with multiple and overlapping mandates that overwhelm the fragile bureaucracies of countries like Sierra Leone with limited resources for implementation. Sierra Leone has a long history of female activism in women’s organizations and has produced many outstanding women in all spheres of society. However, it is probably difficult to say for sure that there is a “women’s movement” in Sierra Leone in the sense of social movement theory whereby people mobilize in mass in opposition to the state to achieve some task or goal that will bring about social change. Our women’s organizations tend to represent various interests and the largest are likely to be mobilizing in support of a political party rather than feminist goals. What we have is probably similar to what Kenyan feminist researchers have defined for Kenya as “A Women’s Group Movement.” This would explain the fragmentation and the lack of clearly defined goals. The abortion debate is a case in point, where religion, rather than feminist issues is the motivating factor, a feature not unique to Sierra Leone. Fragmentation along religious lines was also manifested at the 1995 Beijing conference when many delegates from predominantly Catholic countries objected to recommendations that supported abortion, even though they endorsed most of the recommendations of the Beijing Platform for Action to advance gender equality and women’s rights. Nonetheless, fragmentation can pose serious problems in situations where women are more profoundly divided by class, ethnicity, age and cultural differences. Fragmentation is a chronic problem and was evident in my research on women and collective action in Sierra Leone as well as my study of female leadership in three Mano River Union countries. In spite of these challenges, there are many issues around which women can build bridges and forge alliances. Aided by social media and the digital revolution discussed by one of the articles in the book, effective mass mobilization of women can help improve education, the economy, as well as promote human rights and gender justice. Special emphasis should be placed on health based on the 2019 alarming statistics on maternal mortality that stands at 1,360 per 100,000 live births and an infant mortality rate of 81 per 1,000 live births as pointed out in one of the articles in the book. Other problems addressed focus on patriarchal norms, male hegemony and conventional and unconventional restrictions on women’s participation in politics and public life. Despite attempts to implement quotas for women at a minimum of 30

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percent in parliament through The Gender Equity Bill, this has failed to come to fruition in Sierra Leone. In fact, women’s political representation in national politics shows a downward trend. One of the most pernicious aspects of patriarchy is its misogynistic proclivities, evident in the psychological and physical violence and degrading insults and intimidation of women candidates as one article points out. The Civil War reinforced misogynistic proclivities through sexual violence; kidnapping and the murder of women. Analysis of patriarchy is however, often complicated by the internal workings of the patriarchal apparatus which only succeeds because women are an intrinsic part of it. In other words, women have also internalized patriarchal norms to the extent that many of them are enablers. In general, women are conservative in Sierra Leone and uphold some of these patriarchal norms by constraining the advancement of other women. In my research on women’s political associations in Sierra Leone, there was a tendency for women to vote for male candidates and to try to bring women down as they aspire to leadership positions. This is also discussed in one of the articles in the book and is apparent in other parts of the world. Analysis of patriarchy can also reveal patterns of discrimination that are not necessarily gender-specific such as ownership of land. Traditional land tenure systems in the Provinces of Sierra Leone do not recognize individual rights to land or private ownership for both women and men as well as for Sierra Leonean citizens defined as “non-native.” Women’s legal land tenure rights are therefore contingent upon abolishing discrimination against individual land ownership and private ownership for every citizen of Sierra Leone. Many of the articles mention the political acts and legal instruments devoted to gender equality in keeping with international gender norms. In addition, both The Lome Peace Accord of 1999 and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of 2004 recommend constitutional reform to enhance and promote gender equality. However, resources are needed to implement these acts and laws. Given the degree of underdevelopment in Sierra Leone, despite its enormous wealth in natural resources, implementation and enforcement are bound to be difficult. Sierra Leone is listed as one of the poorest countries of the world, ranking 181 out of 189 in the Human Development Report of 2018 and is among the countries classified as a Least Developed Country (LDC.) The poverty rate of the country stands at 50 percent. Regardless of how well mobilized and committed women are for post-conflict work, their success will be limited by severe resource constraints, as discussed in the book. Nonetheless, women are sorely needed for the work on post-conflict reconstruction and rehabilitation and require adequate resources to ensure their success. This book is an outstanding and timely intervention that will be valuable in academic and policy circles. The co-editors and authors are to be commended for their important contributions. It enhances the growing literature on women, war and postconflict reconstruction and has the potential of contributing to enduring peace and human security.

Thematic Organization Contributing authors of this volume problematize the concept of success and failure when it comes to women’s advancements in post-conflict contexts, with a focus on Sierra Leone. Against the backdrop of work that has often claimed an opportunity for gender progress and gains after conflict, where gains are often couched in terms of electoral successes, Sierra Leone, on the surface would appear to have failed. The country has been unable to pass a gender quota through parliament, or to increase women’s political participation; yet, gains have still been made in other areas. Using a variety of theoretical frameworks, the authors problematize the concept of empowerment and argue in favor of broadening understandings of empowerment and measuring its success in ways that draw on more localized understandings of empowerment and on indigenous frames of knowledge to advance real structural change. They examine the varied ways in which women have individually and collectively responded to, shaped, negotiated, and been affected by internal and global initiatives and processes post-war. The chapters show that while post-war contexts can provide opportunities for new policies and practices that advance women’s rights and gender justice, what they can accomplish is constrained by internal and external factors which need to be interrogated for change to take place. The chapters point to the resilience, agency, and accomplishments of women despite the enduring challenges they face. The volume is divided into four parts dealing with conceptual frameworks; women in politics; issues in women’s empowerment: Legal, Social, and Economic; and mobilizing to advance women’s empowerment: Internal and External actors. In Part 1, the first chapter includes analysis of the challenges facing women’s activism in Sierra Leone in local and global context and the structural and institutional factors underpinning these impediments. At the local level these include a persistent patriarchal system, patronage, and the structure of the political system. At the global level, the impact of colonialism and neoliberalism underpin some of the problems analyzed. This chapter draws on critical feminist discourses on the politics of knowledge production to examine the limitations of neoliberal models, feminist political economy to examine the impact of external and geopolitical processes, and an African-centered gender analysis to identify how such issues as class, race, ethnicity, gender, and heterosexuality intersect to shape patterns of social relations in African contexts. The introductory chapter also provides a historical context to understand the roots of women’s political leadership and activism in Sierra Leone. In chapter 2, Hollist takes the issue further by destabilizing conventional Western notions of women’s empowerment, national consciousness, transformation and development. He advocates the value of storytelling and argues that making storytelling part of the completion, graduation, and acceptance of program initiatives can play a pivotal role in empowering xix

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women in Sierra Leone’s post-war recovery. Storytelling illuminates those difficult conversations about the social and cultural consequences of post-war empowerment programs. Any adequate theory of empowerment, development and rebuilding must take account of the intersecting systems of storytelling, stories, and voices to effectively remap sensibilities and minds. Part 2 focuses on women and politics. While some progress has been made by African countries in increasing women’s political representation after conflict, a growing body of scholars argue in favor of going beyond the numbers and to examine more closely substantive improvements women have been able to make. While in some cases it has led to increased political participation of women, in others such as Liberia, it has shown benefits as well as losses. Chapter 3 discusses the early career of Zainab Bangura in Sierra Leone’s in politics and governance. She highlights three main areas of her activities such as her role in women’s and civil society organizations during the period 1993–2005, her 2002 presidential campaign, and her post-campaign networking with national regional, and international non-governmental organizations. Denzer fills a gap in understanding about women and politics in Sierra Leone by providing a case study of the beliefs and career trajectory of an individual woman as political leader. She argues that more extensive biographical projects are needed to understand women’s full contribution to Sierra Leone’s intellectual and political leadership. In chapter 4, Abdullah takes a more historical approach to examining the role of women in politics by examining the issue of election-related violence against “political women” in Sierra Leone politics. She explains that this is a long established practice in the country’s political process since the first general election in 1957 and reflects an unwillingness of male politicians to share the political arena with women. She argues that in the postwar context, this negates the principles of increased women’s participation in governance and protection and prevention of sexual abuse against women under the UN 1325 Resolution of which Sierra Leone is a signatory. While the first two chapters in this section focus on women in the formal political sphere, Day in chapter 5 examines women in traditional political leadership roles as chiefs and assesses their roles in promoting a progressive agenda for women. She provides a view into women’s leadership roles in indigenous political institutions and argues that they have a place to play in shaping the agenda for women’s advancement. Part 3 examines the complexities of understanding women’s empowerment in postwar Sierra Leone and the need to broaden conventional understandings and measures of success in relation to women’s empowerment. In chapter 6 Dumbuya locates the root causes of women’s inequality in customary laws, traditions, and practices that have been incorporated into the constitution and laws of Sierra Leone. Even with the passage of the so called “gender laws” in 2007, he documents how customary laws still govern marriage and domestic relations, inheritance and property rights. Shepler in chapter 7 similarly examines the complexities and contradictions of defining “women’s and girls’ empowerment.” She considers barriers to girls’ education, particularly in rural areas as one critical element in advancing the political empowerment of women. In order to provide better futures for girls and eliminate barriers to their education, more effective programs and policies must be initiated that define issues from a locally relevant context. In chapter 8, McGough provides an insightful framework to understand the

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influences that led to the development of the Free Healthcare Initiative and explores the impact of the policy on women actors as both recipients and informal providers of health care in post-war Sierra Leone. While access to clinical services has been improved by the government, a provision was made to eliminate traditional birth attendants who historically provided affordable birth services for women in rural areas. This policy strips them of the ability to practice their craft and earn a living. McGough discusses the contradictory results inherent when international laws and mandates get translated into local contexts and problematizes the uni-dimensional ways in which women’s empowerment is often promoted. In chapter 9, Graybill argues more specifically that despite some commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment such as the gender laws and Sexual Offences Act in 2012, women’s physical integrity is not assured and sexual violence against women is endemic. It explores the limited progress made towards reducing gender-based violence with special attention to the impact of Ebola on rolling back gains which had been made. Part 4 closes the thematic chapters by examining advocacy and activist efforts of internal and external actors to advance women’s empowerment and some of the unintended consequences of these initiatives. In chapter 10, Skran focuses on the problematics of external interventions in promoting women’s empowerment in Sierra Leone by examining the UNHCR’s gender policy for refugees and returnees in Sierra Leone. She reveals some of the contradictions and limitations of popular approaches to ensuring women’s political and economic empowerment. Skran argues that international organizations need to adopt a more structured approach and play a more direct role in facilitating community choices ensuring that contextual needs supersede other “best intentions” in promoting women’s empowerment. In contrast to Skran’s focus on external actors, the next three chapters examine the same issue in the context of local actors. Starting with Smythe in chapter 11, she analyzes the sustained efforts locally and in the diaspora of Sierra Leonean women activists to advocate and address structural barriers to gender equality which continued to affect governance and development planning initiatives during the Ebola crisis. The importance of a gendersensitive approach to address the particular concerns of women in UN mandated program initiatives to end the Ebola epidemic was still lacking in the wider decision making process in all spheres. She contends that the use of modern communication technologies like Twitter, E-Mail, WhatsApp, and Facebook helped to facilitate quick mobilization and responses as the situation evolved. As an activist, Smythe provides a picture of how women came together informally to address an unfolding epidemic. While Smythe’s chapter stresses unity, Fofana Ibrahim in chapter 12, through an intersectional lens, explores the current dynamics of the politics between religion and women’s activism in Sierra Leone. She argues that although women’s organizations have worked together to achieve a common agenda, solidarity is not automatic, and women can become polarized depending on the issue under consideration and the political and religious dimensions of that issue. Focusing on the Safe Abortion Bill in 2015, she examines fragmentation within the movement which was exacerbated by religious convictions fueled by religious men in authority. Nevertheless, her chapter shows that by working to see areas of commonality, and to look at what unites, rather than what divides, even issues as contentious as abortion could possibly become an

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area for convergence. In chapter 13, M’Cormack-Hale looks at how women can unify around an issue such as SGBV. In contrast to Fofana Ibrahim, she finds that issues such SGBV around which women are largely united, can provide opportunities for women to work together to advocate for change. Her chapter shows the importance of moving beyond oppositional stances, working with men, investing in locally grounded initiatives, building alliances across a variety of women’s groups including customary actors, civil society organizations and women politicians and the importance of changing mindsets from within, all as ways to build transformative change.

Part One

Conceptual Frameworks

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Understanding the Politics of Women and Gender Equality in Sierra Leone: Opportunities and Possibilities Josephine A. Beoku-Betts and Fredline A.O. M’Cormack-Hale

Gender relations are disrupted in times of conflict and war. Despite the pain that war brings, a number of feminist scholars who study Africa have noted that the period immediately following conflict can provide a window of opportunity for women’s socio-political and economic empowerment (e.g., Bauer, 2016; Tripp, 2015; Tripp, Casimoro, Kwesiga & Mungwa, 2009; Waylen, 2007; Meintjes & Turshen, 2002). Studies suggest that these economic, political, and social policy reforms to advance gender equality and women’s rights can be largely attributed to autonomous women’s movements mobilizing to demand these reforms (Gbowee, 2013; Tripp, Casimoro, Kwesiga, & Mungwa, 2009; Fallon, 2008). Several works have examined how African countries emerging from conflict have reconfigured the political landscape in ways that have benefited women, including constitutional revisions leading to increases in women’s political representation as well as the passage of new laws geared towards improving conditions for women. In Uganda, for example, Pankhurst (2002) showed how conflict paved the way for increased political participation of women. However, the emphasis on this opportunity for gender progress and associated gains for women has increasingly been critiqued for oversimplifying the potential of the post-conflict period (see for example, Scanlon 2019). Fuest (2008) has illustrated women’s gains as well as losses after the Liberian Civil War. Moreover, attention has often been on those stories where women’s legislative gains are viewed as the biggest marker of success; less studied in these discourses are the cases that do not fit this narrative and have either not experienced similar legislative successes following conflict or have not seen subsequent positive impact on the lives of those who are most marginalized or victimized under the laws designed to protect them. In addition, while there is a substantial body of work on different aspects of post-conflict reconstruction, democracy building, and the role of international communities in promoting women’s empowerment in post-conflict African countries, most of these works look at the immediate aftermath of the conflict period. There is need for work examining the longer-term ways in which these interventions impact women, the consequences of 3

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War, Women, and Post-conflict Empowerment

such interventions in areas such as health, education, refugees, and legislation, and the varied ways in which women have collectively and individually challenged, negotiated, and shaped these initiatives to advance their particular interests. The purpose of this edited volume is to fill in this gap through an examination of Sierra Leone, a country that, despite its post-conflict status and record of some positive advancements in women’s rights and gender equality reforms, has largely failed to translate the post-conflict reconstruction process into tangible legislative gains for women. The book reinforces existing critiques of works that romanticize the opportunities of the post-conflict period, by asking us to think more critically about what we mean by success. While on the surface, it might appear that Sierra Leone has failed, if one uses the largely externally driven metric of more women in parliament as a marker of success (as over time the country has recorded decreasing rather than increasing numbers of women in parliament), Sierra Leone nevertheless, has been able to record other examples of positive developments for women. Using Sierra Leone as a case study, and employing a variety of theoretical frameworks, contributors to this volume problematize the concept of success, as well as “women’s empowerment.” Through diverse contributions, examining the complexities involved in translating Sierra Leone women’s activism and successes in ending civil conflict into positive postwar changes, the works in this volume, taken together, suggest broadening conventional notions of understanding and measuring success when it comes to women’s empowerment, notwithstanding the challenges that women face. We locate challenges at three levels. First is the problematic dominance of Western neoliberal conceptual frameworks as a foundation for development and change, evidenced in the depoliticization of terms such as “women’s empowerment.” We employ critical feminist discourses on the politics of knowledge production to examine the limitations of Western-centric neoliberal models that have shaped understandings of how women’s lives should be approached through development initiatives. This has compromised the political struggle to transform the structure of gender relations and has contributed in many respects to flawed solutions in the arenas of health, education, and politics. For example, in discussing reconstruction and peace consolidation policies and program initiatives by the Sierra Leone government and UN agencies after the civil war, Abdullah (2014) shows how their interpretations and applications of the term “women’s empowerment” lacked “political mobilization and consciousness raising for structural change that feminists have demanded as the bottom line in the empowerment process” (p. 77). Second, entrenched in Sierra Leone society historically and in the contemporary period is a dominant patriarchal culture that has blocked and stalled reform efforts, limiting both the passing of new legislation and the transformative capacity of existing legal reforms. This has in various contexts contributed to persistent violence against women institutionally, collectively, and individually. For example, women political aspirants are typically perceived as transgressing traditional “male spaces” by male counterparts during elections. Traditional male institutions such as the Poro Masquerade, which women are by custom not permitted to witness, are used to intimidate women candidates, coming out on display on the dates of their campaign rallies or meetings, thus preventing them from having equal opportunity to campaign

Understanding the Politics of Women and Gender Equality

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in their communities (Fofana Ibrahim, 2015). Institutional factors like the first past the post electoral system have been difficult to shift, further constraining women’s electoral chances. We draw on feminist political economy to examine the impact of external geopolitical processes such as colonialism and globalization on pre-existing structures of gender relations. This approach helps explain the contextual specificities of how these processes reinforce male hegemony and patriarchal institutions in a masculinist social order as well as the ways in which women individually and collectively respond to these processes by demand, negotiation, manipulation, or compliance. Third, the women’s movement, both historically and in the present, has struggled to mobilize on a sustained basis as one unified body. Except under crisis situations, such as the Civil War from 1991–2002 and the Ebola outbreak in 2013–2014 when women mobilized across social divisions to face these challenges, the women’s movement has been largely fragmented, competing within its own constituency along lines of ethnicity, class, religion, and particularly political party affiliation. The movement has also lacked clear leadership. Moreover, relations between women politicians and the women’s movement as well as relations among women politicians themselves have similarly been strained (Fofana Ibrahim, 2015). Within political parties, a system of patronage exists which rewards loyalists with favors such as project support and funding for consultancies (Beoku-Betts & Day, 2015). Among the reasons why the 30 percent quota bill to increase the representation of women in parliament was not tabled or debated before the close of parliament in 2012 was infighting among members of the female parliamentary caucus and the All Political Party Women’s Association (APPWA) (Fofana Ibrahim, 2015). In our discussion of this third challenge, we examine what Pratt (2017) describes as the “ebb and flow in the momentum” of Sierra Leone women’s organizations, employing an “African centered gender analysis” which is a variant of the intersectionality approach and long established in African feminist scholarship. (p. 46). In Imam, Mama, and Sow’s (1997) seminal edited work on Engendering Social Sciences in Africa this approach is described as a means to identify how class, gender, race, heterosexuality, and neocolonial relations are principal axes of African societies interwoven to “produce quite distinct histories, traditions, and cultures” (p. 25). As an analytical tool, “the African gender analysis approach must pay attention to all forms of patterned inequality and how they relate to each other . . . In the process of analyzing subordinate discourses, hegemonizing discourses are deconstructed and denaturalized” (Imam, Mama & Sow, 1997, p. 27). This is an appropriate lens to explain the complexity of the interacting forces impacting women’s organizations in Sierra Leone that cause various stakeholders to compete within and among themselves, thereby hindering their ability to maintain a cohesive and sustainable structure that can be effectively mobilized to advance women’s rights and gender equality. In light of the constraints discussed above, a recurring theme among the contributors is the need for a more gender-transformative approach that challenges Eurocentric and neoliberal models. This approach keeps the term women’s empowerment but tries to frame it differently: it should be grounded in more localized understandings of empowerment and development, on indigenous frames of knowledge, understanding and wellbeing, and it should provide more nuanced insights on ways in which women

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exercise agency to confront, negotiate, disrupt, and transform the gendered status quo. At the same time, the various chapters of this volume also question what activism grounded in local knowledge and understanding looks like. What exactly does it mean to adopt a gender-transformative approach that challenges Eurocentric and neoliberal models? As others have pointed out, it is not simply a question of Southern versus Western voices. In Sierra Leone, as elsewhere, women are not a monolithic group; socio-economic status, class, culture, religion, political party affiliation, and other differentiators all suggest that there is no one way to “do” activism. The remainder of this chapter proceeds as follows. In the next section, we provide a history of Sierra Leone situating women’s involvement and contributions. While this book focuses on the contemporary period following the war in Sierra Leone, it also provides a historical context to understand the long-standing indigenous roots of women’s political leadership and activism, such as the role of women chiefs and the evolution of state violence to impede women’s participation in party politics since independence from Britain in 1961. Advancements and limitations in the present are critically examined, with reference to the past, including the need for women activists to clearly understand and articulate the various complexities and contradictions of how women experience and navigate their particular social, political, and economic conditions in a dominant patriarchal culture. This requires a transformative analysis. Following the historical background, we expand on the three challenges discussed above that Sierra Leone women have faced in translating women’s activism during the war into greater gains for women. Finally, we conclude with a reflection on how the different works have engaged with these challenges, and introduce the chapters that speak to these points. The various contributions offer some insights into the ways in which women’s activism has enabled women to transcend these challenges and improve women’s lives in some areas. In various ways, our contributors have drawn upon Western neoliberal frameworks—taking what works from them and discarding the rest—and favored Global South, African, and Sierra Leonean approaches, variously understood.

Sierra Leone Background History Sierra Leone has a long history of women’s involvement in the country’s political, socio-economic, and cultural development. Women’s contributions have been important in agriculture, market trading, education, traditional and modern political leadership, religion sociocultural organizations, healthcare, and government service. From the founding of interior chiefdoms and the Freetown settlement, Sierra Leonean women participated in collective action to promote equality, development, and peace in times of political unrest, conflict, and transition (Pratt, 2017; Steady, 2006, 2011; Pybus, 2008). A brief overview of Sierra Leone’s geography, ethnography, economy, history, and cultural organization will contextualize women’s experiences in advancing gender justice and women’s rights in post-conflict society. Sierra Leone is located on the west coast of Africa bordering the North Atlantic Ocean between the Republic of Guinea to the north and the Republic of Liberia to the

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southeast. It covers an area of 71, 740 sq. km. and has a population of 6,807,277 (Statistics Sierra Leone, 2015). The ethnic groups are: the Temne (35.5%), Mende (33.2%), Limba (6.4%), Kono (4.4%) Fula (3.4%), Loko (2.9%), Koranko (2.8%), Sherbro (2.6%), Mandingo (2.4%), Krios (1.2%) and Vai, Susu, Yalunka, and Kissi. Krios are the descendants of liberated Africans who were settled by the British in what is now known as Freetown which was established as a colony for freed enslaved Africans. Other minority populations are Lebanese, Indians, Pakistanis, and refugees from the civil war in Liberia (The World Factbook: Sierra Leone, 2021). Due to migration and intermarriage, ethnic groups are not closely bounded and most speak more than one local language, including Krio, which is the lingua franca, as well as English, which is the official language. The climate is tropical with the rainy season from May to December and the dry season from December to April. Sierra Leone is a predominantly agricultural country with 56.2 percent of the population engaged in farming, and has significant mineral resources such as diamonds, titanium, ore, bauxite, iron ore, gold, and chromite (The World Factbook: Sierra Leone, 2021). Religion is very important to Sierra Leoneans, and religious affiliation is not a contentious matter. Although it is a predominantly Muslim country (78.6 percent) with a significant Christian minority (20.8 percent), and a small percentage who follow indigenous and other beliefs (0.5 percent), Sierra Leone is considered one of the few countries in the world practicing religious coexistence (The World Factbook: Sierra Leone, 2021; Coulter, 2009). Sierra Leone ranks among the poorest countries in the world. The UNDP’s Development Index has consistently put it among the lowest for more than two decades with a Gini coefficient of 35.7 (2018 est.). The GDP growth rate is at 3.7 percent, unemployment is at 17.2 percent (2016 est.), and 56.8 percent (2018 est.) of the population lives below the poverty line (The World Factbook: Sierra Leone, 2021). These economic challenges can be attributed to internal factors such as the ten-year civil war from 1991–2001, the Ebola epidemic of 2014, weak political regimes, and corrupt economic and political practices. The legacy of colonialism and the ongoing process of globalization, however, undergird political and economic instabilities in terms of how human and natural resources continue to be misappropriated to benefit powerful economies in the Global North, international economic institutions, transnational corporations, and the development assistance industry. Both internal and external factors are interrelated and perpetuate structures of poverty and inequality at all levels of the society, with citizens feeling the effects of the current economic conditions. A recent Afrobarometer survey reported that Sierra Leonean citizens were overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the country’s economic conditions and its prospects moving forward (Afrobarometer Dispatch, 2020). Sierra Leone’s history long preceded the coming of European explorers and missionaries in the fifteenth century. Bullom, Sherbro, Temne, and Limba ethnic groups have the longest established settlements and that migration from inland regions by Mande-speaking peoples led to settlements of Vai, Loko, and Mende. The southern rain forest region was populated by the Mende with smaller groups such as the Vai, Krim and Sherbro, while the north and eastern savannah regions were populated by the Susu, Yalunka, Koranko, Kono, and Kissi. Over time, interethnic interaction and intermarriage

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through trade and the spread of Christianity and Islam led to internal migration and sharing of cultural practices. For example, the Mandingo and Fulani peoples who migrated from the Futa Jallon region in the north (now the Republic of Guinea), are spread throughout the country (Fyfe, 1962; Steady, 2006). Social organization of ethnic groups was based on kinship and lineage systems. Succession and inheritance were not strictly patrilineal in all groups. Among the Mende and Sherbro peoples, women had the right to hold chieftaincy title in their communities (Hoffer, 1972; Day, 2012). Sherbro communities followed a bilateral kinship and lineage system (Steady, 2006). Ethnic groups were typically organized through a chiefdom system based on the leadership of the original pioneer and his lineage. Chiefs consulted their councils for guidance on important legal, religious, administrative, and economic matters. Land was communally owned and transmitted generationally through the kinship system. Secret societies such as the Poro for men and the Bundu or Sande for women were also very powerful institutions that helped to maintain law and order. These societies provided non-formal education for adolescent boys and girls who were instructed in sexual and gender norms as well as relevant skills of survival and achievement in their respective cultures (McCulloch, 1950; Fyfe, 1962). Young men learned the skills of hunting, farming, building, and war while young women learned the gendered roles of wife and mother and domestic skills in cooking, childcare, and running a household. They also became skilled in networking which enhanced their value as women in their communities. Members of both types of secret society were initiated through secret ceremonies (Fyfe, 1962). The majority of people lived in rural communities and engaged in subsistence farming for their livelihood. British colonization of Sierra Leone began in 1787 with the establishment of a trading settlement for British settlers (both Black and White), Nova Scotian Black loyalists, and West Indian Maroon settlers. Their numbers were greatly augmented by liberated Africans rescued from the transatlantic slave trade by the British Anti-Slavery Squadron from 1807 to the 1860s (Steady, 2011). The descendants of all these groups are the Krios who have combined elements of African, European, and Caribbean cultural and language practices into contemporary Krio culture (Steady, 2006). Krios established themselves as traders, educators, civil servants, religious leaders in Islam and Christianity, and professionals. Among the early Krios, prosperous families educated their daughters and prepared them for the preferred role of wives and mothers, similar to their British middle-class counterparts. The majority however were poor or working class and earned a living as market traders, hairdressers, washerwomen, seamstresses and hospital attendants (Denzer, 1987). Land was privately owned in the colony. Krio residents were ineligible to own land in other parts of the country except under leasehold arrangements (Steady, 2006). In 1896, the British established a protectorate in the colony’s hinterland. Key mechanisms of regulation and control that were imposed included a hut tax system that was vigorously resisted by ruling chiefs, the imposition of British legal codes, and the expansion of Christian religious institutions. The British exerted their moral superiority and control over sexuality and marriage systems through regulations against prostitution, the introduction of a nuclear family model, and a bifurcated legal system of customary and civil marriage. Significant differences between these two legally recognized forms of

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marriage had adverse effects on women’s rights regarding inheritance and paternity, even after the passing of the three Gender Acts in 2007, a significant legislative measure after the civil war to advance women’s rights. Education was concentrated in Freetown during the colonial period with very little investment made to expand educational institutions in the provinces. Thus, the end of colonialism revealed wide disparities between the Krios in Freetown, who though comprising 2 percent of the population had a literacy rate of 80 percent, with the rest of the country, which had a literacy rate of 6 percent (Gberie, 2005). In general, the educational system privileged male education and reinforced British patriarchal ideals of masculinity and femininity (Alie, 1990; Gberie, 2005). In 1930, women in Freetown became eligible to vote after meeting property and income qualifications. There were opportunities for Mende and Temne women living in Freetown to serve in tribal administrations as section heads and on tribal councils and even elected a tribal head in Freetown as of 1960 (Denzer, 1987). After the 1920s, Sierra Leoneans organized nationalist movements calling for the end of British colonialism. One of the key proponents was Isaac Wallace Johnson a political activist who established the West African Youth League in 1935 and campaigned for self-government with an emphasis on new social and economic groups, especially workers and peasants (Denzer, 1987). He encouraged the participation of dynamic women such as Constance Cummings-John, who later founded the Sierra Leone Women’s Movement and became the first woman mayor of Freetown (Cummings-John & Denzer, 1995). In 1951, the British gave political control in the form of the 1951 Constitution to the majority of Sierra Leoneans living in the provinces and not the Krio minority in Freetown. Sir Milton Margai, the Mende leader of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), a predominantly provincial party became the first prime minister of an independent Sierra Leone on April 27, 1961. Among the first cabinet ministers of his government was Madam Ella Koblo Gulama, a college graduate and the first woman paramount chief of the Kaiyamba chiefdom in Moyamba (Lucan, 2003). In 1967, the All-People’s Congress (APC) led by Siaka Stevens won the general elections. This was followed by a turbulent period of states of emergency and military coups. Sierra Leone became a republic in 1971 with Siaka Stevens as executive head of state. In 1978, a new constitution instituted a one-party state with the APC as the sole legal party. This period was characterized by political instability, student protest movements, corruption, mismanagement, widespread public dissatisfaction and a deteriorating economy. Siaka Stevens retired in 1985 and handed over power to his hand-picked successor, Joseph Saidu Momoh, head of the army. In 1987, a state of economic emergency was declared (Gberie, 2005; Kandeh, 2002). During Siaka Stevens’ regime, the women’s wing of the APC played a major role in establishing the one-party state. One of the most influential women politicians at the time was Nancy Steele, secretary general of the Women’s Congress. According to Steady (2006), Steele “introduced the image of female power in politics through her militant, yet maternal approach towards political participation” (p. 38). She was known for organizing militant protest marches against the opposition party (see Abdullah, this volume). Not all women were involved in party politics. In the period between the 1970s and 1990s, women’s organizations were very active in mobilizing women from the different

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regions to lobby for women’s empowerment, particularly in the areas of education and skills training (Pratt, 2017). One of their significant successes was the adoption of their recommendations by the Constitutional Review Committee regarding the legal status of women in the 1978 Constitution (Pratt, 2017). Unfortunately, the principles of these recommendations regarding gender equality are essentially de jure and cannot be enforced. As such, the 1991 Constitution is currently under review and women’s organizations are actively campaigning for de facto gender equality provisions that can be enforced in the revised Constitution (see Dumbuya, this volume). President Momoh’s government was overthrown in 1992 in a military coup which brought in the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) under the leadership of Captain Valentine Strasser. In 1996 an election was held to return the country to constitutional government. Women’s organizations were very active in putting pressure on the military government to hand over power. Several women were candidates for elected positions in the presidential and parliamentary elections, although none were successful (Steady, 2006; see Denzer, this volume). Between 1991 and 2002, Sierra Leone was embroiled in a brutal civil war linked to the illicit trade of diamonds, political corruption, the high unemployment rate, wide rural versus urban disparities, and a dissatisfied youth population (Richards, 1990; Abdullah & Muana, 1997; Reno, 2000; Kandeh, 2002; Coulter, 2009). Between 1994 and 2001, armed men commonly referred to as rebel soldiers looted, robbed, and killed civilians throughout the country. Over 50,000 people died, 10,000 were mutilated, and 2.5 million were displaced (Rashid & Abdullah, 2004). Eventually, the Nigerian military (ECOMOG), the United Nations, and later British military forces intervened to bring the war to an end. In 1999, Peace Accords were established between the opposing war leaders in Lomé, the capital of Togo, with an agreement based on power sharing that would incorporate the rebel army into the new government and an understanding that they would surrender their weapons. Women and girls suffered adversely from the war and many were victims of sexual abuse, gang rapes, killings, abductions, amputations, and displacement. Many women were forced to participate in the war in various capacities such as military combatants, “wives,” spies, cooks in the rebel camps, and child soldiers (Coulter, 2009; see Day; Graybill; Hollist; this volume). The Women’s Forum, a network of over fifty women’s organizations, established “a unifying force for women’s advocacy on all issues relating to women’s concerns, needs, and interests” (Pratt, 2017, p. 39). The Forum played a critical role in mobilizing other women across various classes and religions to campaign for peace and an end to the war. Furthermore, it formed an alliance to discuss issues of mutual interest in preparation for the UN World Conference on Women in Beijing, China in 1995. In sharing their experiences of displacement and destruction, women were able to formulate an anti-war agenda, culminating in the establishment of the Women’s Peace Movement in 1994 (see Day on women chiefs, this volume). Under this banner, they secured resources and external support to spearhead the Movement for Democracy, a network of civil society groups working to end the war, hold democratic elections and return the country to a civilian government. They organized marches, held consultative conferences to discuss a return to civilian governance, and campaigned to hold a democratic election before peace was officially declared. Women’s mobilization

Understanding the Politics of Women and Gender Equality

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resulted in the election of a democratically elected government under President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah (1996–2003). Their efforts also resulted in various program initiatives (see Day; Skran, this volume) and the passing of the Gender Justice Laws: the Domestic Violence Act, the Registration of Customary Marriage and Divorce Act; the Devolution of Estate Act in 2007, and the Sexual Offences Act in 2012 (Beoku-Betts & Day, 2015; Pratt, 2017; see Dumbuya; Smythe, and M’Cormack-Hale, this volume). How have things changed for women in Sierra Leone over the past two decades? Some progress has been made by the government supported by international partners to recover from the civil war (see Skran, this volume) through domesticating several international human rights laws to advance gender equality and women’s rights (e.g., Beijing Platform for Action; UN Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820) as well as other policy and planning initiatives (e.g., the National Gender Strategic Plan, 2010– 2013; the National Action Plan on Gender Based Violence; the Gender Equality Act). However, failure to institute, enforce, and monitor most of these initiatives has frustrated yet emboldened women’s organizations, who continue their mobilizations to advance women’s rights and gender justice. In addition, the 2014 outbreak of the Ebola epidemic which devastated Sierra Leone as well as neighboring Liberia and Guinea, and left over 14,000 Sierra Leoneans infected, 4,000 dead and a deteriorating economy, followed by mudslides in 2017, limited any further advancements during that period (see Graybill, this volume). A recent country report to the UN on the implementation of the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action addresses the state of gender equality in Sierra Leone in several areas (Sierra Leone Government, 2020), revealing that while over 50 percent of the population is literate, this includes 59 percent men but only 44 percent of the women in Sierra Leone. Gender disparities are also prevalent at all educational stages from pre-school to primary, junior secondary, senior secondary/technical vocational education, and tertiary education. Enrolment rates by educational level show that while more girls (67.1 percent) than boys (63.5 percent) are enrolled at the primary level which is the entry point of formal education, overall, enrolment rates decline as students advance from primary to secondary school. Net enrolment rates for junior secondary level are 20.9 overall with 21.2 for boys and 20.7 for girls. At the senior secondary level, overall net enrolment rates are 14.3 with 14.9 for boys and 13.6 for girls. Gender disparities are persistent in retention due to challenges facing girls such as early marriage, teenage pregnancy, and lack of support from parents for the education of girls. One of the significant steps instituted by the government to address these inequalities is the Free and Quality Educational Program Initiative. This provides free tuition and textbooks for pre-primary, primary, and junior and senior secondary schools, as well as fees for national exams, and scholarships for women and girls in STEM programs at the tertiary level (see Shepler on girls’ education, this volume). Gender disparity in access to healthcare, including sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights remains a persistent problem in Sierra Leone. Although the maternal mortality ratio has declined from 2,300 per 100,000 live births per year in 1990 to 1,165 per 100,000 live births per year in 2013, Sierra Leone has one of the worst records for maternal mortality in the world. The Free Healthcare Initiative launched by the government in 2010 is an effort to improve healthcare delivery for women and children and particularly to reduce the maternal mortality rate. This program provides

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universal access to quality healthcare for vulnerable groups and pregnant and lactating mothers and children under five years of age (Government of Sierra Leone, 2019; see McGough on Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs); Fofana Ibrahim on reproductive rights, this volume). Sexual and domestic violence which are health-related issues are also prevalent problems. In 2013, 6,500 cases were reported; following the Ebola outbreak in 2014, sexual violence increased by another 40 percent (Williams & Opdam, 2017; see M’Cormack-Hale, this volume). The “Gender Justice Laws,” Sexual Offences Act of 2012, and recent Presidential Proclamation on Rape and Sexual Violence against Women and Girls are demonstrated efforts on the part of the government to eradicate this problem. Women’s representation in the political and decision-making process continues to receive attention by the government, international partners, and women’s civil society organizations. With assistance from international partners and ongoing monitoring by women’s organizations, the government has been pressured to institute several initiatives such as leadership training, community awareness raising sessions on women’s human rights, and collaborations with political parties and legal experts to improve the legal process in ways that and support women’s political empowerment. Development of a Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Policy, a 30 percent quota for women’s representation in decision making at all levels of governance, gender mainstreaming in the National Development Plan, allocation of a budget line to establish a women’s development fund for female entrepreneurs, and the signing of the Maputo Protocol and All Heads of State Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality are all efforts to address this gap in women’s rights and gender equality in Sierra Leone. Nonetheless, although more women were candidates for a range of elected positions in the 2018 elections, compared to the 2012 elections fewer of these women candidates won their elections, leading to a decline in women’s representation in parliamentary and local council elections. Of the 146 elected parliamentarians in 2018, only 12 percent were women compared to 13.2 percent in 2012. Of the 479 elected local councilors in 2018, 18.7 percent were women compared to 19.2 percent in 2012. Among the reasons provided for these persistent disparities is the lack of support for women candidates from the two dominant political parties, evidenced by, for example, the failure to award party symbols to women candidates (Government of Sierra Leone, 2019). Contributing authors in this volume critically examine several issues pertaining to the current situation of women covered in this historical overview. They show how dynamic individual women as well as strong coalitions of women’s organizations cutting across religious, ethnic, educational, and class backgrounds have continued to mobilize and advocate for women’s rights and gender equality over the years, addressing such issues as women’s health and reproductive rights, maternal and child mortality, violence against women, women in politics and leadership, and gender equality in education (see Fofana Ibrahim; M’Cormack-Hale; McGough; this volume). In the following section, we examine the ways in which African feminists and other scholars in the Global South have challenged the privileging of Western neoliberal knowledge systems. In particular, we discuss the strengths and limitations of neoliberal development feminist discourses about “women’s empowerment” and their implications

Understanding the Politics of Women and Gender Equality

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for gender justice and women’s lives in terms of conceptual frameworks, policy formulation, and program implementation.

Hegemonic Feminist Standpoints and “Women’s Empowerment” Among others, African feminist scholars such as Steady (2004) and Nnaemeka (1998) have criticized Western feminists for assuming a hegemonic role in prioritizing whose voices are heard and whose agendas are validated in feminist discourses. According to Steady (2004), “Eurocentric paradigms can lead to an abstract mapping of stratification systems rather than a more profound interrogation of institutions that determine such parameters of social inquiry” (p. 45). Adomako Ampofo (2009) explains the difficulties that Southern-based scholars experience in gaining legitimacy and recognition for the concepts and theories they produce from their epistemological standpoints. She describes the relationships between Northern-based researchers and their Southern counterparts as “colonial encounters,” in which their “decisions are questioned and over turned without consultation let alone discussion, the budget is not transparent [and] co-researchers are played off against each other in a soap-opera like game of power, work we produce is not acknowledged because we have been paid (as consultants) for our knowledge and we are not seen as knowledge producing collaborators” (Ampofo, 2009, p. 41). A fundamental question is asked by Mama (2017): “What [then] happens to us when we cannot find ourselves, our historical and presentday realities, or our ideas on research in Africa? What happens to us when what we do find is distorted by the perspectives and positionalities of others?” (p. 2). If these imbalances in framing of concepts, theories, and methodologies are not redefined and reconceptualized on our own terms in more inclusive ways that reflect our histories and our social, economic, and political contexts, feminist knowledge production and gender-centered transformative agendas in the Global South will continue to be marginalized. As Pereira (1997) points out “—the task we face as African intellectuals is that of developing our own realities as the starting point for articulating perspectives, or even entirely new theories that emanate organically from our particular conditions and concerns” (p. 5). The concept of “Women’s Empowerment” is examined here from the perspective of these contextual understandings. Batliwala (2010) describes “Women’s Empowerment,” which is grounded in discourses on development feminism from the 1980s and 1990s, as a “widely used and abused” term that has been depoliticized and has lost its transformative value under neoliberal economic policies (p. 110). She defines empowerment as “the process of challenging existing power relations, and of gaining greater control over the sources of power” (Batliwala, 1994, p. 130). By sources of power, Batliwala means “control over material assets, intellectual resources, and ideology” (p. 129). The political underpinnings of this term are situated in dissatisfaction with neoliberal feminist approaches to development and change in the 1980s, such as the WID, WAD, and GAD models, which were strongly criticized as apolitical and economically focused. According to Cornwall and Rivas (2015), the term “empowerment” as intended in Batliwala’s original scripts was about enabling women to build their self-confidence collectively and to

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question the oppressive conditions of their lived experiences. It was a relational and fluid term and not an end point with measurable outcomes, accounting for historical and contextual changes in social and cultural norms and practices as well as restructuring of political and economic institutions (Cornwall & Edwards, 2014). Present-day interpretations and interventions by external actors in the name of women’s empowerment are based on neoliberal capitalist policies informed by individualist ideologies emphasizing individual behavior and focusing on improving women’s earning and spending potential as individual entrepreneurs to raise the standard of living of their families and communities (Eyben & Napier Moore, 2009; Cornwall & Edwards, 2014). The application of measurable outcomes and opportunity structures has effectively sanitized and depoliticized the original meaning of the term as developed by scholars such as Kabeer (1999) and Batliwala (1993). In Sierra Leone, the term “Women’s Empowerment” was introduced soon after the return to peace after the civil war. The Women’s Empowerment Fund was presented as a feminist endeavor and was established with an agenda to raise funds to promote gender equity and to support women candidates for political office and decisionmaking roles; in practice, however, the fund was firmly tied to party politics. Day (2008) contends that the fund “in many ways functioned like the women’s wing of the ruling parties during the time of the one-party state,” as it echoed the party’s overall message and supported the candidates of the Sierra Leone People’s Party regardless of gender (p. 505). Abdullah’s study (2014) on the impact of UN and government policies to promote women’s empowerment in post-conflict Sierra Leone also stresses the need to examine historical context in the framing of neoliberal policies (e.g., the Poverty Reduction Strategic Plan, National Gender Strategic Plan, and SiLNAP) to understand the meaning, practice, and impact of policy initiatives on women in Sierra Leone. She argues that the original meanings of empowerment as conceived by feminist architects of the concept, as already discussed, were not applied in intervention initiatives in Sierra Leone. Instead, a “non-emancipatory” and mainstream agenda was initiated, which lacked political mobilization and consciousness-raising initiatives to promote needed structural change. For example, legal reforms to abolish gender discrimination such as the Domestic Violence Act (2007), the Registration of Customary Marriage and Divorce Act (2007), and the Devolution of Estates Act (2007) have been passed but cannot be fully implemented without revision and repeal of the 1991 Constitution due to contradictory provisions. Also, while Section 15 guarantees the human rights of all Sierra Leoneans regardless of gender, Section 27 (4)(d) of the Constitution recognizes statutory and customary laws and excludes discriminatory practices in cases such as adoption, marriage, divorce, burial, and devolution of property on death. This means that when customary law is applied to marriage and land rights, women have no legal recourse under the traditional land tenure system, which does not recognize individual rights to land. In addition, historically, the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender, and Children’s Affairs has received one of the lowest funding allocations in the national budget, making it difficult to build capacity for women’s empowerment and highlighting the necessity of the UN’s call for budgetary allocation to member states for funding gender equality and women’s empowerment programs. In sum, Day (2008) and Abdullah (2014) clearly demonstrate that despite some efforts to promote women’s

Understanding the Politics of Women and Gender Equality

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empowerment in Sierra Leone after the civil war, interpretations and implementation were informed by neoliberal policies that did not allow for the needed structural changes underlying the original meaning of empowerment. The focus on numbers of women in parliament as well as women’s policy engagement as a marker of success for women in the post-conflict period can also be seen as a potential mismatch between local contexts and international conceptualizations of both success and empowerment. Not only is the ability to get more women in politics often something that requires constitutional engineering, the focus on what women can accomplish within parliament (on which there is an extensive body of work), reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what citizens expect from parliamentarians in many African countries. According to the 2020 Afrobarometer survey in Sierra Leone, citizens rated listening to constituents and representing their needs (52 percent) as their top expectations for parliamentarians, followed by delivering jobs or development (26 percent). Legislating was cited by only 9 percent of respondents (Afrobarometer, 2020). Thus, as M’Cormack-Hale (2015) previously found, development actors largely see women parliamentarians through the lens of Western expectations, in which lobbying and representation of constituents are a major part of their duties, and have focused on largely strengthening these components of their work. This misses concerns and priorities that women themselves have raised, including advocating more with political parties whose largely male hierarchy is resistant to the call to nominate women for political positions, as well as women candidates’ need for resources since the patrimonial basis for much of the campaigning means that successful candidates are those who can distribute largesse to both the party and the electorate. Contributors in this volume illustrate some of the limitations of neoliberal policies and discourses, not only in terms of how empowerment is conceptualized, framed, and implemented by international actors, but also in terms of the policies and legal reforms grounded in these frameworks. Skran for example points out limitations with United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) empowerment projects for women, while Dumbuya advocates for legal reforms to address underlying power structures that constrain women. However, others like Abdullah and Graybill show that legal reforms are insufficient without “organic social transformation” (see Day, this volume), which requires changing mindsets from within rather than without. An ongoing obstacle is a lack of political will in a society characterized by a persistent patriarchal and patronage culture, which has further exacerbated limited outcomes for women’s empowerment in Sierra Leone. While there are men among the governing elite who publicly echo the rhetoric in support of women’s empowerment, when it comes to putting this into practice by passing legislation in parliament there is much resistance to institutional transformations that will threaten men’s control of the political system and opportunities to exercise their patronage. The following section will discuss the persistence of male hegemony and patriarchal institutions as well as their implications for advancements in women’s rights and gender equality in both historical and contemporary perspectives. The extent to which these practices apply to the Sierra Leone experience and how this broadens understanding of the complex nature of these practices will be considered.

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Prevalence of Male Hegemony and Patriarchal Institutions Power structures governing all levels of gender relations in African societies typically privilege men over women in contexts of family and community, as well as in social, political, and economic institutions. Terms such as “tradition,”“customary,” and “culture” have often relegated women to be “bearers and repositories of culture and men the articulators of culture” (Imam, 1997, p. 9). Thus, men are prioritized as heads of household units in Sierra Leone and adolescent girls are socialized through traditional women’s secret societies to obey and prioritize their husbands as they become good women, wives, and mothers (Bledsoe, 1984). Until recent legislative reforms such as the Domestic Violence Acts in post-conflict countries, interpersonal violence perpetrated against women was formally viewed as a matter to be handled privately. Additionally, customary laws failed to protect inheritance and property rights for most women. Such practices are deeply institutionalized into societal norms, values, and attitudes, rendering women and girls vulnerable to structural violence (Denney and Fofana Ibrahim, 2012; Reilly, 2014). The patriarchal nature of Western colonialism, as well as its impact on the structure of gender relations and its effects on women, is of particular significance to this analysis. Ajayi-Soyinka (2005) uses the term “double patriarchy” to describe the multiple and intersecting ways in which Western colonial patriarchal interventions interacted with existing African patriarchal structures to exacerbate the oppression and subordination of women. The colonial experience provides a lens through which we can understand the gender dynamics and power relations in this process and the ways in which colonialism shaped the persistence of violence against women in contemporary African societies. Mama (1997) forcefully argues that colonialism was both a violent and gendered process which took advantage of pre-existing social inequalities, and that this interaction made African women susceptible to violence in various forms. She explains that gender-based violence was already rooted in Europe’s history of violence, as manifested in misogynistic gender ideologies that informed the emergence of European states and the performance of hegemonic European masculinity and were then imposed on the colonized. In addition to the use of the military and missionaries to construct and solidify colonization, the colonial agenda also involved the disruption of existing social structures such as gender relations and the exploitation of women’s reproductive bodies (Connell, 2015). Connell states, “The widespread rape of indigenous women by the men of colonizing forces both was an immediate violation of bodies, and broke down existing structures of sexuality, family and inheritance” (2015, p. 54). As colonialism progressed and patriarchal and racist gender values were imposed on African societies, the legal status of most African women became increasingly marginalized and commodified through lack of opportunities for education, exclusion from political and administrative structures as well as the wage economy, and encouragement of prostitution (Mama, 1997). Colonial models of domesticity were imposed as cities and wage labor became established as the model for a modernizing economy. Whereas in precolonial African societies marriage was the path to achieving adult masculinity, after colonialization this was superseded by predictable income earned from wages, a process which itself was gendered as “male.”

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(Lindsay, 2003; Matlon, 2016). Many successful women traders and some who were traditional political authorities were progressively marginalized, while others took advantage of new and expanding opportunities and exercised their autonomy by migrating to work in the urban informal economy as market or street vendors, domestic servants, and sex workers (Zeleza, 1997; Little, 1973). These trends have continued under independent African governments despite women’s active involvement in nationalist and liberation struggles for independence and despite greater educational opportunities for some women. Occupational inequality has persisted for most women who are predominantly located in the agricultural sector as subsistence farmers or laborers and in the informal sector as small-scale entrepreneurs and workers. Political, economic, and legal institutions, including state-led policies after independence, have essentially followed the autocratic European patriarchal model reinforcing gender hierarchies and prioritizing men as primary breadwinners, culminating in what Connell (1998) describes as the “patriarchal dividend.” Not all men benefited from these privileges and not all women were disadvantaged; however, overall men were prioritized over women with higher income earning employment, labor force participation, leadership and decision-making positions, control over property ownership, and cultural and sexual privilege (Connell, 1998). Women have not gained equal access to the promises of independence, as attempts at reform have not fundamentally changed the structure of gender relations. “A tolerance for violence against women has continued to characterize African social and political life since independence; violence itself appears to be proliferating under the harsh and desperate economic and political conditions now prevailing in many parts of the continent” (Mama, 1997, p. 58). Moreover, to the extent that independence brought single party or military rule, opportunities for women’s political leadership diminished, as occurred in Sierra Leone in 1978 when Stevens declared one-party rule. However, prior to the establishment of single party rule, and following the civil war, Sierra Leone’s political party structure has been essentially modeled on the British Westminster system, which is a predominantly two-party male-dominated system with relatively few elected women representatives. The Single Member District (SMD) system is the primary electoral model although proportional representation was implemented in 1996 during the civil war and in 2002 due to the prevailing circumstances of the time. SMD is widely recognized as unfriendly to women, resulting often in a system dominated by two strong parties (Matland, 2005). Furthermore, this model of party politics relies heavily on party political loyalties, which has constrained the ability of women activists to advance a gender equality agenda (M’Cormack-Hale, 2015). Additionally, while new laws have been passed, the process of instituting constitutional reforms has been very slow, limiting progress on advancing women’s rights. Women who have run for office have often been targets of political violence by men who see them as transgressing into spaces that are the domain of men (Abdullah, this volume). Contemporary forms of masculine identity aspiring to individual achievement and competitiveness are also shaped by neoliberal economic processes. Neoliberal economic reforms imposed by international economic institutions have expanded free

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trade and financial markets, increased feminization of the labor market in low-level positions, reduced state regulation of the private sector, and cut costs of social services and the public sector. These reforms have resulted in economic and social strain, especially for those who are already vulnerable. Many young people rely on informal sector work, and young men in particular feel threatened by their inability to assert contemporary perceptions of their role and identity as men through wage-earning. Rising unemployment, a lack of formal employment opportunities, low wages, and an inability for men to perform the provider role and to transition from young men to elders in their communities, all contribute to the prevalence of violence with a disproportionate and negative impact on women. These conditions are also consistent with the findings of scholarly studies about the emergence of the civil war in Sierra Leone between 1991 and 2002. Studies reveal that a progressively weak state in the 1970s and 1980s, rising unemployment, limited access to educational opportunities, poor healthcare facilities, exploitation of the labor of youth in rural areas by a gerontocratic power structure, and the dominance of the political elite in a one-party state, precipitated the active engagement of young people in the war (Abdullah, 1998; Bangura, 2004; Richards, 1996; Enria, 2016). In Sierra Leone, persistent violence against women was part of the institutionalized system of structural inequality and gender power imbalances prior to, during, and after the civil war from 1991–2002. Approximately 275,000 women and girls were sexually assaulted during the civil war through rape, kidnapping, and sexual slavery, or were used as spies, carriers, and cooks (Human Rights Watch, 2003). As reported by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) used violence against women to intimidate and humiliate their male relatives or to force women to marry male combatants (UNECA, 2010). While there are variations among regions, sexual and domestic violence rates have increased further since the end of the war. In 2013, 6,500 cases were reported. Following the Ebola outbreak in 2014, sexual violence increased by another 40 percent (Williams & Opdam, 2017). One of the contributing factors associated with increased violence against women is the change in family and community gender roles in the absence of men who were involved or affected by the war. The opening of new opportunities for women in decision making and leadership roles, as well as in economic activities such as micro-credit programs, led to tension and marital violence in many cases in which men who had lost their economic and social status in the family and community felt threatened (Horn, Puffer, Roesch & Lehmann, 2014). While new legislative measures, such as the 2012 Sexual Offences Act, have been instituted by the state to fulfill commitments to international treaties and to ensure equal protection of women and the elimination of discriminatory practices, a lack of political willingness to enforce the full intention of these laws can lead to failed outcomes. For example, although the Sexual Offences Act stipulates that marital rape is a crime, in many parts of the country married women are typically considered to be their husband’s property in a traditionally dominant masculinist culture, which means that consent for sexual intercourse is not considered necessary and marital rape is not seriously viewed as a crime, even if a case is taken to court. These are sensitive matters that require training of court personnel such as judges and police, complex negotiations

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with local power structures such as traditional women chiefs and Mammy Queens to raise awareness and support among the critical mass of women, and the commitment of resources to fully operationalize such policies. The 2019 revision of the Sexual Offences Act tried to address legal obstacles through the creation of an independent court to try sexual offences, but as M’Cormack-Hale’s chapter suggests, local support might be constrained by the newly instituted criminalization of compromise that makes punishable by law interference by customary actors such as chiefs or family members. References to patriarchy and the ways in which it has constrained gender relations can be found in nearly all the contributions. Abramowitz and Moran (2012) and Denney and Fofana Ibrahim (2012) argue that failure to ground new measures in local understandings, particularly the balance of power between men and women in households and communities, can lead to resistance to program initiatives to combat violence against women and promote gender equality. The authors in this volume suggest potential ways of engaging with patriarchy through negotiation and compromise rather than open conflict, as well as illustrate both the strengths and weaknesses of these various approaches, as we discuss in more detail below. However, it is not just the balance of power between men and women that needs to be negotiated. Power imbalances exist among women as well, as do other factors that serve to divide rather than unite them, which have contributed to the ebb and flow in momentum of the women’s movement in Sierra Leone. It is to these divisions that we now turn.

Fragmentations and Intersecting Identities in the Women’s Movement In this section, we closely examine the complex interaction of multiple forces that also pose constraints for translating women’s activism and successes in ending civil war into positive and sustainable socio-political and economic gains for women post-war. Apart from crisis situations such as the civil war in 1991–2002 and the Ebola outbreak in 2014–2016, it would appear that women’s organizations have been largely fragmented since the war without clear leadership, and have responded to issues as they emerge rather than working in a sustained fashion. An underlying factor shaping this fragmentation is the compartmentalization of oppressive structures such as class, political partisanship, patronage, and donor relations, which interact at various levels and lead to competition among women for limited resources. Consequently, while some stakeholders feel marginalized in development discourses and political agendas, others are seemingly viewed as privileged in shaping the direction of discourses and agendas to advance gender equality goals. Various chapters in this volume critically examine development interventions in relation to education, healthcare, and the role of women as traditional authorities, and suggest pathways that might lead to a more unified and sustainable movement (Shepler; McGough; M’Cormack-Hale, this volume). Using an African gender-centered approach, we examine how the interaction of political partisanship, patronage, and socio-economic and regional differences, as well as an over-reliance on donor funding, have fostered fragmentation rather than

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sustainable coalition building among member organizations. At the same time, some of the works show how women have been able to mobilize notwithstanding these differences, and suggest ways of moving beyond these divisions; others show, at the very least, the importance of being cognizant of these differences and the implications they can have on development outcomes. In spite of low literacy and educational rates for women and girls in Sierra Leone, women have a long and established history individually and collectively as activists engaged in change and development in their communities. This includes engagement in indigenous socio-political institutions, faith-based and social reform organizations, and contemporary political, economic, educational, and social organizations (Steady, 2006; Pratt, 2017). Mende and Sherbro women are particularly renowned for female leadership positions as chiefs and paramount chiefs and for their membership in the Sande or Bundu women’s secret society, which gives them power to represent the specific interests of women as a group and to influence social, political, and economic decision making in their communities (Hoffer, 1972; Coulter, 2009; Day, 2012). During the nationalist period, the struggle for women’s rights emerged when women protested against the rising cost of food and when market women, supported by women across ethnic and class categories, petitioned the colonial government to protect their monopoly of the rice and palm oil trade from Lebanese and other foreign traders. Thus, there is precedent for crossing these lines in pursuit of common goals. From this emerged the Sierra Leone Women’s Movement (Steady, 2006). During the administration of Siaka Stevens and the imposition of a one-party state, the National Council of Sierra Leone Women (NCSLW) was formed as the women’s wing of the APC. As in many other African countries during this period, women’s political activism was largely channeled through the women’s wing of the ruling party and they were used in a supportive role within the party to raise funds, provide food and entertainment, and recruit votes (Tripp, Casimoro, Kwesiga & Mungwa, 2009; Steady, 2006). Finally, Sierra Leonean women played an influential role in ending the devastating civil war from 1992–2002, pressing for the election of a democratic government that would be accountable to its citizens, and demanding the right to be recognized as equal participants in the resolution of the conflict (Steady, 2006; Beoku-Betts and Day, 2015). These successes along with other global and regional accomplishments on women’s rights such as the Convention on All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), The Beijing Platform for Action, and the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa opened significant opportunities for women’s civil society organizations in Sierra Leone to influence state policies, such as the three Gender Acts and appointments of women in leadership positions in government. This progress notwithstanding, women’s organizations have found it difficult to maintain a strong coalition and tangible policy gains post war, such as representation in elected offices. Polarization among women along political party lines is one key area of contestation within and among women’s organizations. A noted example in many African countries is the practice of “Femocracies,” a term coined by Mama (1995). These are state-directed women’s organizations led by First Ladies, such as the December 31st Women’s Movement in Ghana in the 1980s, which continue to be a strong force in countries like

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Sierra Leone where First Ladies rally support for their particular cause on behalf of women. In reality, these organizations function to corner international donor support, minimize protests from independent women’s organizations, and ensure support for the government. In addition, although women are typically marginalized in maledominated political parties, their undivided loyalty to these parties often makes it difficult for them to hold their parties or the government accountable for policy decisions that would benefit the particular interests of women. Dependence on political party affiliation contributes to failure to build coalitions, especially when loyalists are rewarded accordingly in project support and funding. In Sierra Leone, the current first lady, has several signature projects, including “Hands Off Our Girls,” an initiative geared at protecting girl children from early marriage as well as protecting girls against sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). However, for some, these initiatives do not have much buy-in from women’s organizations, and instead, reflect the interests of the first lady. The office of the first lady has also been accused of hijacking and misusing resources (Kamara, 2021). Political partisanship is also closely tied to a system of patronage, another longstanding patriarchal cultural tradition in Sierra Leone that Denney and Fofana Ibrahim (2012, p. 6) describe as meaning “everybody stands for someone else in a hierarchy of dependence and obligation, based loosely on age, wealth, and status.” Patronage is prevalent in local and national political institutions through membership in formal and informal kinship and political organizations and in the traditional institution of chieftaincy. It is hierarchical and gendered, and women are usually marginalized or excluded on the grounds of maintaining tradition and culture. The case of Elizabeth Sorgbo-Torto, who in 2009 stood as a candidate for Paramount Chief of Nimiyama Chiefdom in Kono District and was denied chieftaincy despite fulfilling the requirements, is a good example of how patronage is practiced and used to keep men in power (Steady, 2011). Another key factor keeping the women’s movement fragmented is the unequal power relations among women based on rural and urban differences, as well as educational and socio-economic disparities. Given the high rate of female illiteracy and the lack of access to education for many women and girls in Sierra Leone, particularly in rural areas, such disparities privilege some categories of women and exclude others with respect to access and control over information, knowledge production, and exercise of leadership as the voice of authority. This disparity in control of knowledge can be exploited by the male-dominated institutional and cultural environment to keep women divided and to maintain patriarchal privilege. This point is echoed by Pratt (2017) “Men often use rural women’s illiteracy and ignorance to undercut support for women leaders who understand the issues and are poised to mobilize women from all regions. Men often tell rural women that the actions to be taken will only benefit educated women” (p. 44). One of the leaders of the 50/50 Group, a prominent organization of educated women activists who campaign to increase the representation of women in elected office and in leadership and decision-making roles, once reported that her members were derisively portrayed as divorcees who were out to ruin people’s marriages (Beoku-Betts & Day, 2015). Notwithstanding current divisions, it is important to note that during the nationalist movement in the 1950s and

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until the establishment of the National Congress of Sierra Leone Women in the 1960s, educated women such as Constance Cummings-John, Mabel Dove-Danquah, and Hannah Benka-Coker campaigned alongside market women and across ethnic, class, and religious lines to protest the rising cost of food in Freetown (Tripp, Casimoro, Kwesiga, Mungwa, 2009; Steady, 2011). In the current period, several women’s organizations such as FAWE, YWCA, and the 50/50 Group have member chapters in rural areas that campaign to promote gender equality and provide leadership training and capacity building in these regions. When the three gender acts became law, the 50/50 Group translated the acts into four of the local languages and organized media campaigns throughout the country to educate people about these new rights. The majority of women nonetheless lack understanding or are reluctant to embrace some of the new legislation to advance gender equality, often because they feel marginalized in the framing of agendas designed to represent the interests of women. This raises critical questions about pathways taken and pathways yet to be explored, as some of the strategies to promote women’s empowerment need rethinking to more sufficiently account for localized understandings of empowerment and development as well as indigenous frames of knowledge. As two study participants commented in an interview conducted by Beoku-Betts: Are we really working for the women? Are we using these women to advance our goals? Are we reaching out to them? We have a role towards these girls who do not have the opportunities we have had. WSSG member interview, 2012, Beoku-Betts & Day, 2015

Apart from issues of class, geographical disparities, political party affiliation, and patronage, the lack of independent funds to finance programming and administrative operations has led women’s organizations to become overly dependent on donor funding, increasing competition among them and straining relations. Unlike in the 1990s, when several skilled and committed women leaders worked tirelessly in a voluntary capacity for the movement, the professionalization of NGOs has led many of these women to take advantage of new job opportunities or establish their own NGOs from funds provided by international donors. The demands to comply with the agendas and specific goals of donors often limit the ability of these organizations to pursue more flexible and independent agendas that represent the interests of their stakeholders. M’Cormack-Hale (2009) reveals the limitations in scope of women-focused projects that emphasize micro-credit and skills training projects with some counseling components. Pratt (2017) notes, “—funding is usually tied to project activities aligned to donors’ priorities and ceases with a shift in those priorities” (p. 44). These conditions have weakened collaboration and partnership among women’s organizations, leading to fragmentation of interests, particularly along class, ethnic, and political party lines. Several of the contributions in this volume highlight fragmentations among women linked to the issues raised above. Failure to address these concerns can reinforce existing patterns of inequality and contribute to reluctance to buy into and consolidate ownership of processes designed to empower the critical mass of women, points that are raised by some of our contributors, who show both how these issues can divide

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women as well as ways in which women have strategized to overcome some of these constraints. The absence of clear leadership in the women’s movement has also contributed to fragmentation, producing a movement that has appeared largely more reactive than proactive. Beoku-Betts and Day (2015) found that the women’s movement failed to plan for an ongoing presence following their successes during the war, a failure that has continued in peace-time, with no clear leader or force to consistently fight to advance women’s issues. Instead, as issues come up, women respond in firefighter fashion, as was the case with the Ebola outbreak (see Smythe, this volume), or with the amendment of the Sexual Offences Act (see M’Cormack-Hale, this volume). In the next section, building on the constraints facing women’s mobilization in Sierra Leone, we show the ways in which our contributors have engaged with the challenges identified above, and review their suggestions for moving women’s mobilization forward in ways that can ensure sustained positive change.

Charting a new way? Contributors and the Challenge to Women’s Activism in Sierra Leone Returning to our underlying question, “When compared to many other post-war African countries who went through similar experiences, why does Sierra Leone demonstrate a different trajectory by failing to translate women’s activism and successes in ending the war into positive and sustainable changes in women’s lives?”, we argue that a fluidity of approaches is needed to understand the historical and contextual processes shaping outcomes, that these approaches are themselves context-dependent, and that ultimately, more work needs to be done mapping previous efforts to help us understand how to move forward. Bridging the nexus between research, theory, and praxis will help us to advance women’s “empowerment,” broadly defined. In this section, we examine the various ways in which the authors in this volume have tried to do just that—we discuss how the authors have engaged with the constraints facing women’s activism in Sierra Leone, using African-centered frameworks. One criticism of the predominance of Western neoliberal frameworks has been their universalizing principles; in contrast, the authors in this volume show that understanding what happens on the ground is key to developing contextually grounded interventions and practices that engage seriously with the implications of intersectionality. As we have shown above, neoliberalism privileges particular notions of success— for example, success is conceptualized as more women in parliament, as well as more policies and laws that benefit women. The emphasis on the individual as a rational actor, is similarly privileged, and tradition and culture (however conceptualized) are seen as vectors holding a country back. Within this framework, customary actors are relics whose powers will eventually fade as societies become more modern. However, a major area of consensus of the various contributors to this volume is the need to jettison Western-centric neoliberal models of understanding reality or change, and instead use an African-centered gender analysis that is truly grounded in local

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understandings of empowerment and development and that builds on indigenous frames of knowledge and behavior. The call to ground interventions in African women’s everyday lived realities (Hudson, 2006) is not new, and indeed has been a central rallying cry of African feminism(s) (Kolawole, 2002). Related premises have made their way into a range of other fields. For example, a well-established body of literature on security sector reform has advocated that neoliberal measures to rebuild states that focus only on formal security governance arrangements are problematic as they miss customary sources of authority that citizens perceive as more legitimate (Hendricks, 2011; Bagayoko, 2012; Hutchful, 2012). However, this view is contested, with others questioning the assumption that all customary sources of authority are equally legitimate or posing accusations of cultural relativism (Edwards, 2013). Interventions that engage in a limited and superficial manner with indigenous customary structures, instrumentalizing them, have also been critiqued. In examining women’s roles in peacebuilding and conflict resolution, Hudson (2006) has argued for a third option, a “hybrid position between cultural relativism and ‘one size fits all’ solutions” (p. 2). The concept of hybridity has made its way to other sectors as well, including SGBV. In a recent policy brief, the International Development Labour Organisation (IDLO), called for greater engagement with customary actors to ensure that women are able to access justice for SGBV, given the limitations of the formal sector and women’s greater engagement with the more familiar and accessible customary sources of power (International Development Law Organisation, 2020). Yet, negotiating between formal and customary institutions and forging a so-called third way in practice has been difficult, particularly given that local and indigenous cultures can be inimical to women’s empowerment and change. A concern is whether gender equity and empowerment are even possible within the context of traditional and customary norms and practices. External interventions have either ignored customary actors, or engaged with them in limited and incomplete ways, either as a stop gap measure until formal sources of authority can resume their “proper place,” or in the hopes of reforming them. However, it is clear that interventions will not succeed unless they are community-driven and community-led. Detailed case studies are foundational to understanding the historically grounded contexts that women face and developing appropriate responses. Several of the chapters in this volume start by examining these cases: for example, the works of Day, Shepler, Fofana Ibrahim, Skran, and M’Cormack-Hale are all based on in-depth field-based research examining the specific contexts, perspectives, and challenges faced by women in activism, with implications for who should be included in women’s activism as well as what this activism could look like. Others, such as Denzer, and Smythe provide a close reading of particular cases to identify what works in specific contexts and what does not. Denzer focuses on a historical analysis of prominent civil society activistturned-politician-turned-diplomat Zainab Bangura, tracing her path into the political spotlight. Bangura was the first woman to form her own political party, the Movement for Progress, under which she ran for president. As Denzer notes, while there is an emerging body of publications on the socio-political situation of Sierra Leone women, many of these works focus on women’s collective action or their war experience as victims, combatants, and collaborators. Denzer’s work fills a gap in the literature by

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providing extensive consideration of the beliefs and career trajectory of an individual woman as a political leader. In arguing that more extensive biographical projects are needed to understand women’s full contributions to Sierra Leone’s intellectual and political leadership, Denzer provides a frame through which to understand the choices, constraints, and successes of Bangura in terms of both how she came into the political spotlight and how she performed once there. Smythe’s detailed look at women’s mobilization during the Ebola outbreak similarly shows how women were able to come together to address the health crisis, as well as the opportunities and constraints they faced in this mobilization. The works also take on the issue of the depoliticization of terms like empowerment, and the call for more gender-transformative approaches. Skran’s chapter focuses on the problematics of external intervention in promoting women’s empowerment, examining the work of the UNHCR. She reveals some of the contradictions and limitations of participatory inclusion, which is designed to ensure that efforts to promote women’s empowerment are not coopted by the interests of the more powerful in their communities. Skran finds that the UNHCR’s attempts to provide projects that reflected community priorities resulted in the identification of projects that reflected the interests of the most powerful in the communities, such as the traditional chiefs who prioritized the construction of Court Barries. Meanwhile, many women expressed a desire for interventions to strengthen the health system but were largely ignored. To ensure that women’s interests are adequately represented, Skran argues that international organizations need to adopt a more structured approach and play a more direct role in facilitating community choices by ensuring that contextual needs take precedence. Similarly, hearkening back to the idea that empowerment needs to engage concretely with power structures, Dumbuya calls for legal reform as one way to move beyond patriarchal practices that have successfully resisted change. This is also in line with a more progressive understanding of change with a focus on structural, rather than superficial reform. Dumbuya recommends that legal changes be made through parliament in the absence of action by the courts to invalidate aspects of customary law that are inconsistent with the constitution and international legal norms. He also identifies the constitutional review processes suggested by both the Lomé Peace Accords of 1999 and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2004, as a potential entry point for lawmakers to adopt changes that strengthen individual rights and freedoms. Similarly, in her chapter charting the history of violence against women in elections (VAWE), Abdullah also advocates for legal reforms to promote gender parity in the political process and guarantee the safety of women as candidates, voters, and activists. She recommends that the government implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations on women’s political participation, pass the Gender Equality Bill guaranteeing a 30 percent quota for women’s representation in parliament, and follow the example of governments such as that of Bolivia to institute a law specifically protecting women from electoral violence. In other countries, such legislative change has enabled the establishment of quotas that have yielded large numbers of women in parliament, as can be seen in Rwanda, Mozambique, and Uganda, among others (Bauer, 2016). While the Gender Equality Bill failed to pass in Sierra Leone, as Dumbuya points out, the CRC review process was an opportunity to

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rectify this. The recommendations did include the establishment of a quota for women, but this recommendation was ignored by the APC and a referendum was not carried out. However, the separation of the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs (MSWGCA) into two separate ministries (Ministry of Social Welfare and the Ministry of Gender and Children’s Affairs) has breathed new life into the Ministry. A Gender Empowerment Bill has been developed (August 2021) for consideration by parliament that draws heavily on the quota provisions in the recently approved Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE) Policy and there is hope that this time, the Bill will be succesful. Also, the works in this volume call into question the actors that are traditionally given voice and space, calling for an expansion of the voices that we hear. In line with the call for more gender-transformative approaches challenging neoliberal and Eurocentric models of both knowledge and action, the authors reconceptualize theories, concepts, and methodologies in more inclusive ways that reflect the country’s socio-economic, political and historical contexts. For example, Day’s chapter on “Women Chiefs” shows that while Sierra Leone, unlike other post-conflict countries such as Rwanda, has not made significant progress in attaining greater representation of women in elected office, women chiefs are indigenous title holders with public and ritual authority who still comprise a formal part of local and national political institutions and play a vital role as community leaders on whom people rely for stability and continuity. Day, critiques hegemonic discourses that conceptualize emancipatory actors as those who fit within particular neoliberal frames and perceive customary actors largely as backward, with “tradition” seen as the enemy of modernity (Rostow, 1960). She calls for an African-centered gender analysis with a broader, more inclusive conceptualization of empowerment. To this end, she argues that women chiefs, although within the customary sphere that is often seen as antithetical to women’s empowerment, can also play a role in advancing women’s empowerment. However, their authority is grounded in African feminist frameworks that see value in the principles of motherhood, one primary prism through which women chiefs are perceived and valued. Thus, they represent a model wherein women’s empowerment builds on existing positive cultural norms and societal values that focus more on sociocentric and communal needs than on individualistic values. Day thus suggests that activists should do more to engage with indigenous institutions, building on the components that recognize and affirm women’s political engagement and participation while “engaging and repurposing” those values that are antithetical. Day’s charge suggests the need to broaden the actors that are involved in processes of women’s empowerment, including those actors that historically have been perceived to be counter to processes of modernization. McGough’s chapter applies this concept to the health sector, where neoliberal interventions have focused on greater formalization for better health outcomes. This has included the discouragement of TBAs, who generally lack formal training but have years of lived experience and practice in childbirth. McGough argues that rather than excising TBAs altogether, when the health sector remains under-staffed and under-resourced, it is better to seek ways to incorporate them while strengthening their skills.

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Other chapters show how limitations in who gets a seat at the table can also have implications for outcomes. For example, in the fight to include women’s voices in the revision of the Sexual Offences Act, M’Cormack-Hale shows that women activists were largely in support of using the courts to address SGBV, but research has shown that women in rural areas are more inclined to use traditional leaders (M’Cormack-Hale, 2018) and to trust customary actors more than the police and the courts (Afrobarometer, 2020). One of the activists mentioned in her chapter reached out to Soweis, women who oversee Female Genital Cutting (FGC), and found that they felt left out in the revision efforts but expressed their willingness to be engaged in this fight, as customary actors. Other examples of the variation in voices in this volume include Fofana Ibrahim’s chapter on “The Politics of Religion and Women’s Activism,” which examines the complexities of women’s activism in a conservative society where religious identity takes precedence over women’s rights to bodily autonomy, as manifested in contestations around the Abortion Bill that most women, including feminist activists, were reluctant to support. Fofana Ibrahim frames her discussion of the failures of the women’s movement to collectively organize behind an Abortion Bill through the lens of intersectionality, as religious identity served to divide women around an issue that raised questions of morality and culture. In so doing, Fofana Ibrahim’s paper also illustrates issues around intersecting identities and fragmentation, one of the constraints mentioned above. Many of the contributions acknowledge that women are not monolithic, and while patrimonialism has been used effectively by men to keep women divided, the various chapters not only acknowledge difference and how these differences complicate activism, but also show the ways in which women have been able to overcome these differences under various conditions. While Fofana Ibrahim’s chapter illustrates how intersectionality can complicate advocacy outcomes, M’Cormack-Hale’s discussion of the role of the women’s movement in the 2019 revision of the Sexual Offences Act, in contrast, shows how women have found it easier to speak with one voice regarding less contentious issues like economic, political, and sexual rights. Although customary actors such as Soweis were not included in the initial discussions, the outcome of a revised bill nevertheless reflected a variety of women’s groups working together, alongside female as well as male parliamentarians. This point is echoed in Smythe’s discussion of women’s collective mobilization during the Ebola outbreak, when women united in the face of a common threat—Ebola—to raise funds for vulnerable populations and advocate at national and international levels for greater attention to be paid to the differential gendered impacts of the outbreak. This variation in outcomes suggest that activism must be negotiated differently depending on the context and issue under discussion. For example, there are currently new efforts underway to re-introduce the bill that would legalize abortion under limited circumstances as spelled out in the Maputo Protocol. Learning from past mistakes, these efforts have sought to widen the debate:—the bill has now been cast as a reproductive health bill, focusing on women’s sexual reproductive health more broadly, and as an effort to stem high maternal mortality rates, to appeal to more actors. As we saw earlier, another major constraint that women face in successful activism is male resistance. Nearly all the contributors in this volume reflect on, in some way, the impact of patriarchy and gender relations that reinforce male hegemony on women’s

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empowerment outcomes. In addition to weak implementation of existing laws, women’s low levels of political participation and representation are often attributed to the unwillingness of men to yield political space, as discussed in the contributions by Abdullah, Denzer, and Day. Similarly, high rates of SGBV can also be linked to structural inequalities and power imbalances, as illustrated by Graybill, Abdullah, and M’Cormack-Hale, among others (this volume). In line with authors like Abramowitz and Moran (2012) and Denney and Fofana Ibrahim (2012) who have both discussed the importance of paying attention to the balance of power between men and women in households and communities, in order to forestall resistance to various programs geared at addressing gender equality, the authors in this volume suggest potential ways of engaging with patriarchy through negotiation and compromise rather than open conflict, illustrating both the strengths and weaknesses of these various approaches. One of the tenets of African feminism, variously conceptualized, is the priority placed on inclusivity, including the need to cooperate with men to advance gender equality (Kolawole, 2002; Hudson, 2006; Hendricks, 2011); indeed, women have been able to find male allies and establish issues of commonality, as M’Cormack-Hale shows with SGBV. However, the plethora of laws safeguarding women’s security have had limited impact: levels of SGBV are at an all-time high, and VAWE (Violence against Women during Elections) remains a concern. In politics, male parliamentarians and political parties have successfully resisted calls to establish a minimum threshold for women. These continuing issues suggest the need for greater engagement with men as well, building on pre-existing culturally rooted norms and values that both genders would support, such as the pre-existing norms that value women chiefs discussed by Day. At the same time, it is important to not romanticize relationships; while these efforts are made to build on collaborative components, there can also be complementary work on those components that are more intransigent. Several of the contributors look at the potential transformative impact of education as a pathway to change. Alongside changing laws, there has been increasing recognition that women need to work with men, as the chief perpetrators of SGBV, to change their perceptions about girls and women and their behavior, in order to stem SGBV. Efforts like “husband schools” and the current male involvement strategy being pursued by the Ministry of Gender and Children’s Affairs are positive steps in this direction (see M’Cormack-Hale, this volume). Shepler’s chapter examines how select communities view the role of education for both girls and boys, finding that conventional understandings by NGOs and external actors of why parents do not send their girl children to school are challenged by local responses to these issues. Her research shows that, contrary to dominant assumptions that parents keep their girl children at home because they do not believe in educating girls, even those parents who want to send their girls to school will not do so because they are reluctant to send their daughters far away and are concerned about pregnancy. While Shepler advocates that the State provide more opportunities for pregnant girls to attend and/or resume their education—a recommendation that has been helped by the recent ruling implemented during the Ebola outbreak overturning the ban on pregnant girls in school1—she also notes the need to not just focus on the provision of education, but also the content of the curriculum as well as the wider socio-economic and cultural environment that

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contributes to teenage pregnancy. Addressing these patriarchal structures and social norms and barriers requires us to go beyond the rather facile neoliberal empowerment discourse that locates education with greater women’s empowerment without problematizing the mechanisms through which this can potentially take place, or acknowledging the wider context that obstructs it. Working with men and using education as a frame for change resonates in a context where despite the existence of strong laws, gender inequality remains a concern. Culture is not fixed, and engaging with men, and using education as a mechanism to encourage a re-examination of patriarchal stances as well as power structures is key as legal reform without accompanying changes in the norms that underpin structural barriers can limit change. Education is equally important for both men and women. Building on ideas raised by Shepler, Hollist’s chapter helps us to imagine what this type of education can look like; in advocating for the use of “transformative narratives,” he uses the prism of literature to help us see how narratives can contribute to women’s empowerment. By focusing on women themselves, as story tellers and owners of their own narratives, he suggests that these processes can be used by women to re-map sensibilities and minds, and that “a daughter born into an environment in which she sees her mother using and encoding her story is by the osmosis of exposure going to believe she has a right to tell hers” (Hollist, this volume). The idea of re-imagination could also potentially be applied to the customary actors discussed by Day, particularly for the components that are less emancipatory, as well as to male actors, given that patriarchy has also been a central factor behind the failures that the women’s movement has encountered. Yet, male resistance to women has been context-dependent, with some issues and topics facing more resistance than others. Case studies of women’s activism around abortion, the revision of the Sexual Offences Act, and the response to Ebola (Fofana Ibrahim; M’Cormack-Hale, Smythe, this volume), among others, demonstrate this variation in resistance. This reinforces the need for locally-grounded ethnographies and case studies that elicit the various subtleties of the different cases to suggest strategies based on context to guide the trajectory of interventions. Women have had greater success in advocacy around issues pertaining to the private domain (Abdullah, this volume) that do not touch on morality or religion, such as SGBV and health. The failure of the Abortion Bill discussed in Fofana Ibrahim’s contribution suggests that women activists must be innovative in building coalitions and generating unity when organizing around issues with the potential to divide women; simply denigrating the other side as not understanding what it means to be feminist will not be helpful in building consensus and collective action. As Fofana Ibrahim writes, there needs to be a “conciliatory approach, an approach that focuses more on the bridges and bonds that bind the opposite sides of this debate together” (this volume).

Conclusion A constant refrain in post-conflict interventions is the need to take context into account, and to tailor interventions to address the societies in which they are grounded (Hudson, 2006; Hendricks, 2011). For African feminists, equally, the push back on

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liberal feminism has called for Africans to engage in work that explicitly recognizes, celebrates, and incorporates the diversity of perspectives and realities that make up African women’s lives. But what does this actually mean in practice, given the extent of patriarchy and the existence of cultural attitudes and structures that by all accounts help sustain women’s marginalization and subjugation? In various ways, the contributors to this volume engage with this question as they grapple to understand Sierra Leone women’s progress when it comes to women’s empowerment in a variety of sectors, ranging from health and education to politics. Although by conventional metrics that sees success as increased numbers of women in parliament, Sierra Leone women have failed, the authors in this volume expand the boundaries of the discussion and in so doing, show that women have been able to register some successes, while continuing to fight against the barriers. Although women are still facing challenges in a patriarchal system such as the resilience of the “first past the post” electoral system that constrains their political participation and contributes to high rates of VAWE, the failure to pass a bill on abortion, and the early signs that—as occurred during Ebola— women experienced increasing rates of SGBV during the COVID-19 pandemic, the picture is not all gloomy. A Bill that would provide for quotas for women in elected and appointed positions will soon be reviewed by parliament. Furthermore, women were able to successfully pass a bill on SGBV, mobilize in the fight against Ebola, maintain a role for traditional birth attendants and play instrumental roles in their communities under the mantle of customary leadership. Additionally, more girls are getting educated and the overturning of the ban against pregnant schoolgirls is an important step in inclusivity. As they point to the limitations of Western-centric models and the enduring constraint of patriarchy, contributors in this volume also engage with the question of how African-centered gender analyses can help us move the conversation forward. While working to not overly romanticize Sierra Leonean cultural realities, and remaining aware that some of these norms are the very ones contributing to women’s marginalization, they examine how to nevertheless build on those facets that promote women’s empowerment while working within the society to change those that don’t. Collectively, the works tell us that even within a particular country, we cannot engage with only one version of African feminism. Rather, one has to be flexible and adaptable, understanding that what might work in one context might not work in another. This book also illustrates the challenges with our terminology and how we understand ourselves, raising questions about what an African feminist perspective really means. As others have argued, there are a range of perspectives and working through these various modes of thought can be difficult when it comes to translating them in practice. While there has been much discussion on employing contextually grounded approaches in activism, and moving away from neoliberal frameworks, knowing how to do this effectively seems to be a struggle for the women’s movement in Sierra Leone. Shepler’s point about the need to understand, respect, and engage with all the varied dimensions of women’s experiences in Sierra Leone raises the uncomfortable idea that there are aspects of women’s power that do not necessarily look like what a liberal understanding of power would look like. Similarly, engaging with customary sources of power, which have long been seen as one of the bastions of women’s oppression, can be equally

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uncomfortable. Yet these are all important components of the cultural milieu, and moreover, important arenas of engagement for many women, both in the countryside and in Freetown. The assumption that these sources of power will fade away with modernization and that this process should be actively encouraged, as is seen in attempts to formalize justice processes (including for SGBV crimes), can be questioned. Customary institutions are still very relevant; Sierra Leone’s most recent Afrobarometer (2020) findings indicate that 63 percent of Sierra Leoneans trust their traditional leaders, behind only religious leaders (81 percent) and the army (71 percent) (Afrobarometer, 2020). This trust remains despite the excesses and abuses of chiefs that some scholars believe were a contributing factor to the start of the civil war (Fanthorpe, 2006). Notwithstanding the nature of the various realities that govern peoples’ lives, sustainable change can only come when change is embraced from within, rather than without.

Notes 1 “Sierra Leone Overturns Ban on Pregnant Schoolgirls” March 30, 2020. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52098230 (accessed July 23, 2020).

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Transformative Narratives: The Empathetic Imagination, Empowerment, and Women in Two Post-war Sierra Leonean Novels Arthur Onipede Hollist

Background The empowerment concept is fundamentally paradoxical. The individuals and institutions who bestow the power markers—equal rights, opportunities, treatment, and access to property, health, education, credit, political, and public office—are often consciously or unconsciously working against their interests because empowering others in its mildest forms involves diffusing power and flattening hierarchies. This inherent conflict militates against successful and sustainable programs, policies, legislation, and implementation practices, primarily because the marginalized or victimized that the empowerment programs are intended to help play a minimal role and have only a faint voice, if any, in formulating solutions to their problems, indicating that marginalized persons are often powerless. In such circumstances, empowerment becomes providential, particularly in post-war situations where “a window of opportunity” (Introduction, this volume), a moral climate or imperative, exists to redress women’s access to and control of power, resources, and ideology. However, Beoku-Betts and M’Cormack-Hale (Chapter 1, this volume) argue that challenges at the state and international levels complicate the process of redressing inequities, evaluating, and measuring post-war successes. Fragmented efforts to mobilize women, dominant patriarchal and patronage practices within States, and a neoliberal framework that emphasizes privatization, free markets, and (comm)unionbusting legislations marginalize or stifle ground-up approaches to empowerment. Together, the challenges form an epistemological axis, a way of knowing and doing, which hampers sustainable changes in women’s post-war lives. This chapter examines this empowerment matrix through defamiliarization. It eschews traditional social science tools and concepts for literary analysis, arguing that empowerment begins with the self but can be efficacious only when resources and power are shared. Therefore, the chapter begins by briefly discussing the empowerment concept, narrative theory, and the brain. Then, it uses them in interpreting two Sierra Leonean war novels. The anthology’s scope, women’s empowerment in post-war Sierra 33

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Leone, poses some constraints. Sierra Leone has produced a limited number of literary texts that focus on the narrow sphere of women’s post-war empowerment. Nevertheless, the two novels under analysis in this essay deal with post-war settings and depict characters who undergo mental transformations that enable them to change themselves and their relationships with the executors of power. Indeed, this essay also argues that for women’s empowerment to be sustainable, it must happen in conjunction with the remapping of the minds of men and children. For this reason, my analyses more broadly make a case for the empowerment of subalterns. To build a just and equitable Sierra Leonean future, the power custodians must also develop the disposition to share power and resources or learn how to relinquish them—a process that might be called dis-empowerment.  *

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The Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SLTRC’s) report of 2004 identifies women as disproportionately impacted by the country’s civil (RUF-SL) war, 1999–2002. Accordingly, local and international organizations conceptualized, funded, and implemented rebuilding programs to empower women by increasing their participation in politics and other sectors of national life. The country’s legislature also enacted laws to protect women from gender-based violence and inheritance inequities and facilitated access to scholarships, micro-credit, targeted healthcare, improved education, and training (M’Cormack-Hale & Beoku-Betts, 2015, pp. 8 and 13). Pointing to similar legal and rebuilding efforts in Rwanda, the Akilah Institute (“5 Ways Rwanda Leads on Women’s Empowerment”) compares the marginalization of women in pre-genocide Rwanda to their post-genocide majority (61 percent) in the country’s parliament. The Institute notes that the nation’s Constitution guarantees gender equality and mandates that women make up at least 30 percent of the country’s parliament and senior leadership positions. The Institute further notes that Rwanda has also made gains in the number of females who head businesses, enroll in academic and vocational institutions, and participate in the formal workforce. The pre- to post-genocide timestamps in the Rwandan example imply that empowerment outcomes materialize over time and result from intervening actions and processes that target women’s public profiles as well as their material and mental well-being. This recognition has led scholars to conceptualize empowerment as a process of intensive reflection (Freire, 1970; 1973) that can lead to consciousnessraising and, ultimately, to changes and control over socio-economic and other structural systems. Molara Ogundipe-Leslie (1994) conceives such action as the ability of women to “speak, act, and live with joy and responsibility . . . to end [their] silences . . . speak [their] truths . . . [and] . . . collapse all screens which threaten to obscure the beauties of the world” (“Forward”). Srilatha Batliwala (1994) concretizes OgundipeLeslie’s “beauties” as actions that challenge existing power relations and gain greater control over resources, power, and ideology (p. 128). Zimmerman (1995), stressing the process component, describes empowerment as “a series of experiences in which individuals learn to see a closer correspondence between their goals and a sense of how to achieve them” (p. 583). Keifer (1984), with a similar emphasis, outlines a process of maturation from political infancy to adulthood, involving four stages. Each lasts about

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a year, beginning in year one with a birth-like entry or mobilizing episode; progressing through intensive reflection and supportive peer relationships (year two); selfawareness, strategic ability, critical consciousness (year three); and ending in an empowered adult. Carr (2003) observes that “[p]rocess-oriented definitions,” implicitly underpinned by developmental psychology, have emerged as the “the more salient and revealing approach to understanding empowerment” (p. 10). Accordingly, she advances a model of empowerment that maps this process as cyclical, constituting position, conscientization, political action, and change as mutually reinforcing. Carr (2003) notes that empowerment starts from a position of “human misery, whether it is termed powerlessness, oppression, or deprivation” (p. 13), arising from a combination of socioeconomic and psychological factors. I would add behavioral factors, such as when corrupt rulers mismanage a country’s economy and when husbands take advantage of cultural practices and beliefs to prevent wives and daughters from developing agency. Therefore, empowerment projects seek to enable individuals in positions of “misery” to identify the factors responsible for their oppression and extricate themselves from their powerlessness. The process-to-outcome continuum particularly suits today’s empirical, data-driven world, where funders require measurable results. Quantifiable outcomes typically have led policymakers and program implementers to sideline storytelling because its outcomes are hard to quantify, and stories are perceived as subjective imaginings divorced from reality. This tendency to consider storytelling as concerned with the fictional rather than with the real explains, in part, why national governments and nongovernmental organizations rarely deploy the oral and literary arts as tools of change in post-war rebuilding and national development plans. Perplexingly, this reluctance runs against a longstanding realization that storytelling produces transformative experiences. Indeed, the earliest oral tales—infused with moral prescriptions and proscriptions—testify to the recognition that narratives change minds. This general belief in a story’s capacity to transform explains why some people burn books or deny children access to them and why many others read bedtime stories to children and encourage reading as a lifetime activity. Undeniably, the power of the story explains Jesus’ many uses of parables (a simple tale used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson) in the New Testament. The recognition that stories can also redeem distorted minds motivates female protagonist Shahrazad in A Thousand and One Nights to tell the many tales that persuade her husband-king to desist from his insane practice of marrying a new wife one day and killing her the next. More recently, the acceptance of stories as instruments of healing underpins scriptotherapy (Henke, 1998), eyewitness testimony in truth and reconciliation commissions, and traditional African jurisprudence systems such as Rwanda’s Gacaca (justice in the grass) and Sierra Leone’s Fambul Tok (family conversation). In other words, while legislative mandates, educational programs, and socioeconomic initiatives increase women’s public profiles and sustain their bodies, the scholarship is less clear how well these initiatives address their minds, and the values encoded in them. Their inability to fully deconstruct the factors contributing to their misery can hinder them from meaningfully and sustainably changing their

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circumstances even when the programs mentioned above are available to them. Fortunately, studies about the brain’s plasticity provide a scientific understanding of how stories can remap the mind, a necessary first step in the empowering process. This understanding, I argue, provides a basis for including storytelling as an integral part of consciousness-raising, which predicates successful post-conflict rebuilding and national development strategies.

The Neurology of Narrative and Empowerment Focusing on the individual, Kay Young and Jeffrey Saver (2001) argue that the predominant and fundamental basis of human consciousness comes from our “understanding of self and world in story” (p. 74). They explain that while we do not hold onto the specific words of a particular story, our retention of a narrative’s core, its “point” or message, creates a mental environment, a cognitive blueprint, that we draw upon when we encounter and make decisions in new situations. They point out that although we may not be actively aware of this process, we still rely on the stories that have entered our consciousness. Roger Schank (1990) elaborates: “[w]e need to tell someone else a story that describes our experience because the process of creating the story also creates the memory structure that will contain the essence of the story for the rest of our lives” (p. 115). To be without stories, Schank affirms, is to be without memories, which means something akin to being without a self. Indeed, Schank argues, storytelling is functionally the same as understanding. Stories hardwire our lived and vicarious experiences into our consciousness. We subsequently use the core or essential elements of these stor(i)ed experiences as accumulated wisdom to identify ourselves and interpret new experiences. Nigerian author Chinua Achebe captures the importance of story to consciousness and identity in the speech of the Abazon elder in Anthills of the Savannah (1987): It is the story . . . that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence. The story is our escort; without it, we are blind. . . . The story owns and directs us . . . makes us different from cattle . . . [and] sets one people apart from their neighbors. p. 114

More recently, Norman Doidge (2007) restates Achebe’s personification in the language of brain plasticity, explaining that consistent exposure to an idea, good or bad, results eventually in its incorporation into the consciousness. Of course, such incorporation is not a simple autonomic process outside our control. As we learn new things, we simultaneously unlearn old ones. Incorporating new ideas manifests as either a conscious or unconscious tug-of-war. The adult brain is a repository of long-held, sometimes fossilized, values and worldviews encoded in our neural pathways. When we cannot rewire the mind and dislodge the old values, they persist, resulting in intransigent traditionalism or the golden-age syndrome—the belief that the best or ideal times are in our past and nothing can replace them.

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Acquiring new ideas requires many iterations (experts say between seven and fifty) of conscious learning before the new concepts become habitual. Kay Young and Jeffrey Saver (2001) call the stories that lead to this new outlook “narrative-motivated words . . . that come together . . . as a story with a coherent sense of wholeness bound to a beginning, middle and end, . . . and wrapped together by a governing sense of consequence or logic . . . that defines a point of view . . .” (pp. 74-75). The memories created by this chronology establish and mature the neural networks, which promote the deep learning that embeds into consciousness and construct the autobiographical self—the apogee of empowerment. These fictional and nonfictional narratives form new brain structures, neuronal connections, and synapses (Doidge, 2007). They restructure the brain. This outcome, enabling self-aware women who are attuned to their post-war realities and know how to change them, should be integral to national recovery strategies. The confluence of the above ideas lead to the central assertions of this essay: narrative, particularly in story form, can help change the blueprints, the imaginative and intellectual pathways of the brain, and enhance individual and societal capacity to “(re)imagine and (re)generate new selves, communities, and nations” (Skelt, 2013). Therefore, the literary arts, particularly stories, must feature in post-war and development strategies and policies. This essay argues that women’s empowerment in post-war Sierra Leone will endure when socio-economic and political programs combine with storytelling initiatives to expand and remap the mind and when changes in women’s attitudes and outlooks enable them to recreate their material circumstances. The analyses that follow illustrate the transformative process described above in two Sierra Leonean novels: Yema Lucilda Hunter’s Redemption Song (2006) and Nadia Maddy’s The Palm Oil Stain (2011). Both depict subjects starting in positions of misery, display their mental rewiring, and show the results. The concluding section proposes that socio-economic programs should incorporate storytelling at strategic points in the continuum of women’s empowerment in post-war rebuilding and national development.

Empowering through a Usable Past: Healing Misery in Hunter’s Redemption Song “I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you” Isaiah 44:22, New International Version

Hunter’s 2006 novel and the biblical verse on redemption parallel the empowerment continuum of position (misery), process (inputs), and outcome (results). The offenses and sins of the persona in the above verse represent the starting misery, disadvantage, or ignorance. The sweeping affirms a specific mechanism of change, and the return foreshadows an outcome, in this case, redemption from distress and communion with God. Redemption Song combines first- and third-person narratives to tell the story of two teenage boys, Manny and Samu. Each progresses from a position of misery to a state of

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awakened consciousness and redemption. Their lives tragically intersect on the day combatants of the People’s Revolutionary Army (PRA) invade George Town, a village six miles outside of Sewa City, the capital of a fictional “tiny West African republic” (p. 1). Narratively, Samu enters Manny’s village in a state of induced misery. Conscripted, brainwashed, branded, and high on a cocktail of drugs to make him and his child soldier peers “fearless and without conscience” (p. 163), Samu kills Manny’s parents, as he has done many others in countless “operations.” Manny does not know that Samu is responsible for his parents’ deaths at the time of the killing. However, the combination of witnessing the senseless execution of his parents and heartbreak after PRA fighters abduct his girlfriend, Hamida, plunges Manny into his state of misery. The story illustrates how he accesses a usable past to progress toward redemption, the locus of empowerment in this novel. Initially, Manny rages at suggestions from Brother Bob, the embodiment of Christian Grace, that he should forgive the rebels. However, Brother Bob, having himself forgiven the PRA rebels that killed his wife, baby, and close family (“everything he had in this world”), persists in delivering the message of grace (underserved forgiveness) to Manny: . . . the Master commands us to forgive, and who am I to refuse? If you are a Christian, He should be your Master too. Whenever I remembered what the rebels did, and I felt anger rising, I used to say, “Master, thy will be done. I forgive them.” . . . I just kept on repeating those words, repeating those words, repeating those words. And you know . . . unexpected blessings started coming my way. p. 147

Brother Bob overcomes the pain and anger of his loss by adhering to the repeated biblical command for him to forgive, testifying that biblical injunctions (and narratives) require repetition and time to become hardwired into conscious dispositions or character traits. Readers witness this repetitive and time-bound process in Manny’s transformation from raging with hatred to promoting “love and unity among our people . . .” (p. 159). He first learns of Brother Bob’s story of loss, forgiveness, and love for the rebels from the tough-talking Mrs. Binda, the woman in charge of food at the Doctors without Borders camp. Subsequently, Brother Bob narrates his journey from loss to love to Manny, and the tale overarches George Town as an archetypal narrative. Together with Uncle Martin’s remittances and other acts of generosity bestowed on Manny, this narrative forms a critical mass of storylines about forgiveness and love that etch themselves into Manny’s subconscious. Neurologically, they (re)construct the memory infrastructure, the cognitive blueprint that Manny later draws upon to apply to new situations and purposes (p. 143). With his brain primed in this manner, Manny’s transformation further unfolds through a dream—a subconscious narrative—in which his parents’ spirits show him a utopian vision of his country. In this reverie, he learns that such a future is “possible” if, interestingly, he uses his “brain,” the muscle that neuroscience tells us stores memories and is capable of rewiring itself to change behavior and outlook. With this emerging consciousness of a better future for himself and his country, Manny is amenable to

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Brother Bob’s encouragement to start an organization patterned after Ghanaian Dr. Azigidah’s New Afrikan Movement.According to Doidge (2007), external encouragement finds receptive neural connections and synapses (p. 199) in Manny’s brain. Nonetheless, Manny’s transformation is neither automatic nor linear. As PascualLeone’s study of blind subjects learning Braille reveals, making new skills and ideas permanent requires “slow, steady work” (Doidge, 2007, p. 200). Understandably, therefore, Manny’s rewiring short-circuits when he discovers that Samu had killed his parents. He chokes and almost kills Samu, and for much of the novel, he desires retribution. This step backward is standard in any learning enterprise. Manny struggles to shed the old vengeful mindset to make way for the emerging disposition to love and forgive, experiences “turmoil,” and feels as if, he says, “[s]omething seemed to give away inside me” (p. 164). Neurologically, Manny is at a crossroads: he can devolve into old habits or fully embrace new ones. Rewiring the mind involves a tug-of-war between the old, ironically comfortable position of misery and the new, frequently tricky task of asserting oneself and recalibrating relationships with new people and circumstances. Accordingly, counselors at the rehabilitation center encourage Manny to embrace change by pointing out Samu’s metamorphoses. They explain to Manny that the Samu who confesses to his heinous crimes is not the same as the boy who killed his parents and that “only his outer body is the same—not his heart,” reflecting the thencontemporary belief that the heart was the seat of reason and emotion and, therefore, amenable to change. After learning that Samu has sacrificed his life to help Hamida escape, Manny acknowledges he owes the rehabilitated child soldier a “debt of gratitude” for giving him back his girlfriend. However, the murder of his parents calcifies as traumatic memory, and he never fully forgives Samu. Indeed, Manny wishes that the latter and his peers would continue to suffer, but he hopes to achieve peace of mind through prayer (p. 188). Nonetheless, the consciousness of love and forgiveness has sufficiently established itself in Manny for him to put it to new uses. With the help of his friends, he founds the Love is Power (LIP) movement, raises money for improving the environment and holding literacy classes, recruits members, and, at its launching, gives an inspirational address: If we want a better country, we must start by acting differently towards each other. . . . Build[ing] each other up . . . let [ting] bygones be bygones and start[ing] afresh, after which the assembly breaks into Bob Marley’s “One love, one heart . . . [l] et’s get together and feel alright.” p. 172

However, the most explicit outcome of Manny’s enlivened consciousness manifests in his response to Hamida’s recovery from rape. Hunter, a female writer, would have been painfully aware of Hamida’s need to remake herself, but, recognizing that women are often the bearers and repositories of culture and men as articulators, focuses the rewiring process on Manny. In taking this approach, Hunter makes a case that while women’s empowerment involves changing their oppressed, subaltern status, such

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changes are incomplete without the willingness of men, boys, and those who hold power to change their outlook and attitude. In the case of Hamida and victims of war-perpetrated sexual violence, the willingness and ability to change resides, in part, in the ability of males to recognize women’s vulnerability to structural violence. When Brother Bob asks Manny if he can handle the idea of “his woman[‘s]” forced intimacy with many “disgusting, perhaps diseased” persons (p. 177), he is asking the male lover if he can re-inscribe his mind with different images and narratives of women’s bodies, particularly to empathize with the perils they face in war theaters. Through this question and answer session between Brother Bob and Manny, Hunter implies that women’s empowerment can be sustainable if men and society change their attitudes to women’s bodies and discard the pervasive and firmly held belief that intentional or unintentional sex by a woman with someone other than her accepted partner defiles her. Hamida may, on her own, find the strength to overcome the trauma of her abduction and rape. Still, her return to normalcy and wholeness also depends on how her society validates her experiences as real and unjustified. In responding to Hamida with love and support, Manny discards old ideas about women’s bodies and lays the mental foundation, as a leader, for the beginning of what Beoku-Betts and M’Cormack-Hale (Chapter 1, this volume) call a gender-sensitive transformative agenda for an enduring relationship and future. In Samu’s case, the novel attributes the “remarkable transformation of his mind”— his redemption—to months of not using drugs or vulgar language, being encouraged to behave politely, and being treated with respect and kindness. In the war theater, field commanders coerce child soldiers into using a cocktail of drugs and rewire their brains chemically. They suppress, if not eradicate, wholesome stories stressing community, family, love, and respect and replace them with malignant narratives that cumulatively make the child soldiers “fearless and without conscience.” However, over time, the absence of drug use in the rehabilitation camp removes the chemically induced brain fog and enables Samu gradually to return to a pre-war state of mind in which the wholesome memories implanted through folktales and proverbs reassert themselves. Samu and Manny’s redemptions derive from their ability to access and reuse the core values of the foundational narratives of their upbringings and from being in environments in which new stories are implanted and repeated. Their displays of empathy, forgiveness, and love are external manifestations of an internal disposition to walk in the shoes of others. Empathy remains the cornerstone of the communal society in which Samu grew up and the central pillar of Manny’s Christian upbringing. By the novel’s end, Manny has redeemed himself from unbridled hatred and develops the conscious disposition to love. Though he presents as a reluctant Christian, readers know that growing up in a churchgoing household exposed him to biblical stories of love and forgiveness. Readers also know that his exposure to English novels, to the extent that they point to gender equality and emphasize love and forgiveness (p. 25), would have influenced him. This critical mass of narratives and examples explains the transformation he undergoes and the role he assumes as an advocate of national reconciliation.

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Empowering the Self: Confronting Misery and Building Agency in Nadia Maddy’s The Palm Oil Stain As noted in the introduction, imaginative writers do not compose stories to illustrate theoretical concepts. However, their works must, to some degree, externalize their conscious and unconscious core values. Hunter’s Redemption Song foregrounds faith, love, and forgiveness, and it suggests they create the empathetic mind that is the precursor to restoration and empowerment for traumatized, post-conflict individuals. That ability to walk in the shoes of others enables Manny to revise his attitude toward Samu, who is primarily responsible for his misery. That empathetic mindset inspires him to lead his community to remake itself and its relationship with the national government. Whereas Redemption Song depicts empowerment as an externally driven process that helps the person in misery access a usable past to retrain the brain, Nadia Maddy’s The Palm Oil Stain illustrates that empowerment can also be internally driven. For twothirds of the novel, Shalimar, the protagonist, is under the management of the men in her life. However, when she is held captive and forced to function as a “wife,” she awakens to her life-threatening predicament. This eureka moment drives her to take actions that would change the environment responsible for her misery. In authoring her destiny, she rewires her brain to sustain the manner of her interaction with people and society for the rest of the novel. Therefore, sustainable empowerment can be externally or internally motivated, but the two processes are not necessarily exclusive. The trigger that begins them depends on the individual’s circumstances. Accordingly, post-war rebuilding programs should avoid one-size-fits-all policies and, instead, deploy flexible and responsive strategies that account for women’s unique educational, socio-political, economic, and cultural circumstances and experiences. Indeed, the sex of their protagonists may have dictated the narrative approaches deployed by the two writers. Hunter’s Manny is a male character who, by default, benefits from “gendered power” (Cornwall and Rivas, 2015, 398), though, I point out, some men may not consciously be aware of how power accrues to them. Therefore, Manny needs external prompting because a change of his attitude requires ceding the authority and entitlement accorded to his gender. On the other hand, Maddy’s Shalimar, desiring both authority and entitlement, must fight for them. She is a half-Lebanese, half-Fulani1 village belle who is “abducted” and held hostage in a luxury hotel in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, by a white South African mercenary named Chameleon. Readers find out later that Chameleon’s friend, who loves Shalimar, had instructed him to abduct her to keep her safe. The would-be lover’s directions and Chameleon’s willingness to carry them out underscore the power both men exercise over Shalimar’s body. Several months into the captivity, the village belle falls in love with the mercenary, and he agrees to help Shalimar find her parents. Unfortunately, during their search, he disappears and is presumed dead. Shalimar is captured by the PRA rebels and is serially raped until ECOMOG peacekeeping forces rescue her. The novel concludes with Chameleon returning to her in Freetown to build a post-war life with a daughter.

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Whether in the quiet of a rural village, in the throes of romance in conflict-free Freetown, or under fire in a rebel camp, Maddy foregrounds various females expressing a desire for economic independence and political power. Shalimar’s younger sister, Baindu, eager to live a materially better life, runs off with a PRA rebel named Ali. The latter firmly believes in the core point of the PRA’s revolutionary narrative, which subaltern villagers buy into, that they must wrest political power and wealth from a corrupt cadre of government officials and their international cronies and return them to ordinary Sierra Leoneans (p. 16). Wriggling her “pure diamond-encrusted ring,” Baindu tells Shalimar, “When [the rebels] win the war,” she and Ali “will build a house for all her family to live in. We will have drivers and servants too, just like the minister’s children” (p. 11). Baindu presents as selfish, uncritical, and impulsive in contrast to Shalimar, the mature, responsible, and morally conscious protagonist who also desires economic independence. However, while Baindu relies on Ali and the PRA revolution to empower her (to some extent deferring to the old paradigm that males must be the providers), Maddy plots the evolution of Shalimar to mimic the brain’s hardwiring process, and her empowerment emanates from within. A key finding of brain plasticity research is that this muscle does not reorganize casually, quickly, or arbitrarily. It restructures itself when the person pays attention to the inputs and tasks of learning. Plasticity research, neurobiology, and social psychology also show that new and different kinds of experiences and inputs over time lead the brain to change and organize itself (Prensky, 2001, p. 1). For example, there is a fundamental difference between how the brains of Gen Y digital natives process information compared to, say, Baby Boomers. However, as we have seen over the past two decades, older adults have, with time, developed dexterity with new technologies. Accordingly, Shalimar’s transformation mimics this time-bound process that leads to a changed consciousness. Unlike with Manny, the catalyst and inputs of her change emanate from within. At the outset, Shalimar conducts herself as the quintessential African village belle. She displays modesty and prudence, helps on the family farm, cares for her sick father, and respects the mother who consistently mistreats her out of misplaced resentment. Without the intervention of war and exposure to city life, Shalimar would likely have married a village beau approved by her parents. He would have been the head of the household even if she had achieved her goal of becoming a businesswoman. Shalimar’s pre-war village upbringing (her mental map) would have led her to subordinate herself to the overarching patriarchal or social imperatives of being a good daughter, wife, and mother. Village life and expectations would have circumscribed the range of her cultural and ideological inputs. To widen those inputs, Maddy removes Shalimar from the village and places her in asymmetrical settings to her upbringing. Her new experiences rewire her brain and, ultimately, her perception of herself and her expectations of a husband. As with Manny, this process is not straightforward but time-dependent and recursive. In urban Freetown, where she is held captive, the conflict-free city gives Shalimar her first insights into another world that implicates a new sense of self. Initially, Shalimar resists that new self, finding it alien because of her upbringing within the patriarchal rural

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setting. Therefore, understandably, she wants to return to her more familiar village milieu and tries to escape. After several unsuccessful attempts, she adapts to her life in Freetown and falls in love with Chameleon. Over time, she views him as her benefactor and subordinates her dreams to become a businesswoman to his desires, agreeing to return with him to South Africa once she has found out the fate of her parents. During this search, which she undertakes with Chameleon as protector, she is captured, and Chameleon disappears, presumed dead. In rebel hands, Shalimar is gang-raped and forced to function as a co “wife,” providing food and sexual services to the camp commander named Predator. Fear, humiliation, and multiple rapes eventually compel her to excise her upbringing to be the dependent village belle. Shalimar recognizes her vulnerability as a woman. Unconstrained by law, order, and discipline, she learns that war suppresses the wholesome stories of the mind that dispose humans to love and protect one another. In the war theater, narratives about power and domination prevail and, if such narratives go uncontested, humans devolve into animals. Youths rape, maim, and perpetrate atrocities on women and girls who could be, and sometimes are, their mothers, sisters, and friends. However, Shalimar’s camp “co-wives” show her that this devolution happens to both men and women. Jeneba, suffering from Stockholm syndrome, and Musu, using her youth and sexuality, curry favor from their captors in their quest to survive. This realization that sisterhood is unstable and situational motivates Shalimar to plan her escape and project a future where she exercises control over her life. Consequently, she scouts the surrounding forests daily, marking trees to map her escape, and studies her captors to identify the one among them who could carelessly divulge information that would help her escape. Ultimately, her efforts prove unnecessary because peacekeeping West African ECOMOG forces rescue her from certain death, but by then, determination and sense of autonomy have etched themselves into her consciousness. This awareness manifests itself in her post-war life, particularly after her daughter is born. At first, Shalimar understandably rejects the pregnancy, perceiving the fetus as an invader and predator because she believes it is the offspring of one of her multiple rapists. However, when she sees the baby girl and recognizes by her features that Chameleon must be her father, Shalimar becomes determined never to allow her daughter, named Martina, to be exposed to her experiences and deprivations. This determination encodes itself into a mental disposition or personality trait (p. 182). Shalimar decides to sustain herself and her child by fulfilling her dream of being a trader, a longing she had as a village belle that crystallizes into a career goal as hostage in Freetown. However, while a rewired mind and a new outlook may be necessary, they are insufficient for sustainable empowerment. Self-determination and autonomy need supportive socio-political milieus and individuals. Cornwall (2016, p. 345), using the metaphor of a journey, explains that women on the path of self-determination need supportive “external actors” who can clear obstacles, provide tips, signposts, bridges, encouragement, sustenance as well as resting places for reflection. Therefore, as Brother Bob and others supported Manny, Mariama, an erstwhile alcoholic market woman whose husband abandoned her, offers Shalimar and her daughter a place to live and

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later invites Shalimar to take over her “spot” selling plasas (greens) at the local market. This offer and Shalimar’s determination transform her from the dependent village belle into an independent city businesswoman. The novel’s conclusion indicates that sustainable empowerment is a synergy of financial independence and a mind unshackled from what Harvard Economist Amartya Sen calls “unfreedoms,” be they political, economic, cultural, or ideological. Maddy reunites Shalimar with an alcoholic, down-and-out Chameleon. In their reversed fortunes, Shalimar writes a new chapter of her life in which she becomes a central character in her own story and an equal, functional, and fully participating partner in their relationship. In post-conflict terms, women need to occupy more political offices and better access to micro-credit, healthcare, and other services and opportunities. However, for these tangible outcomes of empowerment to be long-lasting, transformational, and transgenerational, women need self-conscious, restructured minds, which the two novels I have examined indicate can be externally or internally driven.

Conclusion: From Story to Storytelling in Post-war Rebuilding Programs The preceding analysis has demonstrated that humans learn and develop an understanding of themselves through the unconscious or conscious stories and narratives embedded in their brains. The analysis has also shown that over time the brain can, with new knowledge and experiences, rewire itself and transform individuals, moving them from positions of misery, motivating them to embrace new attitudes and ideas, and empowering them to change their circumstances. The central focus of women’s post-war empowerment programs has been to change the person so that she can change her circumstances. Teaching women to intentionally construct their stories with a point and installing themselves as central characters reconceptualizes them as articulators rather than repositories of cultures. Storytelling places their perspectives, positions, and knowledge frames as part of the spectrum of community and national discourses, and it provides another tool for national politicians and development experts to rebuild societies like Sierra Leone. It also provides an opportunity to make storytelling and the arts, in general, an integral cultural cog in the enterprise of national development. A vast body of literature and practice in many fields shows that storytelling is a widely and effectively used tool to empower people in various degrees of misery and asymmetric relationships or circumstances. Forty-three countries around the world, including Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Rwanda, have deployed truth commissions in which storytelling and witness testimonials have been an integral part of giving these people a voice, elevating them from a subaltern status, validating historical and traumatic wrongs, and giving them a sense of justice and fairness. Storytelling has also been used to reduce aggression and stubbornness in children with oppositional defiant disorder (Hosseini, et al., 2014) and treat depression (Gaudiano et al., 2019). To varying degrees, all these efforts enable individuals to heal, hope, and develop a sense of agency to confront, modify, or change the specific elements of their misery.

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Therefore, current and future post-war empowerment programs should offer opportunities for participants and managers to tell and listen to stories to effectively remap sensibilities and flatten the hierarchies inscribed in systems and relationship asymmetries. Just as bilateral and multilateral agreements sometimes include indigenization clauses, rebuilding programs should, at a minimum, make storytelling integral to the empowerment process, and budgets should reflect this requirement as a line item. These opportunities to tell stories need not be elaborate, but they must persist through the stages of a program. Minimalist curricula can borrow from the practices of group therapies like Alcoholics Anonymous, in which participants take turns telling their stories, or they can deploy more elaborate mechanisms like digital storytelling. Scaling up these opportunities means formalizing narrative as part of the education and graduation from an empowerment project so that storytelling stands apart but is also a core component of empowerment. Opportunities for follow-up activities and refresher courses should also be planned. Where appropriate, print (newsletters) and digital (websites, cell phones) communications technologies should feature stories of individuals, as a 2014 Pew research survey reports that one-in-ten Africans use mobile communications technologies. The goal of empowerment is not to turn marginalized or victimized women into feminists. Instead, the hoped-for outcome is that a daughter born into an environment where she learns that her mother has a right to and encodes her story, is by the osmosis of exposure, going to believe she, too, has a right to tell her own. The realization that she has an inalienable right to tell her story should be the outcome of empowerment: continuity.

Notes 1 In Sierra Leone, being Lebanese and Fulani are, in general, identity badges that expose one to discrimination and insult. Being mixed or half Lebanese, the offspring of an illicit union between her mother and her Lebanese employer, calls up additional negative associations that place Shalimar at a disadvantage along with her gender and village upbringing.

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Part Two

Women in Politics

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Zainab Hawa Bangura’s Early Career as an Activist in Sierra Leone, 1994–2005 LaRay Denzer

Zainab Hawa Bangura rose to national and international prominence in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. In its December 2015 issue, New African magazine listed Bangura among the 100 most influential Africans, emphasizing her “undeniable” influence in policy, diplomacy, and conflict resolution. By this time, she had distinguished herself as a leader in women’s and civil society organizations, as the second woman to campaign for president in Sierra Leone, as a two-time government minister, and as an international civil servant. What was the source of her ambition and how did she achieve her early goals? This chapter highlights Bangura’s early career from 1993 to 2005, examining three areas of leadership: her role in women’s and civil society organizations, her 2002 presidential campaign, and her reform work in nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Documentation for this biographical study is very rich. Aside from wide reportage in the Sierra Leone and international press, Bangura’s contemporary views can be found in her writing, speeches, press releases, and many published interviews online and in newspapers, her Facebook account, and a BBC documentary. Published life histories about Sierra Leone women leaders are scarce. So far, only seven book-length life histories have been published. Yema Lucilda Hunter (1983) illuminates the life and poetry of her mother-in-law, Gladys Casely-Hayford. Adelaide Hill Cromwell (1986) analyses the role of Adelaide Smith Casely-Hayford in diasporan and Sierra Leonean society in the twentieth century. Constance Agatha CummingsJohn (1995) reflects on her careers as educator, politician, and Freetown’s first woman mayor. Talabi Aisie Lucan (2003) examines the contribution of Paramount Chief Ella Gulama in the country’s politics and society. Simon Ottenberg (2014) appraises the hitherto overlooked career of artist Miranda Olayinka Burney-Nicol. Michael Wundah (2014) evaluates the contribution of Christiana Ayoka Mary Thorpe to education and government as the leader of the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE), a government minister, and the first woman chief electoral commissioner. Umu Hawa Tejan-Jalloh (2016), Sierra Leone’s first woman chief justice, recounts the milestones in her rise in the legal profession. There are also a number of brief profiles of notable women (Day, 1997; Steady, 2006, 2011; Beoku-Betts, 2008; Bangura, 2012; TaylorPearce, 2014). Additionally, the late former First Lady Hannah Momoh (1990) compiled 49

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a slender who’s who of professional and businesswomen, apparently intended as a forerunner of a larger effort. These provide a good base for further work, but more extensive biographical projects are needed to understand women’s full contribution to Sierra Leone’s intellectual and political leadership. Socio-political studies about Sierra Leone women, however, have dramatically increased since the mid-1990s. Many focus on collective action (Peace and Solidarity Mission, 1997; Jusu-Sheriff, 2000; Steady, 2006, 2011: 161–215; Thorpe, 2006; Day, 2008; Okazawa-Rey, 2008; Abdullah, 2010; Abdullah and Fofana Ibrahim, 2010; Lifongo, 2013; Beoku-Betts and Day, 2015) while others examine women’s war experiences as victims, combatants, and collaborators (Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, v.3B: 2004; Coulter, 2008, 2009; Holland and Saidu, 2012). While these studies are important for understanding women’s issues and experiences in Sierra Leone, few examine the personal evolution and career trajectories of individual women leaders.

Family Background Bangura was born Zainab Hawa Sesay on December 18, 1959 in Yonibana, Tonkolili district, Northern province, to Temne Muslim parents; her father was a conservative cleric and her mother, Madam Sama Kanu, a trader. In an early profile, Zainab Bangura described her mother as “a strong political personality” (Gbow and Turay, 1996: 4). Before marrying Zainab’s father, Madam Kanu had lived in Freetown, where she observed the importance of education in shaping life opportunities and decided that her children would go to school. When Zainab turned twelve her father insisted that she leave school and marry, a demand her mother adamantly rejected, resulting in divorce and marking a critical juncture in Zainab’s life. In later interviews and speeches, Bangura has often emphasized the transformative power of education as a means to modernity, progress, democracy, leadership, and poverty alleviation. In her acceptance speech of an honorary doctorate from Oxford Brookes University on June 27, 2015, she dedicated her degree to her mother who, “Despite her limited knowledge of the world beyond her village . . . valued education and its empowering and transformative capacity. She taught me that education is a ‘golden key’ that not only unlocks doors, but turns walls into windows of opportunity, barriers into bridges, and glass ceilings into clear blue skies” (Bangura, 2015a). Young Zainab attended local elementary schools, followed by the Government Secondary School for Girls (Mathora), and then the Ahmadiyya Muslim Secondary School (Freetown). In 1978, she enrolled in sixth form at the prestigious Annie Walsh Memorial School, the oldest girls’ school in Freetown, after which she studied history and political science at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, obtaining a B.A. in 1983. Degree in hand, she joined the staff of National Insurance Company and five years later went to England for a diploma course in insurance studies at Nottingham University, followed by a diploma course in insurance management at City University Business School (London). In 1991, she qualified as a fellow of the Chartered Insurance Institute of London. Upon returning to Freetown in 1991, Bangura was employed at the Reliance Insurance Trust Corporation (RITCORP), whose managing director was Ernest Bai Koroma, future president of Sierra Leone. There she rose to the position of

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acting managing director. From 1994 to 1996, she also served as a part-time lecturer in insurance studies at Fourah Bay College and became a leader of the emergent women’s peace movement (Patriotic Vanguard, July 30, 2008). Meanwhile, Sierra Leone had declined into “failed state” status (Reno, 1995). Siaka Stevens’ successor Joseph Saidu Momoh proved incapable of rescuing the nation from prolonged misrule and was forced to declare a state of economic emergency in 1987. Popular discontent led to the emergence of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the military overthrow of Momoh in April 1992, resulting in the establishment of the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC). Although plans were announced for the first multiparty elections since 1967, the military junta concentrated more on plundering state resources than on organizing elections or restoring the economy. Early in 1996, a palace coup replaced the NPRC and, very reluctantly, the new leaders capitulated to civil society demands to hold elections in the midst of ongoing peace negotiations with the rebels. The majority of Sierra Leoneans suffered greatly during this period. According to the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI), Sierra Leone had been ranked among the world’s poorest nations since at least 1990 and during this time was positioned at the very bottom; by 2017, Sierra Leone had risen to number 184 out of 189 countries and territories (UNDP, 2018). Life expectancy was 37.3 years in 1990, rising to 38.7 years in 2000, 48.2 years in 2010, and 51.4 years in 2015. The majority of people still live below the poverty line. Meanwhile, diverse international organizations actively promoted the development of civil society and women’s groups designed to encourage grassroots democratization, sustainable economic development, political participation, transparency in governance, health reform, and gender and human rights. All of these groups targeted likely recruits for leadership in countries like Sierra Leone. Seasoned women leaders in the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), other religious organizations, and community organizations enthusiastically embraced new opportunities and ideas, founding numerous new groups with action platforms to improve women’s status, raise awareness about socio-economic issues, mobilize protests, lobby for peace negotiations, and promote women’s participation in decision-making processes. These efforts drew on a legacy of female activism before and during early independence (Cromwell, 1986; Cummings-John and Denzer, 1995; Day 2012; Denzer, 1981, 1987a, 1987b, 1995; Lucan, 2003; Steady, 1975, 1976). Leaders of about fifty women’s activist groups in Freetown and other towns in Sierra Leone founded the Women’s Forum in 1994 as an umbrella group to coordinate local programs and organize delegations to attend national and international conferences, focusing at first on the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (Jusu-Sheriff, 2000).

Women Organized for a Morally Enlightened Nation (WOMEN), 1994–1995 By 1993, Bangura had become influential in campaigning for good governance, grassroots participation, and government transparency. Supported by the Sierra Leone

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Labor Congress, she took part in the discussions of the National Advisory Council that led to the restoration of the 1991 constitution and multiparty democracy. Sponsored by the United States Information Service she traveled the following year to the United States to participate in a program on Pluralism and Grassroots Democracy that focused on community organization techniques. Before the trip, she had discussed future action with local women’s groups and international agencies (Day, 1995). In the US, she networked with international non-government organizations involved in promoting gender mainstreaming, civil society, and human rights. Back home in 1994, Bangura founded Women Organized for a Morally Enlightened Nation (WOMEN), a nonpartisan group with two primary objectives: the restoration of democracy and good governance in Sierra Leone and the promotion of women’s development and gender equity (Peace and Solidarity Mission, 1997: 85–86). WOMEN organized workshops to promote family planning and strategize on how to navigate the political process, support women candidates, and organize demonstrations (Hamilton Spectator, December 26, 1995). Bangura urged women to demand a place in decision-making for two main reasons: first, women did most of the work in farming and retail trading; second, the (then) five-year-old civil war had hit women and children hard. Asserting that “this country will never be the same again for women,” Bangura claimed that a majority of the 10,000 fatalities in the war were women and children. Bangura was a member of the Women’s Forum (WF) from 1995 to 1998 (Bangura, 2005), and her organization WOMEN joined the WF and other organizations in a five-month campaign (October 1995–February 1996) to drive out the military government in Sierra Leone. They mounted protest marches, rallies, demonstrations, and prayers, maintaining relentless pressure on the junta to negotiate a peace settlement with the rebels and to hand over power to an elected government, arguing that democratic civilian rule was better suited to ameliorating the injustices that had caused the RUF to rebel in the first place. Several sources single out Bangura as a driving force in organizing protest events (for example, Gbow and Turay, 1996; Mazurana, Carlson and Anderlini, 2004: 15). In late October 1995, WOMEN convened a conference at the National Stadium attended by 200 representatives from organizations all over the country. In her welcome speech, Bangura declared that the meeting envisioned “the development of a free, open, and democratic Sierra Leonean Society with the full participation of women in all spheres of government, be it social, economic or political.” Emphasizing that effective democracy required the full participation of women, the conference demanded the establishment of a ministerial position dedicated to women’s interests (Kamara, 1995, p. 1). Earlier that year in April, the military had reluctantly capitulated to the popular demand for a national consultative conference to discuss the modalities of a government transfer and national elections. Despite the instrumental role of women in forcing these concessions, the military and other male leaders had invited only three women to take part in the first conference (popularly called Bintumani I) in August 1995. Outraged by being sidelined, Bangura and other women leaders succeeded in getting the organizers of the second conference (Bintumani II) to increase the number of women delegates to sixteen. During the deliberations, the women delegates presented

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a united front on the issues of peace, type of electoral process, women’s representation, health policy, and the role of the army during and after the election (Peace and Solidarity Mission 1997, pp. 41–42). When Bintumani II was convened on February 12–14, 1996 to consider postponing the election, which the military wanted, women’s groups adamantly oppose this plan. Bangura led a demonstration of women dressed entirely in black ashoebi, a powerful sartorial display underscoring their demand for elections (Gilbril Koroma, 2007 [2005]). The women delegates adroitly outmaneuvered NPRC efforts to delay the elections, which took place on February 26–27. Immediately the women’s organizations undertook voter education, voter registration, recruiting and training local election observers, and campaigning for the inclusion of women’s issues in all party manifestos. Surprisingly, neither Bangura nor other women’s groups offered overt support for the few women candidates standing for election, including Jeredine Williams-Sarho, the first Sierra Leonean woman to register a political party (the Coalition for Progress) and to file papers as a candidate for president.1 When asked in 1997 why women’s groups did not back Williams-Sarho, Bangura replied that a female president was not a major objective of women’s groups at that time: their opposition to the military was a selfless commitment to the nation’s welfare as a whole, not a political gambit to take over government. By taking the moral high ground, Bangura said women showed disdain for “dirty” politics (Kande, 1997). On March 15, Tejan Ahmad Kabbah was elected president in a run-off election marred by sporadic violence, irregularities, and ongoing warfare with the RUF (Kandeh, 1998). In his inaugural address he paid tribute to women for their work in restoring civilian rule and pledged “the preparation of programmes directed to enhance your public life and the removal of obstacles in the utilization of the considerable talent that is to be found in the more than fifty percent of the population of Sierra Leone” (Kabbah, 2010, pp. 37). Kabbah established the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs in 1996, which subsumed the existing Women’s Bureau established in 1988. Unfortunately, optimistic expectations of a new beginning soon faded in the face of a ruined economy, entrenched corruption, and on-and-off peace negotiations (Economist Intelligence Unit, 1996, pp. 23). From the beginning, Bangura opposed Kabbah’s government. She confronted him at the inauguration ball on March 29, warning him, “If you do not perform, we will kick you out, too.” She complained to Washington Post reporter Jonathan C. Randal (1996, A7) that “We need a very strong leader with a clear vision of where he is going and I see no one who fits that bill.” She joined other civil society groups in denouncing the new government of nearly four dozen ministers and deputies as a continuation of the worst tendencies of the former discredited political system. Bangura (1999) castigated Kabbah’s leadership: Kabbah adopted the usual policies of patronage and appointed a bloated cabinet of over 40 in his first year in office. . . . Most disturbing is his apparent ignorance of the very nature of popular government. It seems that Sierra Leone’s political class has not just become inherently corrupt, it has lost the remotest understanding of popular government. In peacetime that degree of incompetence would spell

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War, Women, and Post-conflict Empowerment political disaster, but in the Sierra Leone of 1990s, in the midst a ruthless and devastating civil war, it spells virtual suicide.

Bangura’s blunt speaking and dynamic activism attracted a following, and an early profile in Concord Times focused on her rising leadership (Gbow and Turay 1996, pp. 4, 7). When asked if she had wanted to be a minister in Kabbah’s government, she replied that “the sacrifice she made in mobilizing women against the hijackers of democracy . . . was [in] the spirit of patriotism and principle, and not for compensation.” She criticized the opposition for its complacency and failure to provide viable policies to restore democratic institutions and alleviate poverty. Before Kabbah was forced into exile in Guinea in March 1997, Bangura focused on community organizing, developing a grassroots campaign for increased popular participation in governance, and promoting programs advocating accountability of public officials.

The Campaign for Good Governance (CGG), 1996–2002 In July 1996, a few months after the multiparty elections, Bangura cofounded a new organization, the Campaign for Good Governance (CGG), with American historian Joseph Opala and Sierra Leonean human rights activist and journalist Julius Spencer (Kande, 1997, p. 3; Opala, 2000, pp. B01). The CGG was a nonpartisan, nongovernmental watchdog group with strong links to international agencies such as the Geneva-based International Crisis Group, the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy, the British Department for International Development, and the Dutch Interchurch Aid, all of which pursued policies to promote democratic participation, organize civil society groups, protect human rights, and empower women (Bangura, 2005). In Sierra Leone, the CGG sought to accomplish similar ends, through networking, collecting data, and compiling statistics on domestic and sexual violence; peacebuilding and reconciliation outreach; creating a micro-credit and savings scheme for market women; and organizing women’s advocacy groups and training workshops (CGG, 2000). Although the CGG stated its intention to publish an index of good governance from time to time, such an index failed to materialize. With a staff of forty-nine, the CGG provided free legal assistance and medical care to victims of sexual violence and rehabilitated internal refugees. It established human rights monitors across Sierra Leone at police stations, in rebel-controlled areas, and in internally displaced camps. In cooperation with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the CGG operated a five-year project to investigate and document war crimes. It supervised the collection and archiving of testimonies of civil war victims. In Freetown police stations, it also provided ledgers to document cases of violence against women. As CGG coordinator, Bangura testified in hearings of the US Congress about Sierra Leone conditions and met with UN, US, and UK officials and African leaders to discuss Sierra Leone issues (Patriotic Vanguard, July 30, 2008). Meanwhile, the return to democracy and peace in Sierra Leone suffered a setback in May 1997 when a group of young military officers staged a bloody coup that established

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the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), which suspended the constitution, abolished political parties, banned demonstrations, and invited the rebel RUF to form a coalition government. Kabbah fled to Guinea, where he set up a government-in-exile and organized international support from the Organization of African Unity, the Commonwealth, ECOWAS, and various Western governments. Bangura’s house in Freetown was burned down, but she narrowly escaped physical harm and decided to join other Sierra Leonean exiles in Guinea where she remained for ten months during 1997–1998. Other opponents of the AFRC also suffered violence and intimidation, but nowhere near the devastation Freetown residents would experience in the RUF invasion of January 1999. Despite misgivings about Kabbah’s policies, Bangura absolutely rejected the return of military government and its brutality. In Guinea, she founded a CGG branch, which mobilized international support for the restoration of civilian government at home. She and other exiled Sierra Leoneans established Radio Democracy, a broadcasting station specifically set up to communicate news from home, to keep international supporters informed about the country’s situation, and to discuss policies (Bangura, 2005; Mansaray 2000: 156).2 These efforts resulted in the creation of ECOMOG, a Nigerian-led West African intervention force, which facilitated Kabbah’s triumphant return to Freetown in March 1998. Unfortunately, Kabbah’s government’s efforts to negotiate peace over the next nine months failed, ending with the ferocious RUF invasion of Freetown on January 6, 1999, resulting in 5,000 casualties and massive property damage before the rebels were expelled (Gberie, 2005; Kabbah, 2010: chapters 3–4). Again, Bangura narrowly escaped. The international press recognized Bangura as an important spokesperson for Sierra Leone’s civil society movement. Her opinions about local issues frequently appeared in news reports by the BBC, CNN, VOA, Radio France International, the New York Times, The Economist, and the Washington Post. Freetown public opinion about her role, however, was divided. One admirer applauded how she “upheld her constituency in her shout for democracy and good governance” and built the CGG into a force that “has given a real meaning to the call for the empowerment of civil society” (A.B.T. Jalloh, 2000). Her detractors, however, bitterly resented her emergence as the public face of the nation’s women’s movement (Focus on Sierra Leone, March 22, 2000). Bangura’s support for Kabbah’s reinstated government diminished as it reverted to the same corrupt practices and disregard for democracy that had caused state failure before. When peace collapsed again in May 2000, she concluded, “We must accept that the state has collapsed and urgently needs to be put back on its feet.” More than ever, she believed that gender mainstreaming and grassroots participation were needed to stabilize government (Fofana, 2001). She accused the UN peacekeepers of collusion as RUF leader Foday Sankoh, who had become vice president, broke the peace terms (Buncombe, 2000). At the end of May, Bangura called for the establishment of an international tribunal to investigate RUF’s external supporters and to try Foday Sankoh for war crimes: “We have to deal with him once and for all . . . But if he’s tried within Sierra Leone he will be a security risk, because (the rebels) will always want to come for him, and then the trial must consume us” (quoted in Sierra Leone News, May

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26, 2000). Bangura further urged a more prominent role for civil society, arguing that it had “come to play a role that is not normally played in other countries.” During this critical time, many Sierra Leoneans actually advocated a return to British colonial rule, and Sierra Leone News reported that the CGG and other groups planned to send a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair through visiting Foreign Secretary Robin Cook to extend the stay of British troops. Bangura contended that: . . . British troops are more professional [than UN peacekeepers] . . . We hope that by being here (the British troops) will be able to retrain the army, to help us develop a professional and well-trained and disciplined army that can be subjected under civilian control . . . Britain left us with a very good army, and after the long years of one party rule and militia governments and centralization and corruption and mismanagement, the entire democratic institutions were destroyed . . . Now we have to take time to develop them, and we think that we can only develop them from scratch. Sierra Leone News, June 7, 2000

By mid-July 2000, Bangura’s despair led her to redirect her career from advocacy and agitation to overt politics. At a meeting at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, she called on US and international human rights organizations to declare the RUF a terrorist organization (Concord Times, July 1, 2000). Bangura decided to establish a political party and run for presidential office, recognizing that policymaking was essential to effecting change.

The 2002 Presidential Campaign Elections were scheduled for May 14, 2002. Although the civil war had officially ended on January 18, a 17,500-strong UN peacekeeping force remained in place to oversee an uneasy peace and monitor the upcoming elections. On January 31, Bangura ended speculation about her political intentions by resigning from the CGG and announcing the formation of her new political party, the Movement for Progress (MOP) (Sierra Leone News, January 31, 2002). Asked why she left the CGG, she explained, “In civil society you have your limitations . . . You cannot actually force the politicians to do whatever you want to do. And I think the issues that we’re dealing with actually need to be addressed at the political level” (Jalloh and Sankoh, 2002). In an interview with BBC reporter Lansana Fofana (2001), Bangura asserted, “I am now experienced enough to implement my own ideas and vision for the country.” Activism in civil society and women’s groups had honed her leadership skills. The MOP motto was “positive change.” The party’s comprehensive 26-page manifesto, published on March 12, articulated its goals: We have watched our country, our families, our children, ourselves, suffer from the inhumanity of war, a war that has stolen something from all of us. We know that this war was ours, that it was a war which all of us bear some responsibility for and

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we have resolved to learn its lessons and rebuild our country, by constructing strong, loyal, transparent and patriotic institutions, promoting prosperity for all our citizens, building a just and moral society and cooperating with the community of nations. quoted in Steady 2006, pp. 57

The party’s focus was “on anti-corruption, accountability, transparency and rebuilding the institutions of state,” not personalities. Bangura believed that the manifesto would ensure civility in campaigning, forestall the recriminations characterizing previous elections, and force “other parties to talk about issues” (Sierra Leone News, March 13, 2002). Bangura’s running mate was Deborah Salaam, about whom little information can be found on the internet. Her campaign team consisted of urban professionals, academics, and members of grassroots organizations, with women making up half of the executive positions (Patriotic Vanguard, July 30, 2008; Mac-Johnson, 2002). The party fielded only thirty-two parliamentary candidates in just half of the country’s fourteen electoral districts. According to Mac-Johnson, women topped the list of parliamentary candidates, although he does not provide names or background information. The MOP stance on the issues of governance, education, health, corruption, and poverty reduction appealed broadly to the middle class (Voice of America, May 8, 2002). Female genital cutting (FGC) was a key issue in the campaign. The cultural institution of FGC is widespread in Sierra Leone and is mostly conducted by women’s secret societies, called Bondo in Temne areas and Sande in Mende areas. According to the World Health Organization, ninety-four percent of Sierra Leone women have undergone the practice (Sipsma et al., 2011). Anthropologists have shown the importance of these societies in providing agency for women’s socio-political leadership in Sierra Leone in the past (Hoffer, 1974, 1975; Bledsoe, 1984). A more recent study has analyzed their impact in determining post-conflict elections as well as their aggressive campaign against anti-FGC groups. Bosire (2013, ch. 6) describes how Bondo leaders campaigned for presidential candidate Ernest Koroma in the 1996 and 2002 elections. As a Temne woman, Bangura necessarily belonged to the Bondo society and had undergone FGC. However, some Bondo leaders opposed her because they believed she had supported an anti-FGC campaign organized in 1996, although she had actually criticized the tactics of anti-FGC activists in an interview with New York Times reporter Howard French (1997), suggesting it would be better to assure Sierra Leone women that no one wanted to take something away from them. Bangura believed that activists had trivialized Bondo by reducing it to a circumcision ceremony and overlooking its role in traditional education, leadership, and culture. She suggested that FCG reforms should come from within the culture, not from external pressure. Nonetheless, some Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) opponents warned that Bangura intended to ban the society if she became president. In Kenema, some Bondo women drove her out of the town (Gibril Koroma, 2007 [2005]); however, some Bondo soweis (traditional practitioners) near Freetown supported her (Keili, 2002). Press reaction to Bangura’s candidacy ranged from supportive to skeptical, and was often condescending. One reporter observed that Bangura’s candidacy tested her

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popularity, warning that “her womenfolk” might not even support her (Kamara, 2002). Another writer applauded Bangura and her female supporters for forcing the NRPC out of office and standing strong against the rebel invaders, but queried whether she could break through patriarchal culture, asking, “Can she make victory in her own place of birth where there is so much cultural chauvinism where the politics is not ripe yet to embrace women leaders?” (Momodu, 2002). Yet some other commentators saw Bangura’s campaign as a landmark in women’s political participation. Daniel Wah (2002) wrote: She was there when the war broke out, she heard girls tell their ordeals, she was up the stage at the Law Courts building when a petition was being prepared and subsequently sent to the International community for a redress to the country’s nightmare. Zainab is a Sierra Leonean woman, who is married, who carried her off-springs on her back, who went to the market and negotiated . . . prices with traders, an art society has forced every woman to master. . . . More than any other person, Zainab Bangura understands fully the dynamics of the path she has chosen, it’s a tight rope she has walked too often, though on a grander scale now.

Nonetheless, Wah concluded that Sierra Leone was not ready for a woman president, but Bangura’s candidacy still represented a valuable step for “the agenda for women in the new Sierra Leone.” In the end, Bangura’s critics proved right. Despite Bangura’s high public profile, she won only 0.61 percent of the total poll, although two other candidates fared worse. Her party won no parliamentary seats. Several possible reasons might account for this dismal result. First, Tonkolili district, her home base, was a SLPP stronghold. Second, informants boasted that Bondo activities in opposition to Bangura were instrumental to the SLPP victory (Bosire, 2012, pp. 128–129). Third, the MOP lacked sufficient funding and failed to build strong grassroots organizational structures. Finally, international recognition and media support may have actually incurred resentment among her constituents in Sierra Leone. As discussed in a previous chapter, this raises the question of what type of electoral system prevails in a country. This influences whether political parties outside the two dominant ones can gain any traction. From the onset of her presidential campaign, it was clear that Bangura did not expect victory. Her motive, like that of Williams-Sarho in 1996, was to break through the barrier of patriarchy. Her campaign also served as a warning of women’s resolve to continue building political momentum, and of Bangura’s intention to continue and even intensify her monitoring of good governance practices. The Sierra Leone News (March 13, 2002) reported Bangura’s remarks that “she looked forward to being a thorn in the side of whichever party forms the next government.” On election day, the London-based Independent (May 15, 2002), which listed Bangura among the main contenders, observed “She admits to having little chance of winning, but is using the campaign to build her national profile and further women’s rights.” In her speech conceding defeat, Bangura complained about irregularities and anomalies that plagued the electoral process. She called for an outside monitoring group to ensure open discussion, and pledged that the MOP intended to constitute an effective watchdog

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outside Parliament and demand accountability from government officials (Kamara, May 22, 2002). How did Sierra Leonean women fare overall during the 2002 campaign? Women’s organizations, backed by international NGOs, were more assertive in 2002 than in 1996 (Mac-Johnson, 2002). Bangura co-authored a civic education manual called You and Your Local Government (2003), which was published after the election. Written in simple English and clearly illustrated, it explained voters’ rights, what local government entailed, and why people should participate in the long term. Inspired by a British Council meeting with a leader of Britain’s 300 Group that campaigned for women’s greater inclusion in Britain’s political system, some Sierra Leonean women established the new 50/50 Group on November 30, 2001 (http://fiftyfiftysierraleone.org/history/). Although initially the new organization called for an equal share of power in the political system, it quickly reduced its goal to 30 percent representation. Before the election, government officials, representatives from all nine political parties, and leaders of women’s organization held a meeting to discuss policy on women’s participation in the forthcoming election (Sierra Leone Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender, and Children’s Affairs, 2002). At that meeting, President Kabbah affirmed the government’s commitment to a positive national gender policy. Of the participating parties, the MOP and the SLPP, whose deputy secretarygeneral was Elizabeth Lavalie, were the most inclusive in promoting women candidates and executive members. The United National People’s Party nominated Memunatu Conteh, a businesswoman and leader of the 50/50 Group, as its vice-presidential candidate (Sierra Leone News, April 1, 2002). Overall, however, women politicians and activists did not fare well in the 2002 elections. Of the 156 female contestants, only sixteen were victorious, with an additional two women paramount chiefs becoming members of parliament. Only three women were appointed cabinet ministers (out of twenty-one), and another three as deputy ministers (out of ten) (Abdullah, 2010: 64).

New Directions and Ongoing Issues: The National Accountability Group (SL) and International Consultancy After the election, Bangura spent the next two years in consultancies for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Sierra Leone (November 2002 to February 2003), the Dakar-based Open Society Initiative-West Africa (March–July 2003), and the UNDP-Sierra Leone (June–September 2003 and April–August 2004). Her work focused on formulating empowerment, inclusion, and community development strategies for refugees, internally displaced persons, and women. She participated in West African Civil Society Forum monitoring teams for elections in Nigeria (1999 and 2003), Ghana (2004), Togo (2005), and Liberia (2005). She served as adviser for various women’s and human rights agencies, including the Global Fund for Women, the Global Fund for Human Rights, the New Field Foundation, and the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation. She also sat on many national and international boards that campaigned for conflict resolution, peacebuilding, good governance, and anticorruption, most importantly the Berlin-based Transparency International and the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (Bangura, 2005).

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On July 1, 2004, Bangura established the Freetown branch of the Prague-based National Accountability Group (NAG), a coalition of individuals and civil society groups linked to the Soros Foundation. Incorporating the mission of the parent organization, the Sierra Leone branch stated that its vision was “to have a country in which local and national government are accountable to the people, budget allocation, resources management and public expenditure are open and transparent, and business and the daily lives of the people are free from corruption and poverty” (gaportal.org/ organizations/1-national-accountability-group-sl). In an interview with the Patriotic Vanguard, Bangura declared: It is very simple. We need a corruption-free society. A society in which government can spend almost 100% of revenue allocated to respective sectors. Public servants can do their jobs without asking for extra payment in the form of bribes. Government can disclose what it earns, from where and how so they can be easily held accountable. Government officials both elected and appointed need to know that they are public servants and have an obligation to subject themselves to public scrutiny and must respond when scrutinized. Koroma, 2007 [2005]

NAG collaborated with the London-based Transparency International and the AntiCorruption Commission in Sierra Leone to build civil society capacity by recruiting teachers, religious leaders, and other citizens to monitor and collect data on government activities at all levels, especially local councils. Throughout this period, Bangura remained active in the public dialogue about good governance, women’s inclusion in decision-making, democracy, FGC, and “bush wives.” In May 2005, she co-authored with Christine Solomon a report on forced marriage in the civil war, commissioned by the prosecution of the Special Court of Sierra Leone (SCSL) who wanted to delineate a legal basis for trying rebel soldiers who engaged in rape and forced marriage in their war strategy.3 Their report categorized wartime “forced marriage” and “the bush wife phenomenon” as a human rights crime (Bangura, 2005; Jalloh, 2006), and was based on extensive interviews and focus group discussions with over a hundred “bush wives” in Kono, Kabala, Bo, and Makeni. The study found that women and girls were particular targets of the rebels; thousands were abducted, raped, used as sex slaves, or forced to become “bush wives” of rebel commanders and soldiers. Such “marriages” differed from indigenous systems of “arranged marriages” under customary law with family consent and traditional codes of conduct. By contrast, wartime “forced marriages” bypassed family consent, customary ceremonies, or brideprice, and were often prone to physical and psychological abuse. Nevertheless, such “forced marriage” offered some degree of protection and survival, a better alternative than gang rape, violence, or even murder. Bangura and the prosecution successively argued that “forced marriages” constituted a war crime because they were based on coercion, sexual slavery, and terrorization. The SCSL ruled in favor of the prosecution’s definitions of war crimes, a decision upheld on appeal. Bangura’s testimony became a precedent for international court cases elsewhere involving violence against women (Oosterveld, 2011).

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Meanwhile, the Freetown press continued to cover Bangura’s opinions on the Bondo society and FGC. In September 2005, she gave an eloquent explanation of her views that deserves quoting at length: I was one of those people who had a very bad experience which has psychologically affected me. I hate to call it FGM. I still call it the Bondo Society. The operation is just one aspect of it. To be a member of the Bondo Society, you have to undergo the operation. So the operation is a precondition of the Bondo Society. I think the whole society has lost its essence in Sierra Leone and has been seriously diluted and made into a political issue. The initial focus was not just the operation. My mother spent a year in it, having joined when she was over 15 before she got married. I became a member after High School at the age of 17 and spent a month in it. It helped me to understand my people, their culture and gave me an opportunity to spend time with them. Now children as young as five years are subjected to the process and they take less than two weeks. The whole thing has been commercialized and has become a money-making venture for most people. I think we need to re-examine the whole issue. But there has been too much confusion from both groups campaigning for and against. Those who are against it tend to generalize things too much. . . . The way it is practised in Somalia and the Horn of Africa, where women are stitched up is not the same as in Sierra Leone. Secondly, in Sierra Leone it transcends ethnicity, region and class. Women are the same everywhere. It creates a special bond amongst women. . . . the entire life of women including marriage, child-bearing and their social life is centered on the Bondo Society. Koroma 2007[2005]

Late in 2005, Bangura was appointed director of the Civil Affairs Office of the UN Mission in Liberia. This marked the beginning of the next phase of her career as an international leader. Space constraints do not permit detailed discussion of her international career, which contributed to the global campaign against gender-based violence.

Epilogue Before moving to Monrovia in March 2006, Bangura resigned from the NAG. In Liberia, her mandate included overseeing the reconstruction of the country’s government ministries and agencies, a major undertaking in administrative reform. Before she could implement these reforms, however, President Ernest Bai Koroma, her former boss, recalled her to Sierra Leone and appointed her as foreign affairs minister, a post she held until December 2010, when a cabinet reshuffle transferred her to head the ministry of health and sanitation, widely seen as a demotion, but she responded by trying to reform health policy and curtail corruption. A year and a half later, in June 2012, she was named the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, a post she held for about five years, before returning to Sierra Leone to stand as a

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presidential candidate on the All Peoples Congress ticket in the 2018 general election. She failed in this attempt, perhaps because her international prominence did not immediately lead to building a national political network. Meanwhile, she remains active in international organizations. She currently cochairs Oxfam’s Independent Commission on Sexual Misconduct, Accountability and Culture Change. She also serves on the Global Advisory Board of the Women Political Leaders Global Forum and as a member of the Africa Group for Justice and Accountability. Five honorary doctorates, the latest from Syracuse University, testify to her leadership achievements. Clearly Bangura’s career demonstrates how persistence promoted women’s empowerment and increased public acceptance of women in politics. There is every likelihood that Bangura may play a role in forthcoming politics.

Notes 1 Just before the election, however, Williams-Sarho withdrew her candidacy and merged her party with the National Alliance Democratic Party, supporting its leader Mohamed Yahya Sillah for president (Cole 1996: 223). The Sierra Leone People’s Party, however, elected five women and sixty-three men to parliament, and later supported Elizabeth Lavalie in her successful bid to become parliamentary deputy speaker. 2 Radio Democracy continues to be a vital part of Sierra Leone’s media scene and is supported by the Open Society Initiative for West Africa, which is part of the global network of Open Society Foundations. 3 For more on the SCSL, see Jalloh (2014).

4

“Bastards” in Politics: Violence Against “Political” Women in Sierra Leone’s Post-war Politics1 Hussainatu J. Abdullah

Introduction Acts of election-related or electoral violence are not new in Sierra Leone politics, featuring in the country’s body politic as early as 1944/5 (Fall et al., 2011). However, an escalation in election-related violence has been attributed to the 1967 military coup intended to stop the swearing-in of Siaka Stevens of the All People’s Congress (APC) party as prime minister following a highly contested election. Fall et al., (2011) mark this coup as the beginning of “a constant trend in electoral processes in Sierra Leone” in which “political parties . . . mobilise the army of unemployed young people for election-related thuggery and violence.” (Fall et al., 2011) Although Fall et al. settle on 1967 as the point of departure between orderly processes of electoral campaign and the onset of violence, I have pushed the timeline to 1957, a milestone year in Sierra Leone’s political history. This was the year of the first general election that united the Protectorate and the Colony legislature2 under the 1951 constitution, and the first-time election-related violence was weaponized against female candidates. Furthermore, the 1957 general election was organized around the recommendations from the 1954 Keith-Lucas Commission on electoral reform, which resulted in universal suffrage.3 The Commission gave every citizen the right to vote and the right to contest elections regardless of sex, wealth, education, and social status. Previously, women and men in the Colony of Freetown, now the country’s capital, had been granted the right to vote in 1930 on the condition that they met the property and income requirements (Denzer, 1987). In examining election-related violence against “political women”, 4 I argue that while the phenomenon is not new in Sierra Leone politics, its occurrence in a post-war context negates the principles of the globally accepted Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. The WPS comprises the ground-breaking United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, adopted in 2000, and nine subsequent resolutions.5 Overall, these resolutions promote gender equality and strengthen women’s participation, protection, and rights across the conflict cycle, from conflict prevention to post-conflict reconstruction (Peace Women, 2019). Regrettably, due to the contradictions and 63

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inconsistencies in the Government of Sierra Leone’s (GoSL’s) women’s empowerment agenda, female participation in politics and decision-making spaces has shrunk since the 2007 elections instead of increasing. In this context, this chapter provides an analysis of how the GoSL’s flawed women’s empowerment agenda paved the way for the re-emergence of acts of election-related violence against political women. To analyze the preceding issues, the chapter is divided into five sections. Section one highlights the contradictions within the GoSL’s women’s political empowerment6 project and the obstacles confronting political women in their quest to increase their participation as elected officials in the country’s political institutions. Section two contains a conceptual discussion of elections, bastardy, electoral violence, and violence against women in elections (VAWE). Section three provides an overview of electoral violence in Sierra Leone politics. Section four presents a gendered analysis of acts of electoral violence against women between 1957 and 2012. Section five includes concluding remarks and forward-looking suggestions for eliminating politically motivated electoral violence against women before and during the electioneering process in Sierra Leone.

Women’s Political Representation in Post-war Sierra Leone While Sierra Leone, along with Liberia and Somalia, is an outlier on increasing women’s political representation, other post-war countries such as Angola, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mozambique, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Uganda have adopted new constitutions and enacted affirmative action policies to increase women’s presence in political and decision-making spaces. On the other hand, the GoSL, has not adopted a new constitution and has thwarted efforts to include affirmative action in the country’s political renewal process.7 Sierra Leone’s post-war discourse on women’s political empowerment started with a report by the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) submitted to the GoSL in 2004. The Commission recommended that women’s political empowerment be embedded in the country’s post-civil war political agenda, promoting democracy and good governance. More specifically, the TRC recommended that political parties ensure that at least 30 percent of their candidates for public elections are women. It proposed further that the GoSL and Parliament work towards achieving 50/50 gender parity in representative politics (Parliament, District Council, and Local Government) within the next ten years, at least 30 percent representation of women in cabinet and other political posts, and the removal of the gender portfolio from the Ministry of Social Welfare and the creation of a gender commission. Finally, the TRC called upon UNIFEM (now UN Women) and non-governmental organizations to establish leadership programs across the country to develop a new crop of women with leadership skills to participate in public life (TRC, 2004). It is now 16 years since the TRC submitted its report to the GoSL, and none of the recommendations on increasing women’s political empowerment has been implemented. The Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), the political party that ended the country’s civil war in 2002, failed to implement the TRC recommendations, but did enact three “Gender Bills”: the Domestic Violence Act, the Devolution of Estates Act, and the Registration of Customary Marriage and Divorce Act in June 2007.

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These Acts promoted women’s rights in the private domain but ignored their access to public political spaces. Furthermore, the bills were promulgated within a discriminatory legal framework with claw-back clauses that undermine women’s rights. A 2002 national consultation on the reintroduction of local governance recommended that 30 percent of elected seats at the local government level be reserved for women to enhance their participation in that arena but was rejected by the GoSL. However, as a concession to political women, Section 95 (2c) of the 2004 Local Government Act stipulates that Ward Development Committees should have a statutory gender balance of 50/50 membership and that three of the five members of the Local Government Commission must be women (GoSL 2004, p. 46). The SLPP government then used the flimsy excuse of “elitism” and a lack of support outside of Freetown, the capital city, to reject the women’s position paper on affirmative action in politics presented to the first Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) in 2007 (Abdullah, 2010). Given the GoSL’s stonewalling, by the GoSL, it is unsurprising that women’s representation in Parliament dropped from 14.5 percent in 2002 to 13.2 percent in 2007, 12.4 percent in 2012, and 12.3 percent in 2018 (Inter Parliamentary Union [2019]). At the local government level, women’s representation increased from 11.8 percent in 2004 to 18.9 percent in 2008 and 19.1 percent in 2012 and then declined to 15.3 percent in 2018 (Abdullah, 2014; CLGF (2018); and GoSL, 2019). The APC government that won the 2007 general elections tried to surpass its predecessor by promising to increase women’s participation in the country’s political landscape. In March 2010, during celebrations of International Women’s Day (IWD), President Koroma fulfilled one of the recommendations of the TRC by apologizing to Sierra Leonean women for the atrocities they suffered during the country’s eleven-year civil war. He further assured them that his government would enact a Gender Equality (GE) Bill guaranteeing women 30 percent elective and appointive positions (Abdullah, 2010). This pledge was reiterated at the 2011 IWD celebrations with the assurance that if the women’s movement developed the GE Bill and tabled it as a private member’s legislation, it would be adopted before the end of the 2007–2012 Parliamentary Session. The women’s movement took the president at his word and collaborated with the cross-party women’s alliance in Parliament, the Sierra Leone Female Parliamentary Caucus, as well as the All-Political Party Women’s Association (APPWA), the umbrella organization of political parties’ women’s wings, to craft the bill by the stipulated deadline. Despite their efforts, the GE Bill was not adopted by Parliament, even though eight other Legislative Bills were enacted on Tuesday September 25, 2012, the last day of the 2007–2012 Parliamentary Session (Abdullah, 2012). By this action, the APC government cemented the GoSL’s unwillingness to accept affirmative action in public life by refusing to implement recommendations on the issue from the second CRC’s report submitted in January 2017. While the GoSL refused to implement the various recommendations on women’s political empowerment and participation in public life, the women’s movement, in contrast, has been relentless in pushing ahead. Since 2000, the women’s movement has increased women’s presence in politics by offering technical and financial assistance to female contestants, engaging in advocacy, lobbying, and sensitization campaigns to garner more support among Sierra Leoneans for women’s political participation

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(Abdullah, 2010; 2014). At the same time, political women’s efforts to widen the country’s democratic space have faced challenges from informal tactics used by their male opponents, such as the public parade of secret societies like Poro to intimidate women and disrupt their campaigns. The Poro masquerade parade, which usually occurs at night and is not to be seen by non-members or women, is instead paraded during the day in areas where female aspirants are set to campaign, forcing them and their supporters to abandon their programs. This practice was rampant in previous elections but was scarce in the 2018 elections due to a government ban on secret society activities during the electioneering period (NEW, 2018).

The Conceptual Discussion: Bastardy, Elections, Electoral Violence, and Violence Against Women in Elections. Bastardy The concept of bastardy, or illegitimacy, was introduced in Sierra Leone with colonialism. In precolonial Sierra Leone, there was no stigmatization of illegitimate children because it was not possible to determine the position of an unwed woman and the inculcation of the African adage, “children in Africa are always welcome, regardless of the conditions of their birth” (Harrell-Bond, 1975). Harrell-Bond notes further that “Because of the prestige in traditional society associated with large numbers of children, an attitude which has persisted among educated families, it would have been unthinkable for a father not to acknowledge a child as his own” (Harrell-Bond, 1975). The standard definition of bastardy in the West, now applicable in Sierra Leone as well, notes: . . . product of fornication, adultery, concubinage, incest, prostitution, or other sexual crime or sin. A bastard was at once a child of no one (filius nullius) and a child of everyone (filius populi)-born without a name and without home, the perennial object of both pity and scorn, charity and abuse, romance, and ribaldry. Absent successful legitimation or adoption, bastards bore the permanent stigma of their sinful and criminal birth, noted on certificates of baptism, confirmation, marriage, and death as well as on tax rolls, court records, and property registrations . . . These formal legal disabilities on bastards were often compounded by their chronic poverty, neglect, and abuse, assuming that they escaped the not so uncommon historical practice of being secretly smothered or exposed upon birth, or put out to nurse or lease with modest odds of survival. Witte, 2009

While bastard in the traditional Western sense is used to describe children born out of lawful wedlock, in Sierra Leone, the concept is technically applicable only to persons married under statutory law who have children out of wedlock (Harrell-Bond, 1975). This is because statutory law, carried over from English common law and Equity,

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includes the Christian Marriage and the Civil Marriage Acts of 1965, both based on Christian monogamous marriage. The two other marriages recognized in Sierra Leone, Islamic and native law and custom, are administered under their own rules and regulations. While most ethnic groups are patrilineal,8 a child’s status and inheritance rights are determined by the father’s acceptance of paternity. Children whose paternity is denied or contested are generally absorbed into the mother’s family under Islamic marriage. In native law and custom, the paternity of such children will become an issue for public discussion “only if the family was selecting a member to contest for chieftaincy. Otherwise, such a child could obtain favor in a family through his conscientious attitude and his willingness to assume the responsibilities of family membership” (Harrell-Bond, 1975). Despite the social acceptance of illegitimate children under Islamic and native law and custom, such children are scorned and considered inferior status in the broader society. For instance, Harrell-Bond notes the following: Frequently they find themselves in the same school or class with half-siblings from the “married” home, with the attendant stresses. Since the married woman and her children are accorded the highest status, outside children are often an embarrassment when they turn up as classmates of their “legitimate” siblings . . . Certain abusive phrases in the Krio language bear out the fact that the child born out of wedlock has an inferior position. For example, to use the phrase “you are born a bastard” or to say, “you were born without a coat at the back of the door” (meaning there is no father in the house) is seriously abusive. Harrell-Bond, 1975

Despite the profoundly offensive meaning and social scorn associated with the concept, the term is now used in everyday parlance as abuse to show contempt and denigrate a person, irrespective of their birth status. At other times, an individual may describe him/herself as a “bastard” when they want to deal ruthlessly with an opponent without showing mercy. This loose usage of the term in contemporary Sierra Leone may have followed the legislative changes around bastardy. For instance, the Legitimacy Act No.7 of 1989 allowed children born out of wedlock to be legitimized retrospectively if the parents marry. Also, the Adoption Act No. 9 of 1989 allowed putative fathers to adopt their children born out of wedlock and integrate them into their married households, thereby giving them the same status as legitimate children. Additionally, the Devolution of Estate Act No.21 of 2007 recognized the status of an illegitimate child in terms of inheritance and succession rights.

Elections In general, elections are a mechanism through which individuals choose people to represent their interests in politics, economics, and civil society and can be organized in either a multiparty or single-party system of governance. In Sierra Leone, elections are typically held every four to five years, under the first past the post system. Because of the electoral system being operated in the country, political parties organize primary

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elections to select candidates for presidential, parliamentary, and local elections. Citizens must be eighteen or older and of sound mind to vote for candidates for local councils and parliament. The primary intended characteristics of an election are competition and a peaceful, fair, and free atmosphere. In this context, Hoglund and Jarstad (2010) note that “elections provide for a transparent and peaceful change of government and distribution of power”. Echoing Hoglund and Jarstad, John Cartwright (1970) states that: An election cannot be simply a struggle for power between contending parties: if it is to provide real indication of the feelings of the electorate, it must be fought within a framework of rules which permit the electorate to make a reasonably free choice between the contenders’. Cartwright, 1970

Electoral Violence Electoral violence, a sub-category of political violence, has erupted across the world in recent years (Hoglund and Jarstad, 2010), receiving international attention due to its devastating effect on all sectors of society. It has been argued that elections and the promotion of Western liberal democratic ideals, which are the central pillars of building lasting peace in war-torn and transitional states, “can be a hindrance rather than a solution to peacebuilding” (Hoglund and Jarstad, 2010). Hoglund and Jarstad note that electoral violence is neither the preserve of incumbents nor opposition parties alone; instead, both actors engage in electoral violence to ensure victory at the polls. For instance, in transitional and war-ravaged states, the ruling party may be accused of manipulating or tampering with the electoral processes. In contrast, opposition parties use violence to strengthen their presence in the political realm. Similarly, spoiler groups may use violence to prevent elections or render the outcome invalid (Hoglund and Jarstad, 2010). Electoral violence, as defined by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), constitutes: Any acts or threats of coercion, intimidation, or physical harm perpetrated to affect an electoral process, or that arise in the context of electoral competition. When perpetrated to affect an electoral process, violence may be employed to influence the process of elections—such as efforts to delay, disrupt or derail a poll—or to influence the outcomes: the determination of winners in competitive races for political office, or securing the approval or disapproval of referendum questions. UNDP, 2011

The UNDP outlines three components of electoral violence. These include acts of physical harm (assaults and attacks on communities or candidates, gender-based violence, mob violence, and political assassinations), acts targeted against objects, buildings, and structures (destruction of campaign materials, vehicles, offices, or ballot

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boxes), and threats and intimidation (threats of harm to supporters of political parties and threats of physical violence to candidates) (UNDP, 2011). For multiple reasons, discussed later in the chapter, several forms of election-related violent acts have characterized Sierra Leone’s post-war electoral process.

Violence Against Women in Elections (VAWE) Due to the gendered nature of society, and men’s perception of the political arena as their turf, political women face “deep-rooted obstacles to participation as voters and in other civil and political roles” (Bardall, 2013). Women’s experiences of electoral violence differ from those of men, and Bardall argues that women are more likely to be victims of election violence than perpetrators. According to her, VAWE refers to: any random or conspiratorial act to discourage, suppress, or prevent women from exercising their electoral rights. This includes women’s participation as voters, candidates, party supporter’s, election workers, observers, journalists, or public officials. VAWE may take place in both public and private spheres. Like other common forms of election violence, VAWE is commonly perpetrated by political opponents and party militants; however, it may also be perpetrated by family members, domestic partners and religious leaders and the media. Bardall, 2013

VAWE is categorized into physical, sexual, and economic acts of aggression as well as psychological attacks. While women experience only one-third as many physical attacks as men, they are three times more likely to experience psychological violence (Bardall, 2013). Bardall observes that psychological violence refers to “informal means of control (and) includes systematic ridicule, ostracism, shame, sarcasm, criticism, disapproval, exclusion and discrimination.” Coupled with physical and sexual violence threats, these forms of violence degrade, demoralize, and shame their victims. These psychological forms of election violence are most devastating to women (Bardall, 2013). These forms of violence present obstacles to women’s efforts to exercise their legitimate rights as citizens in their countries’ political landscapes. The concepts that have been defined and discussed relate to the chapter’s central thesis, the use of violence in all its forms to stop political women from participating as activists and contestants in the country’s electoral process. As will be shown later, the concept of bastardy, an invective, which was introduced in political campaigns in 2008 is used to deter women from participating in politics. While violence against women in Sierra Leone’s electoral politics started in the country’s prewar political landscape, the GoSL’s rhetoric on women’s political empowerment marginalized political women. It also unleashed both inter- and intra-party violence against them, negating the post-war political discourse on female inclusion and participation in politics.

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Electoral Violence in Sierra Leone Pre-War 1957–1996 Acts of electoral violence take place within formal and informal structures. Formal level electoral violence involves using state apparatuses by government officials to coerce and intimidate the opposition. On the other hand, informal level electoral violence entails terrorizing opponents through physical and verbal abuse and secret societies. While electoral violence in the 1957 Sierra Leone elections was an intra-party affair, it became an inter-party struggle for power between the SLPP, the party of independence, and the APC, the main opposition party from 1960. This animosity developed from a split within the SLPP over the party’s leadership, with older and more conservative members supporting Chief Minister Milton Margai. In comparison, younger and more progressive members favored his more youthful brother Albert Margai. Albert Margai and his supporters, including Siaka Stevens, left the SLPP and formed the People’s National Party in 1958 (Denzer, 1987). While Albert Margai later re-joined the SLPP, Stevens established the APC in 1960 as an alternative to the conservative SLPP. Although Stevens claimed radical Marxist views (Denzer, 1987), he never laid out a coherent Marxist ideology for the APC. Even though the 1962 election,9 the country’s first post-independence vote, is celebrated as tropical Africa’s (now Sub-Saharan Africa’s) first free and fair poll (Cartwright, 1970), several incidents of electoral violence were recorded. For example, as Cartwright states “even before the writs for the election were issued, the Provincial Secretary of the Eastern Province declined to prevent the chiefdom authorities in Kono District from prohibiting APC meetings” (Cartwright, 1970). Instead, a more direct approach was used to curtail opposition activities, as the leader of the Sierra Leone People’s Independence Movement (SLPIM), a Kono District-based party demanding a fair share of the area’s diamond resources, was suspended from office after announcing an alliance with the APC to contest the four Kono seats. The government’s tactic failed as the SLPIM/APC alliance won all four contested seats, but the interference did not stop there. Chief Mbriwa, the leader of the SLPIM, was banished from Kono District in the Eastern Province to Kamakwie in Bombali District in the Northern Province. In addition, a deportation order to Liberia was issued to Bassa Tribal Headman J.T. Refell after being nominated as the APC’s candidate in the Freetown Council elections (Cartwright, 1970). After Chief Mbriwa’s banishment, three of the four SLPIM Parliamentarians and several councilors crossed to the SLPP. The SLPP continued to use state power to stymie opposition in the closely fought 1967 general election, as Albert Margai’s assumption of the premiership position after the April 1964 death of Milton Margai, the country’s first Prime Minister, was highly contested within both the SLPP and the opposition APC. Albert Margai strengthened his grip on power by restricting organized opposition to his rule. Parliament passed the 1965 Public Order Act (POA), and the 30-day absenteeism rule for Parliament was also introduced. The POA gave the government the authority to criminalize statements it deemed offensive, with the offender liable for either a fine or imprisonment or both. The 30-day absenteeism rule deprived Parliamentarians of their seats if they were

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absent for 30 sitting days (Bundu, 2001); four members of the opposition APC party, who were imprisoned, fell afoul of this rule, as did John Karefa-Smart, an SLPP Parliamentarian, who had contested the party leadership against Albert Margai. KarefaSmart had accepted a lectureship at Columbia University in New York and could not attend all parliamentary sessions. Cartwright observed that some SLPP leaders were willing to use violence to intimidate the opposition: “The Prime Minister himself, in his major Freetown rally in January 1966 had a club-swinging squad of riot police drive a group of hecklers out of the stadium” (Cartwright, 1970). At the informal level, both parties used unconventional methods to win support from voters. Poro members were forced to take an oath to ensure their loyalties, as were women in the Bondo bush, the official meeting place of female secret societies. The military’s intervention to overturn the APC victory in the 1967 election resulted in a constitutional crisis, a coup, and two countercoups between 1967 and 1968. The 1968 countercoup restored Siaka Stevens to power. Given these circumstances, Stevens was unwilling to have an open electoral process once he was in power and was highly suspicious of the opposition SLPP. Under his watch, elections after the 1968 byelections were marred by “violence and organized thuggery” (Kandeh, 2004). The 1973 general election, the first national election under APC rule, was especially marked by violence. It was alleged that SLPP candidates were blocked from nomination centers and sometimes kidnapped (ARI, 2011). Later elections held under APC rule in 1977, 1982, and 1986 were no different. The 1977 general election, the last multiparty poll in the country until 1996, was called a year ahead of the scheduled date because of student demonstrations calling for political change and was ultimately conducted under a State of Emergency. Members of the APC youth wing and the Internal Security Unit, commonly called “I shoot U,” were used to intimidate SLPP politicians and their supporters (ARI, 2011). Despite the tension, the SLPP won 15 to the APC’s 70 seats. The 1982 election, the first to be held under a one-party constitution, has been described as the “most violent election in the country’s history” (Kandeh, 2004). Citizens in the affected areas fled to Guinea and Liberia, Sierra Leone’s immediate neighbors, to escape the violence, and more than fifty people were reported killed during the election (ARI, 2011). The 1986 election, the first under Stevens’ handpicked successor Joseph Momoh, and the last before the civil war began was considered “more open and less violent” (Kandeh, 2004) to other APCorganized elections. Candidates were made to sign a “code of conduct,” and violation was punished with disqualification. Despite this effort, four candidates were disqualified, and seventeen elections were postponed from May 6 to June 6 due to violence (Dumbuya, 2008). The 1996 general election organized by the National Provisional Ruling Council, the ruling military junta that overthrew the APC government in 1991, grudgingly obeyed the call from a citizen-driven campaign for “elections before peace” and shelved their campaign of “peace before elections.” The election was therefore conducted at the peak of the country’s civil war. Various election-related violent incidents aimed at derailing the electoral process were recorded, including junta operatives beating up politicians, the army was threatening not to ensure security on polling day, and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), the rebel group amputating the hands of would-be

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voters. In addition, grenade attacks targeting the offices and residences of the Interim National Electoral Commissioner and the SLPP Presidential candidate, among others, were reported (Kandeh, 2004, and Fall et al., 2011). The elections took place as scheduled despite these acts of violence.

Post-war 2002–2012 The 2002 general and parliamentary elections were organized in May of that year, four months after the official declaration of the end of the country’s eleven-year civil war. During these elections, most complaints of electoral violence were levied against the SLPP, who were once more in power. Other political parties complained of intimidation by the SLPP, and their paramount chief allies, especially in the south, who prevented opponents from organizing campaign rallies and canvassing for votes. Other concerns raised by opposition parties included undue favoritism of the SLPP by the National Electoral Commission (NEC). The most severe incident of election-related violence occurred between supporters of the SLPP and the RUF party (RUFP) on May 11, when a fracas occurred during NEC-approved rallies for the two parties. It was reported that nineteen people sustained slight injuries and that SLPP supporters ransacked the offices of the RUFP (Carter Center, 2003). NEC and seven political parties later issued a press release denouncing the incident. The 2007 elections were hotly contested by the SLPP, the APC, and the People’s Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC), among other political parties. The APC, which was almost extinct in the 1996 and 2002 elections, had by this point revived to pose a severe challenge to its old political rival, the SLPP. The PMDC was formed after its leader, Charles Margai, was defeated in the SLPP presidential primary election. The first set of violent clashes were recorded in Bo, Freetown, Kono, Kailahun, Kambia, and Port Loko between the “new” APC and SLPP supporters and between SLPP and PMDC in Bo and Kailahun (Fall et al., 2011). More serious violent incidents took place during campaigning for the presidential run-off elections between the APC and SLPP. In response to these incidents, the government imposed a temporary curfew in Kono and Kenema Districts. President Kabbah threatened to impose a state of emergency in the country if both candidates did not rein in their supporters. Tensions only calmed after a conference call facilitated by the president before the run-off elections. Both presidential candidates signed a communique to maintain peace and restrain their supporters (Fall et al, 2011). The elections were held, and the APC was ushered into power. Violent inter- and intra-party clashes characterized the 2008 local and municipal council elections. Both the APC and the SLPP wanted to use the polls to either consolidate or recapture state power. The APC was determined to repeat its 2007 national victory at the local level, while the SLPP was set on holding onto its majority in the municipalities. Between 2009 and 2011, chieftaincy, parliamentary, and local council by-elections in Freetown, Kailahun, Kono and Pujehun were marred by election-related violence (Fall et al., 2011). In the run-up to the next national election, all political parties signed a joint communique to curtail electioneering violence in May 2012 (BBC, 2012), but electoral violence nonetheless continued

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unabated. The government responded by deploying 1,500 soldiers to maintain peace during the elections and inviting the International Criminal Court to join the observer mission to prevent election violence (Ibid). National elections were held as scheduled on November 17, 2012, with the incumbent APC winning 58.7 percent of the votes.

Electoral Violence Against Political Women in Sierra Leone Pre-War 1957–1996 As previously mentioned, acts of electoral violence against women in pre-war Sierra Leone started with the first general election in 1957 after universal suffrage. Constance Cummings-John and Mabel Richards were the first women to be elected on merit into politics at the national level. However, they were disqualified after their party, the SLPP, filed election petitions against them for entertaining (providing them with food and drink) their supporters on election day in violation of electoral rules (Abdullah, 2014). Even though both women had “mounted well-run campaigns and won their constituencies by sizeable votes” (Denzer, 1987). While Cummings-John caved to family pressure and withdrew her petition, Richards pursued the case and eventually lost (Denzer, 1987). The SLPP’s petition against them was likely politically motivated as the women’s wing in which Cummings-John and Richards served had supported Albert Margai in his bid for the party leadership over Milton, the Chief Minister of the country (Abdullah, 2014). Effectively, the only woman in Parliament during that electoral cycle was Madam Ella Koblo-Gulama, paramount chief of Kaiyamba chiefdom (Denzer, op cit., p. 450), who was elected to one of the twelve seats reserved for chiefs. The punishment meted out to Cummings-John and Richards by the SLPP hierarchy in 1957 did not deter Cummings-John from seeking an elective position. She contested the party’s nomination in 1961 to represent Central Ward against John NelsonWilliams, the Minister of Information and Broadcasting. Unfortunately, Prime Minister Milton Margai had not forgiven her for supporting Albert Margai for the party’s leadership: Following Mrs Cummings-John’s nomination as the official SLPP candidate, rumours began to spread that the Prime Minister wanted Nelson-Williams elected . . . On May 1 a government spokesman announced that the wives of Ambassadors should stay at their post; the target of this pronouncement was clearly Mrs Cummings-John, whose husband was Ambassador to Liberia10 . . . As a final twist, just a few hours after the Prime Minister had made his statement regarding the place of Ambassadors’ wives, an official of the SLPP introduced Mrs CummingsJohn to a rally as the official candidate “in the name of the President and party”. Mrs Cummings-John’s box bore the palm tree on election day. However, though she won the symbol11, she lost the election, receiving 1,321 votes to 1,356 for Nelson-Williams. Cartwright, 1970

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While the tactics used to prevent Cummings-John and Richards from becoming members of parliament were subtle, outright physical violence was employed to stop Nancy Steele from contesting for the APC symbol to represent Central 1 constituency in the 1973 general election. Nancy Steele was the Secretary-General of the Women’s Congress, the women’s wing of the APC party. While Cummings-John and others had conceived and organized the SLPP women’s wing “to advise the party on women’s issues, to mobilize political support, to protect women’s welfare and to provide a base for campaigning for women candidates” (Denzer, 1987), in contrast, Steele used the Women’s Congress primarily as a tool to project the APC’s political ideals: The type of dynamic activism displayed by Congress through the leadership of Nancy Steele gave women a high profile in political mobilization and female militancy . . . She was willing to use a militant approach to achieve this. She formed a military section in Congress and led militant protest marches against the opposition. Steady, 2006

While Steele was a mobilizing force for the APC’s aggressive political demonstrations, the party was unwilling to allow her to move beyond the delineated boundary it had created for her. Steele’s supporters, who felt the party mistreated her, organized a protest march in Freetown. In response, APC lackeys under Alfred Akibo-Betts, who was also contesting the nomination for the same seat, attacked the women protesters with stones. Based on anecdotal evidence, female protesters were flogged and told to go to their rightful place, the home, to cook for their husbands and care for their children. There were unconfirmed reports that several women were severely injured and about three were killed, and that Steele was under protective custody after attackers vandalized her home. In the end, neither Steele nor Akibo-Betts was awarded the APC symbol. In defiance of the party, Steele contested the election as an independent candidate and lost. Although it cannot be argued that the APC hierarchy officially orchestrated the attack on the women; however, Nancy Steele contesting as an independent candidate reveals the unwillingness of male politicians to share political power with women. The 1996 election was marked by the efforts of the military junta and the RUF to derail the entire electoral process and ensure that the polls did not take place. So specific gender-related violence was less of an issue during this electoral cycle.

Post-war 2002–2012 Election-related violence targeting women resurfaced in Sierra Leone politics during the 2008 Local, Municipal, and Town Council elections. The change in the political landscape after the 2007 general election resulted in fierce competition for local political control by the three major parties. Selecting candidates for these elections, which is typically a local affair, became a national political issue. Political strategies for winning the elections were developed from party headquarters in Freetown. Each political party believed that success in the 2008 local elections would determine the

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outcome of the 2012 general election. As a result, the contestation for political power became both an inter- and intra-party struggle for the nominations of party candidates. Despite the state’s rhetoric of women’s political empowerment and inclusion, male candidates were preferred over their female counterparts by political parties. Various tactics were used to edge out women from the nomination process (WSSG, 2008; Abdullah, 2014). They were harassed, intimidated, and verbally and physically abused to stop them from contesting their parties’ nomination tickets. Political women, especially female aspirants, were mainly targeted during these inter- and intra-party struggles because the male political hierarchies of their parties were reluctant to open the political space to them. While gender-based violence and intimidation of women before and during elections are not new in Sierra Leone, their occurrence in the country’s post-war politics goes against the ethos of the WPS discourse for postconflict societies. In the country’s second post-war local elections, the number of both female and male contestants rose substantially due to increasing general awareness of the importance of local governance in the country’s political architecture. The increase in women’s participation was due to the Women’s Solidarity Support Group (WSSG) role in assisting female aspirants to contest as independent candidates when they were maneuvered out of their parties’ nomination processes. On the other hand, the number of male contestants also increased, especially within the SLPP, as some of those who lost their Parliamentary seats opted to contest at the local level. In response, the APC and the PMDC refused to award their party symbols to women to match the male dominance of the SLPP in the electoral process. All three parties used electability as their primary criterion. Electability in this context meant adequate financial resources to compete with and bribe the political gatekeepers and the ability to endure the rough and tumble of Sierra Leone politics, including intimidation, violence, and thuggery from political opponents. Women aspirants were sidelined in the nomination process because they were deemed unviable to face the stiff competition that lay ahead in the struggle for dominance of the 2008 political arena at the local level.  Although female aspirants complained of physical and verbal abuse and their opponents’ strategic use of socio-cultural mores to force them to abandon the campaign trail, the worst vitriol was reserved for independent candidates. Political parties singled out these women for challenging the patriarchal decision to discriminate against them in the nomination process. They were referred to as “bastards” in a show of anger and disgust. According to the WSSG: This is one of the deepest insults and social stigma that a person can face in Sierra Leonean society. It implies that a person does not have legitimate social standing or recognition, because he or she is born out of wedlock and their father did not publicly or privately accept their paternity. When invoked in a political context, the party is regarded as the father who must recognize and accept a candidate for him or her to be legitimate. Without this father (or party), a candidate is not deemed legitimate or worthy of participating in the political process. WSSG, 2008 quoted in Abdullah, 2014

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The de-contextualization of the concept through frivolous usage and passage of the 1989 Legitimacy Act notwithstanding, the invective has not lost its offensive meaning. Using it to describe female independent candidates, male politicians sought to degrade and humiliate political women for daring to access an alternative pathway to political power. WSSG’s organizing strategies and support to these women resulted in a rise in female contestants from eighteen in 2004 to twenty-nine in 2008 (Abdullah, 2014). Regrettably, their success at the polls was dismally low, and only two women were elected as councilors in the 2008 electoral cycle. Violence, intimidation, and discrimination against women continued in the country’s political terrain. In 2009, during a Ward by-election in Soro-Gbema chiefdom in Pujehun District, APC supporters attacked SLPP supporters, wounding the wife of the SLPP chiefdom chairman (Denny, 2009). The Chieftaincy Act of 2009 allowed women to participate at the highest level of local governance and allowed all claimants to the Paramount Chieftaincy throne to contest the election; however, Subsection (1) (b) of Section 8 includes the proviso “where tradition so specifies,” a loophole that was used to intimidate a female contestant and her supporters. In December 2009, Elizabeth Torto stood as a candidate in the Paramount Chieftaincy election in Kono District. Directly descended from a former chief, she had received the full support of traditional leaders in her community and was confident of victory. However, the all-male “poro” society viewed her candidacy as a contradiction of traditional practices and vowed to block her from standing. When she appeared in public, she was confronted by extreme intimidation from men in her community. “They accused me of starting a revolution”, she calls. She received death threats warning her never to return to the area, and her supporters were attacked and beaten. Under a hail of stones, she was eventually flown to safety in Freetown in a UN helicopter. Bardall, 2011

The national government’s response to the issue was lackadaisical. The Minister of Internal Affairs and Rural Development noted that “we are taking a neutral position here, chieftaincy is a rather complicated issue, and we do not want to hurt anybody, but the matter will be handled by the courts” (IPS, 2009). The high court dismissed Torto’s case on two occasions and ignored her application for an injunction to delay the election (OHCHR, 2010). After this legal defeat, the chiefdom officials immediately organized the election for a new paramount chief (OHCHR, 2010). Since the GoSL was reluctant to intervene, it was left to the United Nations, who had the role of maintaining peace and stabilizing the country, to provide security for Elizabeth Torto and her supporters. Although the GoSL and the judiciary betrayed her, Torto is in the annals of the country’s history as the first woman to lodge a gender discrimination complaint with the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone (OHCHR, 2010). Lynda Day, in this volume, also raises the issue of discrimination against Madam Torto and points out her unfair treatment by the male political establishment and concludes that it is a setback for female political equality in the country.

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Although VAWE was rampant in the country’s third post-war electoral cycle in 2012, the changing political landscape led it to receive less attention. The GoSL’s promise to enact the GE Bill before the end of the 2007–2012 Parliamentary Cycle diverted the women’s movement from its earlier focus on ensuring women’s political participation and protection from acts of electoral violence. However, the case of Navo Kaikai, an aspirant for the Chair of the Kailahun District Council under the SLPP, did attract national attention. Kaikai won five out of the eight electoral constituencies during the district primary elections. Alex Bonapha, the runner-up, challenged these results and questioned the capability of a woman to hold a leadership position in a “traditional district” (Peace Women, 2012). In protest, Bonapha and his supporters mobilized the Kamajors, traditional male fighters and secret societies, to intimidate Kai-Kai and her supporters. Per Kaikai’s account, Bonapha’s backers chanted songs with threats to “slaughter any woman who stood in the way of men” (Peace Women, 2012). After this open threat, she fled her Kailahun District base to Kenema District at night under police protection. Her supporters informed her while she was in Kenema that leading party stalwarts had changed the party’s nomination rules and annulled her elections. Kaikai went to Freetown to complain to the SLPP’s National Executive Committee about the events in Kailahun and the nullification of her electoral victory. Regrettably, the illegal action of the Kailahun District branch was upheld by the party. The SLPP’s National Executive Committee did not respond to her complaint. Instead, they nominated her to represent her party at the June 10, 2016, by-election in constituency 001 in Kailahun District, the seat of the late Patrick Foyah. Mr. Foyah succeeded his wife, Alice, who died in May 2013. Kaikai was not nominated to contest the 2018 parliamentary election and chose not to compete as an independent candidate. Skran, in this volume, points out an unexpected outcome of the 2012 local government election in Kailahun District, Navo Kaikai’s place of birth, of an unusually high rate of female representation in Kailahun District of 41 percent, against the national average of 19 percent. Of the twenty-nine wards in Kailahun, twelve elected female representatives. This unexpected feat was achieved because of the presence of UNHCR-supported women’s centers that focused on economic and political activities.

Concluding Remarks and Recommendations I have argued in this chapter that electoral violence against women in Sierra Leone politics has been part and parcel of the country’s political process since the first general election in 1957. The re-emergence of electoral violence against women in post-war Sierra Leone is due to the GoSL’s stonewalling on implementing all but one of the TRC recommendations on gender equality and the increased participation and representation of women in public life. However, the use of the epithet of “bastardy” on female independent candidates is not only a new low in the country’s political discourse but also highlights the disrespect male political operatives have for women politicians. Furthermore, acts of election-related violence against women violate the WPS aspect of the norms guiding participation and representation of women in governance that almost all post-war African countries are

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committed to upholding, including protection from violence in all forms, the prevention of the abuse of women, and the promotion of gender equality. The UN Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Sierra Leone (UNIPSIL) has organized political women and youths from the main political parties (APC, SLPP, PMDC, among others) into coalitions to ensure they and their supporters adhere to a non-violent electoral process and is a step in the right direction. However, this has not been sufficient, as the schism reflected in the struggle for political dominance between the APC and SLPP in the APPWA (members of the APC’s women’s wing only attended AAPWA meetings when they led the secretariat) among different political women has widened. As a way forward, the government should consolidate the various recommendations for increasing women’s political participation, enact the Gender Equality Bill guaranteeing a 30 percent quota for women in politics and follow the example of Bolivia by passing a law specifically to address electoral violence targeted at women. Law No. 243 against the Harassment of and Political Violence against Women in the Bolivian Plurinational Congress was enacted in May 2012 after the assassinations of two Councilwomen (Clontz, 2020). The Law criminalized political harassment and violence, and the former was punishable by up to five years in prison. The latter includes physical, sexual, or psychological aggression, punishable by up to eight years in jail (BBC, 2014). However, Bolivian women’s activists say that the problem is not being tackled adequately (Ibid). While these frameworks guarantee women’s political participation and safety, they are not the be-alland-end-all. Their adoption will start in the right direction to get more women to participate as candidates, voters, and activists in Sierra Leone’s political process.

Notes 1 Some of the data for this chapter were collected during the Research Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Research Program Consortium 2006–2014. 2 Before then, Sierra Leone was governed as two separate entities: the Protectorate or hinterland and the Colony. 3 All citizens over 21 years old. 4 The concept refers to women political activists, contestants, and supporters. 5 1820 (2009); 1888 (2009); 1889 (2010); 1960 (2011); 2106 (2013); 2122 (2013); 2242 (2015); 2467 (2019); and 2493 (2019). 6 In the Sierra Leone context, political empowerment refers to increasing female representation and participation in politics, including access to political offices and government positions.  7 The DRC and South Sudan have not adopted affirmative action policies to increase women’s representation in public life. 8 The Mende and Shebro ethnic groups recognize both matriarchal and patriarchal descent. 9 Sierra Leone gained independence in 1961. Since then, eleven parliamentary elections and five presidential elections have been conducted in the country. 10 Mrs. Cummings-John’s husband was designated for a post in the former Union of the Soviet Socialist Republic. However, through her contacts within the party, her husband’s posting was changed to Liberia. Personal conversation with LaRay Denzer during the workshop for this volume on 11–12 February 2016. 11 Sierra Leone parlance for party nomination.

5

Women Chiefs, Women’s Empowerment, and a Feminist Agenda in Contemporary Sierra Leone Lynda R. Day

Introduction Almost twenty years after the end of a devastating civil conflict, Sierra Leone continues to build its social and political institutions. Political scientist Aili Tripp has suggested that periods of post-war reconstruction have presented opportunities in many countries for national reconstruction constitutions and gender equality legislation, however, Sierra Leone has not followed this pattern (Tripp, 2015; Kellow, 2010, pp. 6-8). Despite the active mobilization of women’s organizations to end the Civil War (1991– 2002) and institute a democratic government, solid gains in women’s empowerment and gender equity have proven elusive. The lack of progress in women’s empowerment calls for an examination of received wisdom regarding the way forward and I propose that lessons may be learned through examining Sierra Leone’s particular cultural heritage regarding women customary authorities. Indeed by doing such an examination, we can contribute to decentering Global North paradigms and toward decolonizing the production of knowledge. This chapter argues that traditional women chiefs in Sierra Leone represent a cultural acknowledgment of women’s political authority and should be understood as actors or potential actors in a grassroots movement for women’s empowerment at both local and national levels. This analysis suggests that Sierra Leone’s women chiefs embody African feminist conceptions of women’s authority that are grounded in principles of motherhood and which support community development and gender justice. Finally, I argue that the work of women chiefs demonstrates that women’s customary authority can be adapted to comport with progressive social change.

Background After the war, the international community, UN agencies, Sierra Leone’s elites, and Sierra Leone’s civil society shaped post-war institutional priorities and worked hard to install and strengthen the neoliberal democratic state, with all stakeholders asserting 79

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that the state could best achieve the democratic agenda of human rights and gender equality (Kellow, 2010; Castillejo, 2008; Cockburn, 2007). First however, the international community prioritized the establishment of a security apparatus and “peace,” generally conceived of as the absence of war, rather than the absence of everyday forms of security such as food, housing or health care. Indeed, in numerous ways, the international community successfully established security from rebel attacks throughout the country, and quickly initiated such efforts as the disarmament of ex-combatants, skills training in the usual pre-conflict occupations, and mental health counseling for war trauma victims (M’Cormack-Hale, 2009). Furthermore, to put the country on a stable footing, the international community prioritized strengthening the Electoral Commission, re-establishing local government councils, and creating both an Anti-Corruption Commission and a Human Rights Commission (Castillejo, 2008). These priorities, primarily focused on ushering in democratically elected governments through a routine process, have mostly succeeded. Since the end of the war in 2002, Sierra Leone has witnessed three democratic elections and a change of ruling party, considered by many observers to be indicative of a maturing if imperfect democracy (Akanji, 2013). However, despite these achievements, successive democratic regimes have not succeeded in shrinking yawning gender inequality gaps in Sierra Leone. In fact, reconstituting the neoliberal state has not done much to advance a progressive agenda for women. Although the women’s movement sparked an uptick in women’s electoral successes in the first years after the war, that level of participation has not been sustained. In 2002, the first election after the war, eighteen women were elected out of a total of 124 MP’s at 14.4 percent (where there were only five in 1996). Then in 2007 the number declined to seventeen (13.4 percent) and in the 2012 elections a reduction to 15 (12.4 percent), M’Cormack, 2015). These reductions in women elected officials continued. In 2018 only 12 percent of parliamentarians were women and out of the 479 elected local councilors in 2018, 18.7 percent were women compared to 19.2 percent in 2012 (O’Reilly, Flanigan and Sullivan, 2018). In many respects, prospects for women’s social and political advancement are worse now than before the war. For example, a BBC News article in 2019 declared that genderbased violence in Sierra Leone had grown exponentially in the years since the war and noted that 8,500 cases of sexual assault were recorded in 2018, a rise of nearly 4,000 over 2017 (BBC News, February 8, 2019). Indeed, the ten years of warfare exacerbated pre-war gender imbalances and shredded any pre-existing cultural checks on toxic, anti-social, male behavior. Many observers point to the 2007 “Gender Bills” mandating legal sanctions for gender-based violence, a minimum age for marriage, and more rights for women in family life as major post-war milestones on the path to establishing equal rights for women, but these laws are rarely enforced and have not led to significant improvements in the lives of most women. Given lax compliance and enforcement, gender human rights advocates call for more laws and stronger police action to enforce them (Abdullah, Ibrahim and King, 2010). But formal laws, passed and put on the books, do not engender organic social transformation. Even though successive state-level regimes since 1997 have included

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elite women in national political leadership as cabinet ministers and members of parliament, these positions have not led to wide-ranging and enduring women’s empowerment efforts at either the local or national level. In contrast to top-down initiatives often prioritized by urban elites and international actors, scholars in several fields have stressed the need to develop models of positive social change from within the cultural context of each society, in order for organic social transformation to occur.1 Historians and political scientists recognize that social change is a process in which the new is added to that which already gives meaning to people’s lives.2 For example, in the 1990s, political scientist Claude Ake warned that democratic models developed in European countries might not be successfully imported into African countries. He noted that rather than individual autonomy and accountability, in Africa, communal values are broadly accepted: Primordial loyalties and pre-capitalist social structures remain strong . . . Liberal democracy assumes individualism, but there is little individualism in Africa . . . For the African, especially the rural dweller, participation is linked to communality. Africans do not generally see themselves as self-regarding atomized beings in essentially competitive and potentially conflicting interaction with others. Ake, 1993, p. 243

Following Ake’s argument, strategies for social change are likely to succeed if they are located in values and practices that can form the basis of enduring progress. Following Abdullah and Ibrahim, I suggest that opportunities for women’s agency can be nurtured at the local level through indigenous socio-political institutions (Abdullah and Ibrahim, 2010). Although there are undoubtedly customary practices that hinder movement toward progressive women’s rights agendas, this chapter seeks to identify existing cultural norms and practices regarding women’s influence and authority which can advance a women’s empowerment agenda. For example, Mende cultural scholar and historian Arthur Abraham has suggested employing the term “gender justice” rather than “gender equality” in framing a rights agenda for women in Sierra Leone because the term “gender justice” grows out of accepted principles of fairness and balance embedded in Mende culture. As such, the concept of “gender justice” is more likely to be readily accepted by men and women at the local level and thus nurture a women’s rights agenda.3 By incorporating indigenous principles in the pursuit of progressive change, we also participate in the hard work of decolonizing the production of knowledge.

Contextualizing Women Chiefs Although Sierra Leone, unlike post-conflict Rwanda for example, has not made much progress in advancing “gender equality” measured through markers of success such as greater numbers of women in parliament, the country has, from precolonial days to the present, incorporated customary women leaders in its local and national political institutions. Since the late nineteenth century, the colonial English term “chief ” was

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applied to a range of women in positions of public executive and ritual authority who held office with the same powers and prerogatives of men in the same position. The women holding these positions embody characteristics such as decisiveness, political savvy, dedication to the community, and strength of character often cited as fundamental to women’s empowerment more generally. Women in positions of customary authority have always, and still continue, to exercise leadership and local influence in both the southern, eastern and northern regions of the country. In the southern and eastern regions of the country where people speak Mende and Sherbro, some women have historically held high executive positions identified in colonial and contemporary language as “paramount chiefs,” while in the northern region, Temne chiefdoms maintain authoritative ceremonial positions for women just below that of the bai, i.e., “king,” a position identified in current parlance as “paramount chief.” Women usually hold between 10 and 12 percent of the country’s one hundred and thirteen paramount chieftaincy positions. Those paramount chief positions have historically been only in the southern and eastern regions populated primarily by Mende, Sherbro, and Krim ethno-linguistic groups (Day, 2015). Since the colonial period, paramount chiefs have been the top executive authorities in local administrative units. The 1991 constitution, the current governing legal instrument of the nation, further enshrined the institution of paramount chieftaincy in the legal structure of the country, and the Chieftaincy Act of 2009 reaffirmed the place of paramount chiefs in local government. Like all paramount chiefs in Sierra Leone, women paramount chiefs, represent a mix of precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial political structures. They are elected for lifetime tenure in office by chiefdom councilors, competing against other candidates put forward by the chiefly families of each chiefdom, including sometimes their own. These “ruling lineages” were identified and recognized by the British at the dawn of the colonial era and have been a component of the formal government structure since then. Paramount chiefs are responsible for tax collection, preventing the commission of offences, and are expected to serve as the guardian of the customs and traditions of the chiefdom. As chief executives they oversee a local court, a chiefdom treasury, and chiefdom police, allocate and determine land use, promote development, and maintain order. Paramount chiefs also oversee section and town chiefs as well as ward leaders and chiefdom councilors (Conteh, 2013). In the south and east, in addition to paramountcy, women also hold positions as tribal section heads, ward leaders and town chiefs. Chiefly political and ritual titles are largely hereditary, typically feature lifetime tenure, and are rooted in communal group identity and connections to ancestral founders of the towns and mini-states of the past. Though chieftaincy positions are not democratic in the ideal sense of being open to any citizen, chieftaincy is grounded in the cultural traditions that define community leadership, on which people rely for social stability and continuity, and which, certainly in the case of women chiefs, prevailed even during the upheavals of the war years (Labonte, 2012; Miller, 2013). However, in the context of Sierra Leone’s post-war rebuilding efforts, many theorists identified traditional structures, particularly chieftaincy, as barriers to progressive change and political empowerment for women.4 A working paper published by the Spanish think tank, Fundacion para las Relaciones lnternationales y el Dialogo Exterior (FRIDE),

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asserted that customary governance structures, including the office of paramount chief, are the principal impediments to women’s empowerment. This study argued for greater individual power and stronger citizenship rights within the state as the road to women’s greater political efficacy, and identified chieftaincy—in addition to other customary practices, “patriarchy” and lack of education—as a roadblock to the implementation of a global human rights agenda (Castillejo, 2008). None of the critiques of Sierra Leone’s customary governance structures took note of the apparently anomalous existence of influential traditional women leaders, including paramount chiefs. Though rule by women chiefs is grounded in the notion of rule by the founding lineages of local polities, women chiefs also represent cultural values associated with female authority. Like other African political and social formations, Sierra Leone’s ethnic groups incorporate “cultural values that stress the potency of the female principle governing life and reproduction through motherhood and the centrality of children” (Steady, 2005, p. 326). Motherhood itself has been an important trope of power in societies in which reproduction was a critical source of social continuity and wealth. These positions of responsibility have included leadership roles as senior wives in large polygynous households or as the oldest living relatives of a landholding descent group. Ideological concepts such as male and female complementarity, which suggests that women’s responsibilities are recognized and valued for their own sake, and seniority as a measure of authority, which can apply to women as well as men, support women’s legitimate exercise of political power. Ifi Amadiume launched a seminal discussion of the matriarchal roots of African societies and pointed out that areas of women’s agency such as reproduction, food production, religious rituals, and marketing are central to many African social formations and have also supported women’s authority in the public sphere (Amadiume, 1997). Within cultural frameworks such as gender complementarity, spiritual/public authority, motherhood as power, and age seniority, women have long played meaningful public roles. The concept of African women as having long been influential actors in public life is now widely accepted (Sheldon, 2017, pp. 1-17). In her study of Sierra Leone’s Mende culture and its contradictions, Mariane Ferme acknowledged that some women, like some men, occupy the role of kpako, i.e., “big people,” who exercise power and influence over others through religious rituals and the distribution of goods and services (Ferme, 2001). Women chiefs embody the aforementioned cultural constructs. Furthermore, this chapter seeks to employ an African feminist framework and to participate in developing alternative theories regarding women’s political empowerment. The analysis offered here will contribute to crafting solutions to women’s advancement that are grounded in African women’s lived experiences and cultural orientations. Following M’Cormack-Hale, I attempt to “focus on alternative discourses and ways for theorizing women’s political behavior” (M’Cormack, 2015). This study also follows Steady’s call to use “culture as the paradigmatic framework that has the potential of producing action-oriented research capable of transforming society and empowering women” (Steady, 2005, pp. 326-327). In taking account of Sierra Leone’s particular history and cultural nexus, this study will join a critique of mainstream liberal feminism’s tendency to adopt a “one size fits all” approach to women’s rights.5

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One of the cultural frameworks that has drawn the attention of many African feminist theorists is the ideology of “mothernity” (the reification of motherhood) in contrast to “sisterhood,” as a trope of women’s solidarity and empowerment (Okome, 2003). In many ways, the authority of Sierra Leone’s women chiefs reflects an ideology of female leadership that Steady links to qualities of motherhood, perceived as: “. . . nurturing, compassionate, and protective . . . a general concept of caring, continuity, and peace . . . not limited to reproductive and nurturing roles in households, but reflects the normative values and humanistic ideologies that embrace notions of preservation of past, present, and future generations; prosperity and well-being of society as a whole and the promotion of equality, peace, and justice”. Steady, 2011, pp. 21–22

Steady outlines the transformative possibilities of women’s leadership, with a focus on “motherhood” as a value-laden social construct underlying women’s authority, and its possibilities for a new vision of political institutions that “reflect greater female participation and greater emphasis on communal and socio-centric values, rather than hierarchical and individualistic ones.” (Steady, 2011, p. 8). Steady’s research participants believed that women’s leadership is distinguished by qualities such as “moral integrity, altruism, mothering, caring, and sacrificing for the good of society and for present and future generations” (Steady, 2011, p. 11). Although these concepts threaten to move us into the territory of essentialist thinking, they highlight other than state-based theories of power. For example, Desiree Lewis reminds us of a Foucauldian critique of state power, pointing out that “power is not simply imposed from above, but infiltrates the way in which social subjects routinely police themselves.” (Lewis, 2005). Laura Grillo’s study directs our attention to yet another view of women’s power, referencing the “strategic essentialism” built into female genital power and “an understanding of the consonance between spiritual power and political authority, whose common source is women” (Grillo, 2018, p. 8). Like Grillo, I do not seek to romanticize tradition, but rather to use it as a point of interrogation of the present (Grillo, 2018, p. 14). Although this analysis focuses on characteristics commonly linked to motherhood, like Steady, my analysis stresses the symbolic concept of the mother rather than stressing or assuming biological essentialism. As Steady points out, “. . . mother can be interpreted to encompass the whole nation as a symbolic and structural, rather than biological concept” (Steady, 2011, p. 24). Thus it is the practical application of symbolic and value-laden notions of women’s authority as carried out by women chiefs that this study explores. The long history of Sierra Leonean women chiefs is not normally linked to the neoliberal model of progressive social change for women, but these chiefs do in fact embody local authority in the hands of women. I propose that notions of gender justice and women’s political authority are already incorporated into Sierra Leone’s unique history and cultural values. The cultural frameworks legitimizing their power help weave together the fabric of civil society at the local level, promote a forward-looking ideology of women’s political authority, and help shape a more effective paradigm for internal feminist theorizing.

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Indeed, although these traditional women leaders are not democratically elected, many of them have supported women’s equality and economic empowerment agendas, and in concrete ways have contributed to the movement for gender justice at both the grassroots and national levels. The active participation of many women chiefs in women’s equality efforts re-identifies them as agents of women’s empowerment rather than merely representatives of an oppressive status quo. In contrast to the perspective asserting that customary authorities by definition undermine a women’s empowerment agenda, I argue that traditional women chiefs in Sierra Leone represent a cultural recognition of women’s political authority, which could support more widespread acceptance and approval of this authority by both men and women, starting at the local level and extending throughout the political apparatus of the state. I propose that gender theorists engage and repurpose local level customary values and authorities, particularly regarding traditional women chiefs and by considering customary women chiefs in the contemporary political climate, explore the possibilities offered by this unique Sierra Leonean cultural and political institution for crafting a progressive women’s empowerment agenda.

Methodology This study is grounded in qualitative research carried out from 1981 to 2020, that focused on Sierra Leone’s women chiefs and the culture, history, and politics of its southern and eastern regions. For periods of months or weeks the author worked in the archives and talked with women chiefs and other research collaborators inquiring into the work of women chiefs from the nineteenth century up to now. These conversations took the form of formal interviews, semi-structured interviews, and open-ended discussions with women chiefs and a variety of research collaborators which were audiotaped or videotaped. For this chapter, I composed a questionnaire asking about their current political activities, their involvement in the gender equality movement and local economic development projects as well as their attitudes towards women in formal political positions. The questionnaires were administered to three sitting women paramount chiefs, Madam Matilda Minah (Kpukumu Krim), Madam Sallay Gendemeh (Malegohun), and Madam Mamie Gamanga (Simbaru), as well as a woman section chief, Sao Seiya Juana, from Malegohun chiefdom. Two questionnaires were administered by my research assistant, graduate student Lansana Juana, one was administered by a research collaborator who visited Madam Gamanga in Simbaru chiefdom, and one was filled out directly by Madam Minah. I also made contact with Madam Minah through Facebook Messenger. Since 1981 I have personally interviewed thirteen women paramount chiefs, four of them—Benya, Gamanga, Gulama, and Minah—on numerous occasions. Some of my interviews were conducted in Mende with a translator chosen by the interviewee and others were conducted in English or Krio, Sierra Leone’s lingua franca, which I can understand and speak. During the war, in January and July of 1995, I interviewed five women paramount chiefs—Benya, Caulker, Gendemeh, Gulama, and Minah—and a woman sub-chief then taking refuge in Freetown, Yebomwarra Kamara. The five

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women paramount chiefs comprised a third of the fifteen women chiefs then in office. In 2005, 2007, and 2012, I interviewed a woman sub-chief, Haja Yabomposseh, two more women paramount chiefs, Segbureh and Gessama, and re-interviewed three others—Gamanga, Gulama, and Minah. At all times, I have aimed to open up space for the voices of these customary women leaders to be heard, to highlight their agency in the culture and politics of the past and present, and to directly learn from them how they exercise legitimate power as women. In 1982, my entrée to women chiefs and their representatives in the Eastern and Southern provinces was ensured by Paramount Chief Mamawa Benya, Small Bo Chiefdom, Kenema District. After our initial meeting, Madam Benya offered to become my “landlord,” i.e., sponsor. Her headquarters town of Blama was centrally located in the Kenema District, the region where several women chiefs held office, and all subsequent meetings and interviews were prefaced by introducing me as Madam Benya’s “stranger from America.”6 After Madam Benya’s passing in 1996, I contacted women chiefs through the auspices of the Office of Local Government, and in 2005 and 2007 met women paramount chiefs elected after the war. Since then, my meetings and contacts have been through mutual friends or through direct contact via email and Facebook. Interviews have always been conducted with the verbal permission and at the convenience of the interviewees. Some interviews were videotaped and others were recorded with a cassette recorder and transcribed later.

Women Chiefs of the South and East during the War Just as they had from precolonial days to national independence, women traditional chiefs continued to exercise leadership during the Sierra Leone Civil War (1991–2002), when Sierra Leone faced its greatest challenges as both a nation and people.7 As local government officials and members of the rural elite, women chiefs were subject to physical attack, yet faced the war from their multiple locations as customary authority figures, family heads, leaders of rural communities, members of the national elite, and as advocates for women’s empowerment. During the war, women chiefs, as government officials, appealed to the government for help, but normally had to rely on networks of kin and their personal prestige to maintain their leadership positions in the face of social and political disintegration. Though their personal strength was sorely tested, as they had during earlier eras, they reimagined, reinvented, and re-introduced principles of wealth in people, family loyalty, mothernity, sababu, i.e., “who you know,” the redistribution of resources, and landlord–stranger relationships.8 Throughout the war, wherever women chiefs were located, they represented cultural values that stress motherhood, communal values, and mutual responsibilities.9 Each chief I interviewed described having a tremendous burden of responsibility for the safety and well-being of their large extended families and the chiefdom people who relied on them for protection and sustenance. For example, Madam Benya of Small Bo Chiefdom (elected 1962) rented a house in Kenema to shelter her extended family and chiefdom people, but the inability to feed them all put a great strain on her health.10 Furthermore, each woman chief expressed special responsibility for the

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desperate needs of the women of their chiefdoms. In July 1995, in the middle of the war, Madam Minah (elected 1986) explained that “especially the women” were coming to her for the things they needed to take care of themselves and their children, believing she would be particularly sympathetic to their needs. She described feeling tremendous pressure to respond to their pleas and cries for help (Statement by Minah, 1995). Madam Mamie Gamanga, paramount chief of Simbaru Chiefdom (elected 1983), explained the burden of attempting to feed the hundreds of refugees from her chiefdom who had escaped to Freetown but then became destitute. There, she, like other paramount chiefs exiled in the capital, was asked by government to track and oversee the meager food distribution for her own people in the refugee camps of the city (Gamanga, 1995). And after the war, even when she was desperately ill and on her deathbed, Paramount Chief Margaret Segbureh was feeding and clothing her sister’s children and her brother’s grandchildren, as well as paying their school fees. Indeed, toward the end of her life, while resting at a friend’s home, “she would send money to feed the people at the family house in Freetown” (Cheedy, 2007). All of these tales of sacrifice combined with ongoing responsibility for kin and chiefdom people represent women’s traditional leadership articulated as chieftaincy in the parlance of local government. Aside from these traditional leadership roles, during the war, formally educated women chiefs Honoria Bailor-Caulker, Mamie Gamanga, Sallay Gendemeh, and Matilda Minah, began to participate in the growing women’s movement for peace and human rights. While in exile in Freetown, they met and discussed their location as women chiefs in the national and international discourse around women’s rights. They saw themselves as representatives of indigenous women’s leadership and lobbied to gain representation on the Sierra Leone delegation, first to the regional meeting in Senegal, then to the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in September 1995. Though generally ignored and marginalized in Freetown’s prevailing discussion on women’s rights, ultimately the most senior member of the group, Madam Honoria Bailor-Caulker, made the trip to Beijing (Gamanga, 1995 and 2010). In general, the dogged determination and durability of these women represented the potential for reinventing and re-claiming the traditions of women’s leadership in a peaceful future.

Women Chiefs and Political Activism After the war, several women chiefs took up active roles in other government positions. Their skill as persuasive influencers and identity as respected community leaders meant that they were logical choices for elected office. Paramount chiefs Gamanga, Gendemeh, and Segbureh were elected as chiefs’ representatives to parliament from their respective districts and assumed prominent positions of national service, joining the ranks of other women who attained high elected office in the immediate post-civil war period. As both “natural rulers” and members of the national legislative body, the paramount chiefs differed from other women elected officials in that they both participated in a contemporary political institution and represented indigenous values and principles of leadership.

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As of 2019, fourteen women out of a total of 113, held positions as paramount chiefs in the country: two in Bo, two in Bonthe, three in Moyamba, two in Pujehun, and five in Kenema. Six of these women were elected before the war and the others after the war in 2002. Four women were elected in 2002–2003, indicating that women chiefs were still popular in the immediate aftermath of the war as local political structures, procedures, and institutions were being re-constituted and re-inscribed. Indeed, the respondents in a study conducted by a graduate student at the University of Sierra Leone’s Institute of Gender Research and Documentation saw women as political game changers in contrast to male representatives in parliament and in the local district councils who had served for many years without any significant impact on the livelihood of the communities. The respondents in this study believed that women were more trustworthy and would better articulate and advance the needs of the communities they represent, especially the needs of women and children, and would be more transparent and accountable (Conteh, 2020). Women paramount chiefs often represent the best of these expectations of female leadership.

Matilda Y.K. Minah V Several current women paramount chiefs have actively and effectively participated in national politics over the years. For example, Madam Matilda Y.K. Minah V, paramount chief of Kpukumu Krim chiefdom, Pujehun District, has served with great distinction in a variety of leadership positions for over thirty years. During the war, she served on the steering committee of displaced chiefs and lent her voice to efforts to equitably Women Paramount Chiefs in Sierra Leone (2019) No.

NAME

DISTRICT

CHIEFDOM

1 2 3 4 5

Ruth Fawundu Songa Margaret Bio Gbanie Hawa Kpanabon IV Melrose Foster Gberie Haja Fatmata B. Keama-Kajue Doris Lenga Koroma Gba Bayor Deborah Sudie Anthony Quee IV Edina G. Fawundu Matilda Y. L. Minah Haja Mariama Gessama Kaanja Theresa Vibbi Mariama Jaward Tamai Mamie G. Gamanga Sallay S. L. Gendemeh

Bo District Bo District Bonthe District Bonthe District Moyamba District

Gbo Valunia Imperri Kpanda Kemo Dasse

Moyamba District

Kargboro

Moyamba District

Kowa

Pujehun District Pujehun District Kenema District

Mano Sakrim Yawbeko Kpukumu Krim Gorama Mende

Kenema District Kenema District Kenema District Kenema District

Kandu Leppiama Niawa Simbaru Malegohun

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 12 13

Adapted by Lansana Juana from the comprehensive list of paramount chiefs available at the Ministry of Local Government.

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distribute rations to displaced citizens in refugee camps. In the immediate aftermath of the war, she served as the only woman among a group of eleven paramount chiefs comprising the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s working group handling paramount chiefs and traditional justice. Minah has gained an international reputation for her work in post-war rural development, leading to an award from the United Nations Women’s Guild (based in Vienna) in 2010 (Margai, 2010). Madam Minah continues to play a vital role in Sierra Leone’s political life and in the work for women’s empowerment. Currently, she is one of two women chiefs in parliament, where she serves alongside Madam Haja Fatmata Koroma of the Moyamba District. Section chiefs and paramount chiefs vote for parliament members, and she won 62 percent of the votes cast in the district, defeating a male paramount chief who had been in parliament for twenty-two years. As one of the eighteen member Women’s Caucus of Parliament, she traveled to Kigali, Rwanda to observe the workings of their government. Minah was interviewed in Conteh’s study and in her remarks mentioned admiringly that 62 percent of the Rwandan parliament members are women, and noted that Sierra Leone has a long way to go to approach such a representation (Minah, 2019). Minah has called on government to enact the 30 percent quota for female representation as law, believing that such a requirement would force political parties to select women as party representatives (Conteh, 2020). Minah also expressed plans for greater women’s empowerment in her district, initiatives she promoted long before her election into parliament. According to her, the role of a parliamentarian is to see that your constituency get what the government provides for them, you develop your constituency, as I earlier on said, children should be educated, women be empowered, pregnant women have free access to health care and develop the chiefdoms as well. Conteh, 2020, p. 62

Madam Minah is also the chief advisor of Women of Wajama (WOW), a non-partisan community-based organization established in 2014 with the goal of promoting the status of women and girls in the Pujehun District where women have high rates of illiteracy and high rates of sexual and gender-based violence. Minah served three terms on the District Councils established after the war, but can no longer serve due to her role as a sitting member of parliament (Minah, 2019; Minah questionnaire, 2019).

Madam Mamie Gamanga Shortly after the war, Mende paramount chief Madam Gamanga served as a member of parliament and actively participated in the Network of Women Ministers and Parliamentarians (NEWMAP), an organization that reflects the heightened visibility of women in high national political office and focused on individual empowerment and prioritizing women’s issues, especially those of women as mothers. In January 2007, Madam Gamanga was among the attendees at a NEWMAP meeting in Freetown that included the Honorable Elizabeth Lavalie, at the time the speaker of parliament, the Honorable Haja Afsatu, a minister of parliament from the Western Area, and four

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other women parliamentarians including Madam Gamanga and Chief Hajabomposseh, a ceremonial Temne woman chief. In a recent interview, Madam Gamanga explained that she currently does not meet consistently with other women chiefs, but is a member of the National Council of Paramount Chiefs, although this council has not been meeting regularly “because of financial constraints” (Gamanga, 2019).

Madam Sallay Gendemeh Madam Sallay Gendemeh (Malegohun Chiefdom, Kenema District) actively promotes and in many ways represents a progressive women’s advancement agenda, even though she has not run for political office. With her lifetime tenure as paramount chief, she has led her chiefdom since 1973 and carries a great deal of influence at both local and national levels of government. She sits on the Kenema District Council, having been elected by the other chiefs in the district as one of three who represent paramount chiefs on the Council. She is one of two women chiefs on the Council; Madam Mariama Tameh (Niawa Chiefdom) is the other. Gendemeh supports greater representation and political efficacy for women, and considers herself part of the movement for women’s empowerment. For example, as a paramount chief, she supports two NGOs—the Social Enterprise and Development Foundation (SEND-Sierra Leone) and the 50/50 Group—that promote women’s leadership and development. Referring to both organizations, she said, “They work to help we the women, they provide trainings for women in the area of income generation, leadership and motivation to know that they can do anything men can” (Gendemeh, 2020). Despite her support for women’s participation in electoral politics, she herself does not aspire to a formal elected position. Regarding the 2018 elections, Madam Gendemeh said,“Well at my age I was not really interested, but I have been appointed by His Excellency the President to serve as a Board Member at the National Commission for Social Action (NACSA) Sierra Leone” (Gendemeh, 2020). Recently she actively participated in the Bintumani III conference held in Freetown from May 23 to 26, 2019, the third national conference convened to help the country “evolve through the required stages and processes of good governance pathways.” (Thomas, 2019). Madam Gendemeh noted that she and “all the female Chiefs” were also present at the Bintumani consultative conferences held in 1995 and 1996. She confirmed her conscious engagement in the women’s movement, and when asked if she connected with other women chiefs, gave this answer: Yes, I meet with them (other women chiefs), for example during the Bintumani conferences starting from the first to the third conference [we] were present, I met with so many women during those conferences, we interacted a lot, talked to each other. Gendemeh, 2020

Sao Seiya Juana The inchoate acceptance of women’s authority is reflected in the work of women in other customary positions of leadership. Sao Seiya Juana, a woman Tribal Head in the Kenema District, recently described the challenges and drawbacks of the position. She

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indicated that as a tribal head in the section, i.e., a section chief, she has to take part in the election of the paramount chief and “provide oversight role in the Section Administration.” She spoke of a particular boundary dispute that she helped settle “with other women chiefs.” She explained that, The case almost went to the Magistrate court in Kenema, but as a woman I engaged my colleague women chiefs to talk to their men, especially who were directly involved and it worked out good in our favor, where we were able to settle it out of the court room. Juana, 2020

Thus, we see that at the local level, women take on responsibility for public service when they occupy customary positions of leadership in the communities in which they live.

Women Traditional Chiefs in the North Sierra Leone’s northern districts, largely Temne speaking, have no tradition of women holding the top executive position of bai (king) in the precolonial era or paramount chief in the colonial and independent republic eras. By custom, these positions have always been held by males and have thus been seen for many years as targets for addressing gender equity. However, though northern districts hold onto local government customs often considered deeply resistant to women’s empowerment, here too, lessons can be learned by examining customary socio-religious positions for women that could be sites for shaping effective paradigms for women’s empowerment and feminist activism. First, in considering women’s customary authority in the North we should bear in mind the case of Elizabeth Simbiwa Sogbo-Torto and her failure to win election as paramount chief in 2010. That year, Kono indigene Madam Sogbo-Tortu declared her right to stand for paramount chief in her region, a bid for the position which subverted existing customs regarding paramountcy and led to protest riots and threats against her by local residents. In the end, after months of public demonstrations for and against her, bitter controversy, and lengthy court cases, the refusal of customary officials to approve the election made it impossible for her to accede to the office of paramount and eventually her male cousin was installed in the position. The failure of Madam Sogbo-Tortu to gain a position as paramount chief in the northern region of Kono was widely seen as an example of customary attitudes and practices blocking women’s political power and was characterized as a major setback for women’s political equality (Kellow, 2010). The resistance to electing a woman paramount chief in the northern districts certainly flies in the face of a neoliberal notion of gender equality, and was widely seen as a loss in the gender equality movement. Interestingly enough, however, though traditional restrictions barring women from becoming paramount chief prevailed, the intense women’s activist campaign to gain a chieftaincy position argues in favor of traditional chieftaincy as an avenue for women’s empowerment.

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I propose that a lesson learned from the failure of Sogbo-Tortu to win the paramount chief position should be to focus on and strengthen other traditional positions for women in northern chiefdoms and build on the customary structures that have historically given women in the region legitimate political authority. Because, indeed, Sierra Leone’s northern districts, though holding onto customs often considered deeply resistant to women’s empowerment, still retain critical socio-religious positions for women that can be sites for shaping effective paradigms for women’s empowerment and feminist activism. Rather than focusing only on the paramount position customarily held by men, women’s rights activists could work, with less public resistance, to legislatively empower the customary positions of authority held by women and perhaps imbed them into the neoliberal state. For example, the positions of Bom Posseh, Bom Warra, and Bom Rufah are female socio-religious titleholders who carry out rituals necessary to crown and protect male paramount chiefs in northern chiefdoms. But in addition to religious duties, these titleholders not only embody the cultural concept of “mothernity,” but they carry out public responsibilities ensuring community stability and continuity. Their political authority and leadership roles have been widely recognized from the past until the present. For example, colonial records reveal that nineteenth-century British officials negotiated with two women ceremonial titleholders of the Koya kingdom who served as regents in charge of the country. After the death of Bai Farma Alexander Bai Conteh in 1872, the ruling council’s two female members, Bom Warra and Bom Rufah exercised great influence as leaders of the Koya country. Given their religious functions, we may regard them as priestesses, however, under the British, their ritual responsibility for the spiritual well-being of the country was actualized as a civil responsibility and the British labeled them with the English shorthand title “queen.” However, the women conceptualized their relationship to the regent chiefs and war leaders of the country as mothers to sons, recalling the mothernity principle of women’s authority. For example, in mid-nineteenth correspondence, the Koya queens referred to the strongman and war leader Alimamy Lahai Bundoo as “our son and chief.”11 Their political influence continues into the present day, and one Sierra Leonean scholar described women with these titles as “kingmakers” (Smart, 2005). In recent years, a titled Bom Posseh from one of the northern chiefdoms was elected as a member of parliament, demonstrating that even now, her ceremonial position carries political heft as well as religious importance.12 During the Sierra Leone Civil War, a northern female titleholder named Yabomwarra Kamara, the incumbent Bom Warra from Koya Chiefdom, demonstrated public governance and leadership as another aspect of her inherited leadership role. The Bom Warra title refers to her customary ritual responsibility to use prayers and medicines to protect the male paramount chief during his coronation ceremonies (Inga, 1919). But aside from this critical ceremonial duty, a titled Bom Warra is expected to resolve civil complaints and can preside in a local court. In a 1995 interview, Yabomwarra Kamara, outlined her responsibilities judging cases in tandem with a male chief in a Freetown district crowded with Temne war refugees. Describing in effect a system of gender complementarity, she explained, “The two chiefs sit together to settle disputes. I am running my own court with Pa Komrabai” (Kamara, 1995). Although she was not the

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top chief executive, i.e., paramount chief, of her district, she exercised legitimate public authority adjudicating community conflicts, thus embodying traditions of female authority in northern chiefdoms. In another example of her public leadership, Yabomwarra Kamara served on the inner circle of the National Coordinating Committee for Peace (NCCP) during the war. There too, her role was tinged with the attributes such as moral integrity and a mothering, caring managerial style which Steady has described for women in leadership positions. In 1995, the committee members met with Valentine Strasser, the young leader of the National Provisional Revolutionary Council’s (NPRC) military coup. They had come to try to push the NPRC government to end the war, which was then dangerously escalating, apparently in complicity with the Sierra Leone Army. A member of the NCCP recalled the moment when Chief Kamara began to speak with the brash leader of the coup: she changed the whole tone and flavor of the meeting. Strasser was crying, he had to put on his sunglasses. She just talked to him like a mother would. Foray, 1995

Yabomwarra Kamara relied on the inherent respect for the sacredness of the mother to legitimately criticize the young head of state. As a ceremonial woman chief, she carried the authority of “mothernity” and gendered female power. Perhaps, rather than focusing on the constitutional right of women to attain the paramount chief position in northern chiefdoms, activists can strengthen and reinscribe the existing ceremonial public positions for women. These customary positions could be legislatively restructured to increase their powers and ensure that they comport with modern governance mandates and responsibilities. For example, the “ceremonial” women chiefs could be given a government salary and travel budget. They could be allotted police officers under their control which they could perhaps deploy to protect victims of gender-based violence. Even in the North, expanding and strengthening the powers of ceremonial women chiefs could enlarge the parameters of women’s political authority while still legitimately reflecting cultural norms and advancing women’s agency in local governance structures.

Women Chiefs and Economic Empowerment Initiatives for Women Women traditional chiefs also head up development projects in their chiefdoms, and in general have directed much of their attention to economic progress for the women of their districts. Lack of education has always been a critical barrier to women’s economic empowerment. One of the most well-known women paramount chiefs of the modern era, Madam Ella Gulama, stated that her main goal after becoming paramount chief in 1951 was to empower women by improving education for the women and girls of her chiefdom (Gulama, 1995). In Madam Minah’s Kpukumu Krim chiefdom, at the direction of the chief, the women of the chiefdom collectively planted a cassava farm after the war, an activity that Minah spearheaded by planting her own cassava farm as

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well. Madam Minah also runs a one-hundred-acre rice farm and shares the seeds among local farmers to start community farming (Day, 2012, pp. 175-176; Minah 1995). Economic development in her chiefdom is also being advanced through infrastructure projects she pushed while on the District Council, such as a health center, a secondary school, and a hospital currently under construction. Paramount Chief Sallay Gendemeh sits on the Kenema District Council and provides oversight for the procurement of funds and their equal distribution for projects in the various chiefdoms within the district. In this role, she provides leadership for all developmental projects, as she said, “especially those that have a direct link with women development and empowerment within the district” (Gendemeh, 2020). High rates of maternal mortality shorten the life span and sap the productivity of rural women. Madam Gamanga focused on this issue while she was in Parliament. Working together with other women leaders in NEWMAP, she was instrumental in organizing an ambulance service for pregnant women, thus making it possible for women in labor to be transported to the hospital with just a phone call. So often it is only the lack of funds or time to get to the hospital that makes the difference for women with a life-threatening delivery. Madam Gamanga is no longer in parliament, and is now working on economic development projects in her chiefdom. During my visit to Boajibu in 2007, she was focused on rebuilding houses, opening a bank branch and working on other construction projects in her burned-out town. Currently, she is building a community guesthouse and completing a fence around the hereditary Gamanga compound destroyed during the war (Gamanga, 2019).

Conclusion: Women Chiefs, African Feminism and a Feminist Agenda In general, NGOs, international agencies, and their partners in Sierra Leone seek to strengthen the neoliberal democratic state, believing that through the state the liberal democratic agenda of human rights and women’s empowerment will best be achieved. However, to achieve transformative development, a sustainable national women’s movement, and progress toward more fulfilling lives for all citizens, innovative political institutions and approaches should ideally be grounded in the country’s customs and indigenous history. Through its women chiefs, Sierra Leonean women’s empowerment is already being articulated within an African feminism that embraces the human and social needs of the group, and is thus “transformative in human and social rather than in personal, individualistic and sexist terms.” (Steady, 2005, p. 329). By their actions and their positionality, women chiefs are already contributing to women’s empowerment at the local level and can be seen as “innovative re-combinations of old and new forms of activism.” (Moran, 2012, p. 63). Though customary women chiefs are elected only by a select group of chiefdom councilors, and thus are not democratic in the Western sense, they nevertheless represent a model of women’s leadership through the symbolic force of motherhood, and serve as models of women’s political authority. A system of ascribed royal privilege like that of paramount chief elections, would seem on its face to be antithetical to the

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notion of individual rights and freedoms, but if liberal European democracies such as Great Britain and Norway, as well as the African nation of Ghana, can comfortably articulate royal families into a system of democratic rule and citizenship rights, then perhaps the lesson for Sierra Leone is to unapologetically retain and modify its own customary hereditary political structures to comport with progressive democratic change. By adapting women’s customary authoritative socio-religious positions, African feminist theorists of the Global South could not only sustain the social fabric of the community but help shape effective African-centered paradigms for women’s empowerment.

Notes 1 Anthropologist Mary Moran discussed how women’s political participation has “successfully melded indigenous models of female authority with those embedded in a liberal human rights discourse” in her article, “Our Mothers Have Spoken: Synthesizing Old and New Forms of Women’s Political Authority in Liberia.” Journal of International Women’s Studies vol. 12. no. 4. (2012); Poet Catherine Aholonu has explored women’s spirituality as a basis for unity in Motherism: the Afrocentric Alternative to Feminism (Owerri, Nigeria: Afa Publications, 1995); Literature professor Obioma Nnaemeka has coined a new term to describe indigenous African feminisms. See “Nego-Feminism: Theorizing, Practicing, and Pruning Africa’s Way,” Signs vol. 29 no. 3 (Winter 2004). 2 The late African historian, Joseph C. Miller, discussed this concept at the annual African Studies Association meeting in Atlanta, GA in November 2018. In his last major project, he described historical dynamics as “how people make changes in their lives by minimal, incremental extensions of their presents.” Joseph C. Miller, “Slaving in Bantu-Speaking Regions” in Thomas Spear (ed.) Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. 3 Remarks by Sierra Leonean historian Arthur Abraham during a panel discussion on women in Post-war Sierra Leone at the 54th annual African Studies Association meeting, Baltimore, MD., November 2011. 4 See for example Allesandra Dal Secco, “Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and Gender Justice,” in Donna Pankhurst, ed. Gendered Peace: Women’s Struggles for Post-war Justice and Reconciliation (2008): 86 and Kellow, Women, Elections and Violence in West Africa, 19. 5 Many theorists have raised this critique of mainstream liberal feminism over the years. See Oyèrónké Oyĕwùmí, “Visualizing the Body: Western Theories and African Subjects in African Gender Studies” in African Gender Studies: A Reader, Oyèrónké Oyĕwùmí, ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005): 3-23, for a summary of the shortcomings of feminist theory when applied to African realities. 6 I summarized my research experiences in Sierra Leone in Lynda R. Day, “Mamatoma: The Chief ’s Namesake: Language, Gender and Age as Categories of Belonging in Sierra Leone,” in Black Subjects in Africa and its Diasporas: Race and Gender in Research and Writing, Benjamin Talton and Quincy Mills, eds., (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011): 159-178. 7 Lansana Gberie. A Dirty War in West Africa: the RUF and the Destruction of Sierra Leone. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2005). See the collected essays in Between Democracy and Terror: The Sierra Leone Civil War, Ibrahim

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War, Women, and Post-conflict Empowerment Abdullah, ed. (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2004) for several insightful essays analyzing the underlying causes and effects of the war. Narratives of pain, loss, and displacement were recounted during author’s interviews with Margaret Segbureh, Freetown, August 8, 2005; Matilda Minah, Freetown, July 6, 2007; Obai Kabbia (son of Ella Gulama) Lawrenceville, NJ, June 29, 2010; and Mamie Gamanga, Freetown, June 28 and July 22, 1995 and Boajibu, August 6, 2005. See my article, “Women Chiefs and Post War Reconstruction in Sierra Leone,” Journal of Asian and African Studies, Special issue on Sierra Leonean Women, vol. 14, 1-2 (March 2015), 19-39, for more on women chiefs during the war. Madam Minah was kidnapped by the rebels and related that they called her “Reverend Ma” because she called on them to read the Bible as she did every day for the six months of her captivity. Author’s interview with P.C. Matilda Minah, Freetown, July 6, 2007. Personal communication. See Lynda R. Day, Gender and Power in Sierra Leone: Women Chiefs of the Last Two Centuries (New York: Palgrave Macmillan) 158-160 for a description of Madam Benya’s tireless efforts during the war. Sierra Leone Archives, Government Interpreter’s Letter Book:1876-1878, 37-38,166 and 178, “Memo to His Excellency in relation to the Quiah country.” See Day, Gender and Power in Sierra Leone, pp. 57-59 for a longer discussion of these women titleholders. In 2007, I interviewed an incumbent Bom Posseh who was a member of Parliament, active in NEWMAP, an NGO supporting women parliamentarians and cabinet members, and an APC Party stalwart. The combination of her roles underscores the legitimate influence of women titleholders in the public sphere and the respect they are accorded by virtue of their traditional ritual roles.

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Issues in Women’s Empowerment: Legal, Social, and Economic

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Women and Law Reform in Post-war Sierra Leone Peter A. Dumbuya

Introduction Even though women experienced especially unspeakable atrocities during the civil war (1991–2002), sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) is nothing new in Sierra Leone society. Its roots lie deep in the country’s history, specifically in its statutory and customary laws, and in a constitution that carves out an exception for customary law and so regularizes male dominance and privilege over women. The Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) concluded that pre-war violence against women was often met with a “culture of silence” and impunity that “enabled the armed groups to sexually violate women during the conflict with no thought or fear of accountability” (TRC Report Vol. 3B, 2004, p.105). For several reasons, the war’s end opened a window of opportunity to improve gender relations. First, while the conflict did not completely undermine customs inimical to women’s equality, it nonetheless created opportunities for society to improve gender relations. Second, women and girls had acquired wartime experiences they could then utilize to promote gender equality in post-war society. Third, the presence of inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) boosted the gender equality discourse (Smet, 2009, pp. 153-154). Gender equality was one piece of the post-conflict development puzzle (BakshSoodeen and Etchart, 2002), with multiple theories about how to get there. Some feminist scholars looked to women’s associations as “building blocks for developing female identities and for promoting a brand of African feminism that transcends narrow concepts about gender equality” (Steady, 2006, pp. 1, 10, 17). Others saw traditional women chiefs as repositories of “culturally acceptable concepts of women’s political authority” and keys to achieving gender justice and equality at both the local and national levels of Sierra Leone society (Day, 2015). The women’s empowerment discourse suggests that “consciousness-raising activities, legal reform, access and control to economic and livelihood resources” (Abdullah and Fofana Ibrahim, 2010, p. 261; Skran, 2015) are all necessary steps. However, although women’s groups pushed for gender equality, the “Province of Freedom” for women in the public sphere has yet to be fulfilled (Ojukutu-Macauley 2013, p. 37, see also Abdullah; Beoku-Betts and M’Cormack-Hale, this volume). 99

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In the fight for gender equality and women’s empowerment, “strategic litigation” has had mixed results. Defined as “the process of bringing a case to court with the goal of creating broader legal and social change”, strategic litigation has been used by women’s advocates to identify gaps in laws or to change laws that discriminate against women or that violate human rights norms (UN Women, 2011, p. 16). This tactic has had some success in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, and Ghana, where courts have struck down some aspects of customary law, but has failed in Botswana and Zimbabwe, where courts have upheld customary law as consistent with national constitutions. To ensure that courts interpret the law in ways that advance gender equality, women must have access to courts so that they can bring claims based on discrimination. Ndulo argues that customary law is dynamic and continually evolving alongside shifting social, economic, scientific, and technological developments in modern societies, and so should adapt to changing gender roles and rights (Ndulo, 2011). In Sierra Leone the courts have not been active in striking down discriminatory provisions of the Constitution. Of particular concern to human rights advocates is Section 14 of the 1991 Constitution, which declares human rights provisions nonjusticiable. Currently, the constitution empowers only the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution (Section 124(1)(a)), but there is growing public support for this review power to be extended to the High Court and the Court of Appeal in order to “contribute to the development of a more vibrant constitutional jurisprudence in Sierra Leone” (TRC Report Vol. 2, 2004, pp. 137-138). Despite the support for this idea, the Constitutional Review Committee made no such recommendation (CRC, 2016). Therefore, given the lack of judicial review, I argue that the most practical ways to promote gender equality are, first, through legislative action and, second, through the constitution review process. This chapter focuses on women’s empowerment through legal reforms that seek to eliminate laws that discriminate against women (Abdullah and Fofana Ibrahim, 2010; Fofana Ibrahim, 2015). It examines the history of exclusion and violence against women in Sierra Leone and the ways in which post-war reconstruction programs at macro- and micro-levels have incorporated the rights of women as part of a broader nation-building project. The macro-level of analysis considers international conventions and protocols that are crucial for the development of domestic laws to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment. The micro-level of analysis focuses on the extent to which domestic laws have protected the equal rights of women. This legal approach to gender equality predates the civil war. The immediate postindependence government ignored demands by the Sierra Leone Women’s Movement for the inclusion of gender equality in the Independence Constitution of 1961 (Davies, 2005, pp. 17-18). Earlier efforts to accord women equal rights with men intensified as conflicts in Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East, and Afghanistan galvanized the international community to do more to extend legal protections to women in wartime as well as in peacetime. Efforts to end violence against women have evolved alongside various peace efforts as part of a comprehensive strategy to empower women more broadly. Conflict prevention, resolution, and post-war nation-building are now causally linked to women’s equal rights, as are issues of justice, security, and development (Cohn, 2013). For example, the civil war in neighboring Liberia (1989–2003) gave rise to an “empowerment discourse” that market women then used as a dominant frame of

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reference for assuming roles, such as primary breadwinners, hitherto assigned to men (Cruz, 2015, pp. 425-426).

The 1991–2002 Civil War The initial objective of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), when it attacked Kailahun District from neighboring Liberia on March 23, 1991, was to overthrow the government of President Joseph S. Momoh (1985–1992). For the first six years of independence (1961–1967), the Sierra Leone People’s Party had led the country, but since then the All People’s Congress had been in power under the leadership of Siaka P. Stevens (1968–1985) and his successor Momoh. The causes of Sierra Leone’s civil war have been discussed elsewhere, but by all accounts one-party rule, corruption, and political violence were at its core (TRC Report Vol. 2, 2004). The RUF labeled its offensive “Operation Liberate the Motherland.” The invocation of a “motherland” in peril could be seen as a celebration of femininity which in Sierra Leone is rooted in the “culture of most communities which support the image of the female as a mother figure existing to reproduce the species and ensure continuity of the community” (Koso-Thomas, 1987, p. 39). The appropriation or resignification of “gender,”“women,” and “empowerment” can be done by state actors. In her insightful article on how the Olusegun Obasanjo government in Nigeria (1999–2007) appropriated gendered ideas to sell its National Economic Empowerment Development Strategy (NEEDS), Pereira defines appropriation as “the practice of a given agency using terms developed in one context to mean something quite different in another context.” While NEEDS articulated the construction of a “new citizen” with a future in a reconstructed neoliberal Nigeria, the fact remained that Nigeria continued to operate under patriarchal values despite this rhetoric (Pereira, 2008, pp. 42-44). During Sri Lanka’s civil war (1983–2009), the Mother’s Front, led by Sirimavo Bandaranaike, rallied around “motherhood” to protest the disappearance of thousands of young men. The Front demanded “a climate where we can raise our sons to manhood, have our husbands with us and lead normal women’s lives.” This argument suggested that the private domain of women was apolitical and positive while the maledominated public domain was not only patriarchal but also corrupt, manipulative, destructive and, therefore, a danger to women’s way of life (De Alwis, 2007, pp. 123-124). In South Africa, Johannesburg-based Pentecostal Charismatic Christian Churches have appropriated popular print and television media portrayals of the ideal mother to construct the ideal Christian mother. The ideal Christian mother, who symbolizes the modernity and success of the nuclear family, is middle class and stays at home to care for the children and her husband who works outside the home (Frahm-Arp, 2016). Feminist critics, nevertheless, deride representations of the homeland as the symbolic body of a woman—such as the RUF’s operation name—because of its association with victimhood and a lack of agency (Pereira, 2008; Oyěwùmí, 1997; Cohn and Jacobsen, 2013; Skran, 2015). The TRC divided the conflict into three phases, each involving a steady escalation of attacks against women. The first, the “conventional” phase, ended in November 1993

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when the RUF lost control of the town of Baidu in Kailahun District. In the second phase, “jungle warfare” dominated the fighting, culminating with RUF leader Foday Sankoh’s arrest in Nigeria on weapons charges in March 1997. It saw the election of President Ahmad T. Kabbah in March 1996 and the signing of the ill-fated Abidjan Peace Agreement in November 1996. The third phase commenced with a power struggle within the RUF and continued until the formal declaration of the end of the civil war in January 2002. Within this timeframe, the military overthrew Kabbah’s government in May 1997 and formed the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) in league with the RUF under the leadership of Major Johnny P. Koroma. The Economic Community Cease-Fire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), deployed to Sierra Leone in 1997, intervened and restored Kabbah to power in March 1998, only to be overthrown again by a combined AFRC–RUF invading force in January 1999. Though the Lomé Peace Agreement of July 1999 certainly did not bring the conflict to an end, it laid the foundation for post-war reconstruction. British intervention freed UN peacekeepers to deploy throughout the country. It led to the defeat of the RUF and allied West Side Boys (TRC Report Vols. 2 and 3A, 2004). Early in the conflict, the RUF targeted women for forcible recruitment and sexual abuse (Day, 2015), revealing that its earlier appeal for a gendered Motherland was opportunistic rather than reflective of any real concern for femininity (Pereira 2008). The TRC concluded that warring or insurgent groups, the RUF included, used sexual abuse to exercise control and dominion over “target” towns during the first phase of the conflict (TRC Report Appendix I, 2004:11, note 5; Marks, 2013; Arieff, 2009, 2010; Amnesty International, 2007). Data compiled by the TRC showed that most victims of the conflict were displaced from their homes and communities. While adult males bore the brunt of the war, women and children endured some of the most brutal abuses at the hands of rebels. The RUF committed not only most of the documented reports of rape (67.1 percent) but also the most violations of any warring faction, followed by the AFRC, the Sierra Leone Army (SLA), and civil defense forces (CDFs) (TRC Report, Vol. 3B; Vol. 2). Most of the violations and abuses of the civilian populations occurred in three peak periods. The first peak period occurred soon after the RUF attacked Bomaru, when rebels began to “target” women for forcible recruitment, especially in the Eastern and Southern Provinces where the conflict began. The second peak period began in 1994 and culminated in 1995/96 when the Bintumani I and II conferences endorsed the holding of elections as a first step toward a peace settlement, yet the collapse of various cease-fire proposals signaled the RUF’s disinterest in peace unless it was on its own terms. The third peak period started in 1998 following ECOMOG’s intervention to restore Kabbah’s government after the 1997 coup, culminating in the January 1999 invasion of Freetown, which, until then, had not experienced actual fighting (TRC Report, 2004, Appendix 1). The notion that women are helpless victims of war, which is often described as a quintessential male domain, is now contested. Cohn, for instance, has argued that women’s individual identities and experiences are informed by their sexuality, culture, ethnicity, age, and socio-economic class. She further contends that women not only try to prevent wars but that they also instigate wars and therefore bear agency as to how wars are fought and concluded (Cohn, 2013). The RUF trained

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women not only to fight but also to serve as “bush wives” for rebel commanders (Coulter, 2009). The government did not thoroughly investigate these multifarious roles, causing severe under-representation of female ex-combatants in disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration programs at the war’s end (Mazurana and Carlson, 2004).

Historicizing Women’s Unequal Status in Society Women’s unequal status in society predates the civil war. It can be seen in the country’s pluralistic legal system, within which customary law exists alongside the national constitution as well as international human rights conventions and protocols to which the country is a signatory. Sierra Leone’s pluralistic legal system is intricately bound up with its bifurcated colonial and postcolonial history. The country evolved from two political and administrative entities: the Colony, which now comprises the capital city of Freetown, and the Protectorate, which was made up of the land adjoining the Freetown peninsula. The Colony, which Granville Sharp referred to as the “Province of Freedom”, was settled by the Black Poor, a group of freed slaves from England, in May 1787 (ContehMorgan and Dixon-Fyle, 1999; Peterson, 1969). Its benefactors, among them British philanthropists, described it as an “experiment in social and cultural engineering” (Wyse, 1989, p. 1). It was on the brink of financial collapse in 1808 when the British government stepped in and declared the settlement a Crown Colony. In 1896 the British government further extended its rule to the Protectorate, and on Independence Day in April 1961 the two entities merged to become the unitary state of Sierra Leone (Foray, 1977). Courts established by British colonial officials utilized common law principles and norms followed by statutory laws which originated with the Charter of 1799. By the middle of the nineteenth century, British colonial authorities had extended the common law to the Colony. With the establishment of the Protectorate, the Legislative Council extended its powers therein, thereby creating a dual system of law, one based on customary law and the other on British common and statutory laws. This arrangement allowed British colonial authorities to apply customary law in the Protectorate in civil matters as long as they did not conflict with the principles of natural justice, equity, and good conscience (Renner-Thomas, 2010). This contrasted with precolonial times when unwritten customs and traditions operated in various kingdoms and political entities where different rulers applied them to settle disputes (Abraham, 2003). The Constitution of Sierra Leone 1991 (Section 170(3)), which replaced the oneparty Constitution of 1978, and restored multi-party politics in Sierra Leone, describes customary law as “the rules of law which by custom are applicable to particular communities in Sierra Leone.” Crafted as the country descended into the civil war, the constitution is problematic for gender equality. Section 6(2), which is part of Chapter II on the “Fundamental Principles of State Policy,” calls on the state to “discourage discrimination on the grounds of . . . sex,” among other factors, while Section 8(2)(a) guarantees equal rights. In Section 14, the constitution contradicts these provisions by stating that they “shall not confer legal rights and shall not be enforceable in any court of law.” Even more confusing is Section 27(1), which contains a non-discriminatory

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provision that states that “no law shall make any provision which is discriminatory either of itself or in its effect.” Yet Section 27(4)(d-e) claws back this provision by exempting “adoption, marriage, divorce, burial, devolution of property on death or other interests of personal property,” and customary law from its operation (Constitution, 1991; Abdullah and Fofana Ibrahim, 2010). Customary law was founded upon a structure of patriarchy, a system where men exercise power and dominion over women through control of society’s institutions (Cohn, 2013). For example, in the Provinces, where customary law operates among various ethnic groups, the eldest male members of families still control, manage, and protect land in both family and communal tenures. Women’s interests in land, therefore, are still subordinate to those of male family members who often deprive them of access to such property despite recent changes to the inheritance law (Fofana Ibrahim, 2009; Renner-Thomas, 2010). Embedded in customary law is a socio-cultural ethos that assigned women a very low status, and gave them few, if any, individual rights and freedoms. Prior to the end of the Second World War, “most educated women had to be content to keep house for their husbands, and perhaps to open shops in the ground floors of their homes to sell goods imported from England and Germany” (Wyse, 1989, p. 40). Since customary law is not codified and varies from one ethnic group to another, it lacks uniform rules or procedures for regulating marriage, divorce, and inheritance. Furthermore, customary law creates unequal power relations in which women, in many instances, are legally not entitled to inherit matrimonial property upon the death of their husbands. This has given rise to a practice known as “widow inheritance” by which one of the decedent’s brothers or male relatives “inherits” his widow (Fofana Ibrahim, 2009). Therefore, to level the playing field for women requires a concerted effort to reconcile the various laws and customs that hamstring women’s empowerment (Davies, 2005; Ndulo, 2011). Opinion is divided over which pathways yield the best possible outcomes for women’s participation in rebuilding Sierra Leone (Bachelet, 2012). The examples of several nearby countries show promise for the “gender-security nexus”, in which societies recognize the causal link between discrimination against women and state insecurity (Kfir, 2012). In Rwanda, amidst external pressure by women’s groups and the enabling domestic political climate engendered by Paul Kagame’s Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), “Rwandan women framed gender as a strategy for national development and security in the context of an ethnically torn society, which was key to their success” (Haynes, Aolain, and Cahn, 2011). In neighboring Liberia, market women’s post-conflict economic gains empowered them to “renegotiate gender relations at home” and in the public sphere (Cruz 2015, pp. 426, 43). Women in Sierra Leone also have the opportunity to shape the empowerment discourse in ways that enhance their rights. Such efforts can attract the attention of the international community, which has provided significant assistance in post-war reconstruction (Haynes, Aolain, and Cahn, 2011).

Gender Equality at the Macro- and Micro-Levels Both macro- and micro-levels of analysis are useful for understanding the nexus between international legal instruments and the development of domestic laws that

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promote gender equality and women’s empowerment. The macro-level examines the push from the international community, including the United Nations (UN), African Union (AU), and the Commonwealth, to domesticate international legal instruments to which Sierra Leone is a signatory (Zureick, 2008: Abdullah and Fofana Ibrahim, 2010). Of particular importance to women activists is the domestication of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and its concomitant “due diligence” recommendation (1992) for member states to take reasonable action to prevent violence against women, prosecute perpetrators, and provide redress for women victims (Impact Assessment, 2018, pp. 3, 21; Fofana Ibrahim, 2015; Smet, 2009). There is strong precedent for such applications of international legal tools to domestic settings. In Singapore (1971) and Harare (1991), the Commonwealth emphasized the “equal rights for all citizens regardless of gender” (Commonwealth, 1991). In Nairobi (1985) and Beijing (1995), the UN adopted international legal norms in support of gender equality. These efforts received an additional boost in 2000 when the UN Security Council (UNSC), in Resolution 1325, recognized women’s participation as essential to conflict management, resolution, and the maintenance of sustainable peace and security (UNSCR 1325, 2000; Kfir, 2012). In Resolution 1820 (2008), the UNSC recognized that sexual violence “can significantly exacerbate situations of armed conflict and may impede the restoration of international peace and security” (UNSCR 1820, 2008). The extent to which knowledge of human rights and respect for international norms could have prevented or minimized the atrocities committed during the Sierra Leone civil war remains an open question (Holland and Saidu, 2012). The micro-level of analysis examines the involvement of women’s groups, individual activists, feminist scholars, the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs (MSWGCA), and the Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) to domesticate international legal instruments. Pressure from these domestic actors led to passage of the “gender acts” (Fofana Ibrahim, 2015; Impact Assessment, 2018) in Sierra Leone. Various government ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs), including the Ministry of Defence (MoD) (Gender Training Manual, 2010) and the Sierra Leone Police (SLP) (FSU Guidelines on SGBV Case Management, 2013), have adopted training manuals and guidelines that promote gender equality. Nevertheless, these laudable policies and programs lack adequate funding for education and other outreach activities in communities throughout the country.

The Legislative Process In the absence of action by the courts, Parliament remains a viable option to strengthen women’s rights (Barrow, 2010; Haynes, Aolain, and Cahn, 2011). The Anti-Human Trafficking Act (AHTA) was passed in 2005, and was followed by the set of legislation generally referred to as the three “gender acts” or the “women’s rights bills” (Amnesty International, 2007, p. 15). The gender acts include the Domestic Violence Act, 2007, the Devolution of Estates Act, 2007, and the Registration of Customary Marriage and Divorce

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Act, 2009. Parliament also passed the Child Rights Act in 2007 and the Sexual Offences Act in 2012. In general, these laws align with a number of international conventions and protocols to which Sierra Leone is a signatory. Although little has been said or written about it, the AHTA fulfills Article 6 of CEDAW by prohibiting not only “sexual servitude” but also “exploitation of the prostitution of another” and other forms of “commercial sexual exploitation,” including pimping, pandering, and maintaining a brothel. The law provides for both criminal sanctions (a maximum fine of Le50 million and ten years in prison) and restitution to victims (AHTA, 2005; CEWDA, 1979; Impact Assessment, 2018). The Domestic Violence Act (DVA) identifies ten domestic relationships, including those in which a complainant is or has been married to the offender, is engaged to the offender or in a courtship with the offender, or has or expects a child with the offender. The inclusion of “house-help” in the categories of domestic relationship is important because of the practice of foster care, in which children, particularly young girls, are cared for in the homes of distant relatives and friends while they attend school or learn a trade. These circumstances are often the setting of domestic violence, rape, and sexual exploitation, which are then often settled as family matters and therefore go unreported to the police or social welfare workers for judicial redress. Under the DVA, any child (below the age of 18 years), can file a complaint of domestic violence by themselves or with the assistance of a next friend. Adults can file complaints for themselves, and the law also allows persons with knowledge of domestic violence to file a complaint if it is in the interest of the victim to do so. This provision broadens the power of social welfare workers, health care providers, and family members to report cases of domestic violence to the authorities (DVA, 2007). However, as similar efforts in Liberia have shown, much success also depends on women remaining active in efforts to reduce the rate of withdrawal of rape cases by victims as well as the police (Medie, 2013). Furthermore, the DVA proscribes what the Maputo Protocol defines as “harmful practices,” defined as “all behaviour, attitudes and/or practices which negatively affect the fundamental rights of women and girls, such as their right to life, health, dignity, education and physical integrity” (Maputo Protocol 2005: Articles 1 and 2). The DVA’s definition of violence is broad enough to include acts that cause “physical, sexual, psychological, and economic harm.” The latter includes “the unreasonable deprivation of any economic or financial resources to which the complainant, or a family member or dependent of the complainant is entitled under any law” (DVA, 2007; Jalloh v. Jalloh, Misc. App. 186/12). In aggravated cases, such as when the victim of domestic violence suffers serious bodily injury or the offender uses a weapon in the commission of the crime or violates a protection order, the DVA bars out-of-court settlements. In other cases, the court can refer the matter for settlement by an alternative dispute resolution method that involves counseling and psychiatric help for the offender. The law also ensures that mediation or intervention by family members does not prevent the investigation and prosecution of domestic violence offenders. In fact, it provides for prompt response by the police to victims of domestic violence, including assisting the victim to a place of safety and obtaining free medical treatment. Upon conviction, punishment for domestic violence ranges from a fine of up to Le5 million, a term of imprisonment of up to two years, or both. Domestic relations include those entered

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into by customary law, Muslim law, and Christian law (DVA, 2007; FSU Guidelines on SGBV Case Management, 2013). The DVA empowers the Family Support Unit (FSU) of the SLP to enforce the “gender acts” and the Child Rights Act. Founded in April 1999 as the Domestic Violence Unit, the FSU emerged in its current form in February 2001 as part of the Criminal Investigation Division (CID). In 2004 the FSU partnered with the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender, and Children’s Affairs to secure the services of social workers and probation officers to assist in its investigations and provision of social services to victims of SGBV crimes. Since 2007 the FSU has existed as a separate and independent entity from the CID but is housed within the same building in Freetown (FSU Guidelines on SGBV Case Management, 2013, p. 6). Despite the legal scaffolding provided by the DVA, the FSU faces significant challenges. The FSU’s protective, investigative, and prosecutorial powers are constrained by a lack of financial resources, personnel, equipment, and training. Its earlier records of SGBV cases are incomplete, mostly due to a lack of storage and computer equipment. The FSU’s current record keeping system was launched in 2012. During my research in 2013/14, I found that of the 62 FSUs in the country, 32 were based in the Western Area. At the time, there were 403 police personnel but only twenty social workers for a country of five million people. This meant that the vast majority of the population was underserved by the FSU and its MSWGCA partners (Author Research FSU 2013/14), raising fears of an “impunity gap” for SGBV offenders (CARL, 2015). Of the three SGBV offences (domestic violence, sexual penetration, and rape), domestic violence continues to be the most prevalent in the six Police Command Regions (Freetown East, Freetown West, North-Eastern, Southern, Eastern, North-Western). Most of the SGBV offences to date have occurred in the Western Area, which is the most populous part of the country (Annual Crime Statistical Report, 2017; 2019). It is hoped that the culture of silence and impunity that had pervaded family relationships as a private domain beyond the reach of public authorities has begun to give way to a culture that protects the rights of women even in private settings (Kfir, 2012). This, however, will depend to a large extent on public education about domestic violence, which the DVA empowers the Minister of Social Welfare to undertake (DVA, 2007). Section 1(1) of the Devolution of Estates Act (DEA) applies to persons who die testate (with a will) or intestate (without a will) “irrespective of religion or ethnic origin,” but exempts family, chieftaincy, or community property (DEA , 2007). Customary law operates in the Provinces where land is held either as individual, family, or community property, which a paramount chief holds in trust for the people (RennerThomas, 2010). Therefore, by clawing back such property from consideration, the law leaves precious little property for surviving spouses to inherit. However, Part II on intestate succession empowers surviving spouses or next-of-kin to apply for letters of administration to care for the property (See In the Matter of the Estate of Haja Dankay Kabia, Misc. App. 237/2009). Under customary law an intestate may have had more than one spouse, and so the DEA provides for the first spouse to apply for letters of administration. If the first spouse refuses or is unable to apply, then the next spouse in line can apply for such letters. If an intestate is not survived by children or issue, the

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entire estate devolves to the surviving spouse. But where the intestate is survived by more than one spouse but no children or issue, then the “estate shall be distributed among the surviving spouses in proportion to the duration of their respective marriages to the intestate” and their contributions to the marital estate. If an intestate is survived by a spouse, child, and parent, the surviving spouse and child are each entitled to 35 percent of the estate while the surviving parent gets 15 percent and the remainder is distributed in accordance with customary or Muslim law. Other intestate provisions deal with distributions to brothers and sisters, grandchildren, and the appointment of receivers to prevent wastage, damage, or destruction of the property (DEA, 2007; See In the Matter of the Estate of Musa Kamara, Misc. App. 305/09). The testate provisions in Parts III and IV provide not only for interested parties to contest the validity of a will, but also for contestations within six months of the grant of probate in cases where the testator did not provide for a “dependent” (spouse, child, parent, or persons the testator used to maintain) or where such dispositions are deemed inadequate or unreasonable. The court, in equity, can order reasonable provisions to be made out of the estate for the maintenance of a dependent. The law also bars ejection of a surviving spouse (or child) from a marital home within the three-year period in which the administrator or executor must administer and distribute the estate. The law offers protections to surviving spouses in cases where the marital home is rented property (for which a court order is required for ejectment), a family house (one year after death), or public property (six months after death). What makes this law even more of a welcome development are the criminal sanctions that come with unlawful intermeddling with an estate, unlawful ejectment of a surviving spouse or child, or obtaining letters of administration by fraud. These provisions roll back some of the customary law practices whereby a brother or other male relative of the deceased may inherit his wife (“widow inheritance”), children, and marital home (DEA, 2007; DVA, 2007). Nevertheless, application of the law is problematic. First, the law’s provision for the distribution of property to more than one surviving spouse amounts to a tacit recognition of polygamy under customary law and thus reinforces a key factor in the discrimination and marginalization of women (CEDAW, 1979: Articles 1 and 2). Second, widow inheritance continues because people’s understanding of the law is colored by cultural norms and practices (Koroma, 2019). The Registration of Customary Marriage and Divorce Act (RCMDA), to a large extent, incorporates CEDAW’s Article 16 recommendations. The RCMDA not only validates customary marriage but for the first time sets a minimum age of eighteen years for consenting parties to enter into such a union. If either of the consenting parties is under the statutory age, parental consent or the consent of a guardian, magistrate, or local government chief administrator is needed for the marriage to become valid. Furthermore, if persons have cohabited or lived together as husband and wife for a continuous period of at least five years and are over the age of eighteen years, they are deemed to be married under customary law. However, persons already married under the Christian Marriage Act (1960), Muslim Marriage Act (1960), or Civil Marriage Act (1960) cannot enter into a customary marriage, but if they did, they would have to choose which law shall apply to them. The RCMDA also makes it clear that once a person has entered into a customary marriage, the only way that person can also enter

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into a Christian, Muslim, or civil marriage is with the same person. When that happens, the customary marriage is deemed to have been dissolved by operation of law. The law provides for the registration of a customary marriage or divorce in the local council within six months of marriage or dissolution. In a departure from previous practices, Section 18 of the law provides that “A wife in a customary marriage shall have the capacity to personally acquire and dispose of properties and to enter into contracts in her own behalf.” The law imposes a fine of up to Le1 million or a prison term of one year or both for those who unlawfully contract or dissolve a customary marriage or who knowingly make a false entry or alter an entry in the register (RCMDA, 2009: CEDAW, 1979). Despite these standards, the RCMDA faces serious challenges in data collection, costs, and confusion over its interpretation (Impact Assessment, 2018). The Child Rights Act (CRA 2007) domesticated the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and its Optional Protocols (2000), as well as the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990). Its guiding principle is the “best interest” of the child as defined in the Sexual Offences Act (SOA) of 2012. The SOA prescribes fines and prison terms (maximum of 15 years) for various offences (including rape, indecent assault, and sexual harassment) (SOA 2012). In December 2018, in response to the rising spate of sexual offences (2,800 cases in 2018), First Lady Fatima Maada Bio launched the “Hands off Our Girls” campaign to eradicate, inter alia, teenage pregnancy, child marriage, and rape (First Lady 2018). On February 7, 2019, President Julius Maada Bio declared a state of national emergency to achieve these objectives and prescribed life imprisonment for persons convicted of the rape of a child. Subsequently, Parliament amended the SOA by increasing the prison term for rape and sexual penetration of a child from a minimum of 15 years to life imprisonment (Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act, 2019). Like the RCMDA, the CRA also sets eighteen as the minimum age for marriage. This decision has broader significance, because child marriage not only violates international conventions but is also associated with poverty, deprivation, and lower education levels for women (Maswika, Richter, Kaufman, and Nandi, 2015). The CRA prohibits forced child betrothal and marriage or subjecting a child to a dowry transaction, enforcing these rules with fines and prison terms (maximum Le30 million or two years in prison or both). The CRA also rejects the consideration of domestic violence and child abuse as a “family affair” and requires service providers, parents, and community members to report any form of abuse to the FSU. Family courts, presided over by Magistrates, have jurisdiction to hear CRA cases (CRA, 2007). Cultural and societal practices still hamper the execution of the law, as do corruption, spiraling costs, underreporting of cases, and family pressure to settle cases out of court (Impact Assessment, 2018).

Constitutional Review Process Both the Lomé Peace Accords of 1999 and the TRC in 2004 recommended changes to the country’s constitution to address gender inequality, among other issues. CEDAW’s Article 2(d) calls for modification or abolition of existing laws, regulations, customs, and practices that discriminate against women. Article 4 suggests temporary special

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measures, such as affirmative action programs, to accelerate de facto equality (Fofana Ibrahim, 2015). The first post-conflict effort to review and recommend changes to the constitution occurred in January 2007 when President Ahmad T. Kabbah appointed a Constitutional Review Commission. Led by Peter L. Tucker, the commission considered suggestions by women’s groups for a 30 percent quota in Parliament. After reviewing CEDAW, various other international conventions and protocols, and the constitutions of Liberia, Rwanda, and Uganda, the commission concluded that “None of the signatories have made it a mandatory provision of their constitutions. We see no reason why we should recommend a quota system in our multi-party constitution.” Instead, the commission recommended the repeal and replacement of Section 27 (1) with its inadequate discriminatory provisions, and supported affirmative action to remedy past discrimination against women in decision-making organs (CRC, 2008, pp. 14-15, 3132). Nevertheless, the successor government did not act upon the commission’s recommendations. Instead, on 30 July 2013, fulfilling a campaign promise, President Ernest B. Koroma appointed an 80-member CRC to consider revisions to the constitution. Under the leadership of Justice Edmond K. Cowan, the committee provided yet another opportunity for the public to suggest changes that could strengthen individual rights. Women’s groups, including the 50/50 Group, Mano River Women’s Peace Network (MARWOPNET), Sierra Leone Market Women’s Association (SLMWA), All Political Party Women’s Association (APPWA), Women’s Forum, National Disabled Women’s Forum, Sierra Leone Women, and Port Loko Women’s Association demanded repeal of Section 27(4)(d-e) of the constitution as a first step towards ensuring gender equality. This section exempts adoption, marriage, divorce, burial, devolution of a decedent’s property, and customary law from application of the constitution’s anti-discrimination provisions. The CRC, therefore, recommended repeal and replacement of Section 27 in its entirety with a new section that expressly prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex and other attributes. It also proposed a two-thirds gender parity ceiling for members of elective or appointive bodies (CRC, 2016, pp. 510-511). On January 24, 2017, the CRC presented its report to President Koroma. In a White Paper on November 10, 2017, the government rejected 102 of the CRC’s 134 recommendations, arguing that the country’s constitution and laws adequately address most of the issues raised therein. Despite the hue and cry this raised among members of civil society, the government failed to take any further action, and no referendum was held before the 2018 elections. Parliament’s failure to act on the remaining recommendations underscores the low priority accorded to issues of gender equality in post-conflict Sierra Leone. As a case in point, Parliament itself comprises 145 members, with elections for one constituency pending. Sixteen of the 145 members are women, accounting for 11 percent of the membership. Parliament notes that “The disparity is so wide that it calls for urgent affirmative action in order to address it” (Parliamentary Research Unit, 2019). Numerous countries across Africa including the countries of Morocco, Djibouti, Rwanda, Mozambique, Uganda and Niger (see Bauer 2019) have adopted measures to increase women’s representation in national legislatures while courts in South Africa and Botswana have done the same. Affirmative action measures are temporary, to be

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discontinued when the objectives of gender equality have been achieved (InterParliamentary Union, 2003).

Conclusion Women’s experiences during the civil war offered Sierra Leone an opportunity to address issues of violence and gender inequality through reform of the laws as key components of nation-building. In this chapter I have reviewed the ways in which women experienced the civil war as victims, while acknowledging the often complex nature of their roles within the war, including as perpetrators themselves. Earlier efforts to accord women equal rights with men intensified as conflicts in Africa and elsewhere in the world exposed shortcomings and galvanized the international community to do more to extend legal protections to women in wartime and in peacetime. I have also argued that the history of women’s unequal status dates back to the colonial era, if not earlier, when customary and common laws first began to exist side-by-side. Structural discrimination against women is a function of tradition, customary law, statutory law, and the constitution. Legal inequality entrenched discrimination in regard to property ownership and inheritance, while weak judicial processes, limited prosecutorial resources, out-of-court settlements, and a poorly equipped police force have all contributed to ineffective enforcement of existing laws. During the conflict, sexual violence was both opportunistic and systematic when perpetrated by the RUF and other armed groups (Impact Assessment, 2018). The legal approach to gender equality in Sierra Leone predates the conflict and does not exist in a vacuum (Davies, 2005). Much of the reform effort has been driven by international actors as well as by domestic women’s groups and individuals. The “gender acts” passed by Parliament are designed to strengthen women’s rights, but are hindered by a lack of adequate funding for education and outreach activities in communities throughout the country. National leaders lack the political will to implement the recommendations of the CRC, which offered the public the best chance to reform the country’s laws and eliminate gender discrimination. This inaction jeopardizes the realization of the goals of gender equality and empowerment which have been framed as a fundamental component of post-conflict development. Therefore, much work remains to be done to rid the country of conflicting laws and negative attitudes that inhibit gender equality and women’s empowerment.

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Barriers to Girls’ Education in Rural Sierra Leone: Findings from Participatory Research Susan Shepler

Context: Post-war Education Reform Initiatives There have been a wide range of interventions aimed at rebuilding (or building) Sierra Leone’s education sector generally. Despite these interventions, numerous barriers to quality education in Sierra Leone persist, not just for girls but for all students. The dismal state of the education sector has been detailed by scholars, NGOs, and intergovernmental agencies over the past decades (see Wang’s 2007 report for the World Bank for a comprehensive summary, and Williams 2014 report for the Open Society Institute for a more up-to-date assessment). A significant challenge is poor infrastructure, including a lack of buildings and materials. There is also a lack of trained teachers, and poor investment by the government has resulted in many teachers going unpaid for long stretches of time. There is corruption in the Ministry of Education, with the issue of “ghost teachers”—names on the payroll of teachers who do not exist or do not show up to class—well known and enduring. Furthermore, the legacy of the British education system has left a curriculum mismatched to local realities and a gap between expectations and economic opportunities. Some theorize that the poor state of education was one of the primary drivers of the decade-long civil war (Richards 1996), and the destruction wrought by the war certainly did nothing to improve the situation. The post-war period ushered in a new set of education reform actors, including UN agencies and International NGOs working alongside longstanding local education advocates. With substantial international help, Sierra Leone has moved fairly rapidly towards achieving Education for All (EFA) goals of universal primary enrollment. There is now near gender parity in school attendance, with the most recent data from the World Bank Gender Data Portal claiming that in 2017 the primary completion rate was 69.4 percent for boys and 67.2 percent for girls while the secondary school enrollment rate was 38 percent for boys and 37 percent for girls.1 The All-People’s Congress (APC) Koroma government (2007–2018) made girls’ education a central issue of its education policy and introduced scholarships for girls to attend Junior Secondary School in order to encourage girls’ educational success (more on responses to this policy later). President Bio of the current Sierra Leone 113

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People’s Party (SLPP) Bio government campaigned on the importance of education and has made education a top priority of his administration. Indeed, in August 2018 Bio announced a program of “free quality education”, saying, “education is an investment for human and economic development” (Bio 2018). Some scalability issues have been reported with the rollout of this program, including lack of supplies and late payment of subventions to schools. Interestingly, the official announcement of the free education program made no mention of girls or gender (Bio 2018). Bio’s wife, First Lady Fatima Bio, has made child marriage and violence against girls central to her agenda, launching the “Hands Off Our Girls” program in December 2018. Girls’ education, or “the education of the girl child,” is not a new issue in Africa or in Sierra Leone. As with education generally, there are multiple actors working on the issue. At the UN level, UNICEF is a key actor, as is the UN Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI). International NGOs such as Save the Children, World Vision, the International Rescue Committee, and many others have implemented many education interventions. Most importantly, local actors such as the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) have been quite active in supporting girls’ education.

Framings of the Importance of Girls’ Education, Post War Even in general development contexts, educational initiatives have been the tool of choice for the pursuit of girls’ and women’s empowerment across the Global South. The logic of this is now so ubiquitous it has become common sense (Pincock 2018: 907). Indeed, Switzer (2013: 345) calls this approach the “increasingly hegemonic discourse of global girl power via formal education.” Multiple reasons are given for the importance of girls’ education in post-war contexts. First, girls’ education is often linked to national development, leading to the prevalence of sayings such as “educate a girl and you educate a nation”. Girls’ education is linked to a broad range of development issues, including the importance of girls’ education to addressing maternal and child mortality rates. The second most common framing for demanding improvement of girls’ education is human rights, whether the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Millennium Development Goals, or now the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In particular, SDG 4 sets the following aim: “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” Third, and particular to conflict-affected contexts, is the Women, Peace, and Security agenda laid out in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (United Nations Security Council 2000). This agenda has mainly been understood to center the inclusion of women in all aspects of peacebuilding, from the bargaining table to peacekeeping forces, but it also posits a causal linkage between gender equality and state stability. Melander (2005) found that “more equal societies, measured either in terms of female representation in parliament or the ratio of female-to-male higher education attainment, are associated with lower levels of intrastate armed conflict.” Finally, an especially practical framing of the importance of girls’ education to the political empowerment of women is the need for educated women in the pipeline to run for political office.

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These multiple framings tend to reinforce each other and have become hegemonic in the fields of development, peacebuilding, and education in emergencies. However, we have to be careful about adopting the “girls’ empowerment through education” message uncritically, and instead listen to how Sierra Leoneans themselves understand girls’ education, and its potential for individual success and structural change.

Conventional Wisdom about Girls and Education in Sierra Leone There are many common assumptions shared among international experts and Sierra Leonean government policymakers about why Sierra Leone’s girls are not enrolling or succeeding at school at the same rates as boys. In a 2014 report, the Ministry of Social Welfare Gender and Children’s Affairs (MSWGCA) explains, Two major interrelated challenges to the achievement of Gender Equality, Women’s Empowerment and the successful implementation of the (Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action) include low level of education among women and girls and deeply rooted patriarchal customs and traditions. The practice in rural societies within Sierra Leone, where most people live below the poverty line, is usually to favour education of boys at the expense of girls. Such male preferences have led to huge disparities in educational enrolment and attainment for men and women. MSWGCA 2014, 3

The same report continues, Cultural and economic factors are also cited as contributing factors to the low level education of girls and women. The economic crisis that Sierra Leone experienced in the 1980s meant that as resources became scarce and priorities were set, most families chose to educate their males rather than their girls and women. This preference is common in many African societies, where families believe that by educating their boys they will support their own kin, whereas educating their girls they will benefit the families those girls marry into. MSWGCA 2014, 15

In other words, the conventional wisdom shared by international experts and Sierra Leonean policymaking elites is that traditional—one could even read that as “backward”—beliefs about girls’ and women’s proper roles and goals are important to understanding educational disparity in Sierra Leone. Analysts cite a range of interrelated factors to explain girls’ lack of secondary schooling. The country’s civil conflict has meant that many children delayed their entry to school, and according to the World Bank gender issues were compounded by age discrepancies, “Over-aged children, particularly girls, may also tend to drop out more readily because of such personal and family pressures as marriage, work, and looking after their siblings” (Wang 2007, 62). Other factors behind girls’ low educational success commonly posited by analysts and policymakers include gender-based violence

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(GBV) in schools, families’ need for girls’ labor, and a lack of appropriate sanitation facilities at schools.2 This set of assumed benefits to girls’ education—as the key to national development and as a basic human right—as well as the assumed reasons for the lack of girls’ education—from patriarchal culture to a lack of gender-sensitive school environments— form a kind of shared conventional wisdom among international experts and Sierra Leonean government policymakers. Many of these perspectives emanate from educated elites in Freetown and the West, and rarely take into account the views of girls themselves, their parents, families, or communities. In particular, they may be built on outdated assumptions about girls’ lives in today’s rural Sierra Leone.3

Methodology: Participatory Action Research This chapter reports on a research project that aimed to uncover and document rural Sierra Leoneans’ perspectives on education. I led the research on behalf of the British child protection NGO Children in Crisis (CiC), in partnership with FAWE Sierra Leone and Frances Fortune Associates (Shepler 2015). The research was conducted in rural Kambia District for thirteen months in 2013 and 2014 (right before the Ebola outbreak began).4 Kambia is the district with the lowest educational indicators in the nation. Before the Ebola outbreak, Children in Crisis and FAWE (CiC/FAWE) were implementing a two-year “support to rural schools” initiative that included teacher training, school management committee training, adult literacy classes, and a microcredit program. They requested a parallel research project to use participatory approaches to answer two questions: 1. What are the barriers to girls’ education? 2. How can communities support education in a setting where the state is absent or weak? We set up twenty-four volunteer “active research groups” to gather data and investigate questions about community support for education and other issues, including the barriers to girls’ education (UNICEF 2006). Here I go into detail about the active research groups, including where they were set up, who was included, how the process worked, and what topics they discussed. We selected six communities across the three chiefdoms where CiC/FAWE was working, as follows: in Gbinleh-Dixon Chiefdom, Mafaray and Masiaka; in Masungbola Chiefdom, Kawula and Masimera; and in Bramaia Chiefdom, Kukuna and Kaskonday. Communities were selected in consultation with CiC/FAWE staff. In each chiefdom, we selected two sites: one larger town and one smaller town or village. We included sites where staff felt their initiative was proceeding very well (a success story) and sites where their initiative was not proceeding very well (a challenge). We also included three types of school in the analysis: government, mission, and Islamic. We worked with CiC/FAWE project personnel to identify Focal Persons in each chiefdom, looking for well-respected residents who were willing to do volunteer work

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Figure 7.1 Map of research area.

and could mobilize community members, work well with school children and other youth, and write reports in English. Because Focal Persons lived in the chiefdoms, they were in the communities all the time to work with the active research groups, respond to crises, check up on group participants, and report to the research coordinators. In each of the six selected communities, we worked with the Focal Person to set up the active research groups. Four groups were formed in each community: ● ● ● ●

Male and female adults (“Adults”) Mixed boy and girl student group (“Students”) Boy only group, mixed school going and non-school going (“Boys”) Girl only group, mixed school going and non-school going (“Girls”)

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This design allowed for an in-depth, comparative perspective across communities, age groups, and genders. In addition, rather than creating groups across the whole project area, setting up groups that worked only in their own communities facilitated ground-up group formation and ongoing work over time. The groups were allowed to form somewhat organically, in that we did not specify a certain number of participants, instead merely asking that interested group members meet at least once a month, with some continuity across months. The groups represent the voices of community members, but there is some selection bias, as the participants are all people who cared enough about education to participate without remuneration in a monthly discussion about education in their communities. Our team created a list of monthly guiding questions, in collaboration with Amanda Jones (the CiC Programme Manager for Sierra Leone). The questions were phrased to be easy for the groups to understand and also interesting for them to discuss (the complete list of guiding questions is in Appendix 1). The questions were developed in consultation with FAWE/CiC staff, Focal Persons, and later with input from the active research groups themselves. The aim was to ask general questions about education at the community level in order to understand how people saw educational challenges from their own perspectives. This research project had many challenges. First was the low literacy level of the active research groups and Focal Persons, which was mainly challenging because the outcome of their discussions was reported in written form. The second significant challenge was a lack of understanding of the method by research group members, and confusion about whether and how these research activities might be tied to later benefits. It was also originally unclear to some of the groups that each of them should have their own ideas about the questions, and they often strove to make sure they all had the “right” answer to the questions. This meant a great deal of duplication of answers among groups, at least in the early stages. Third, there were serious transportation and communication barriers that meant the research coordinators could only visit monthly. If the Focal Persons misunderstood the questions or any other aspect of the project, the research coordinators would only find out about it the following month. Finally, there was the issue of expectations. A learned dependency was often clear in their written reports and in some of our interactions. In the postconflict setting, many Sierra Leoneans have learned standard ways of interacting with NGOs, such as presenting their needs in a way that aligns with the projects on offer and adopting a beneficiary identity. These are just some of the issues that led us to conclude that participatory action research (PAR) is difficult to carry out in Sierra Leone (see also McKay, Veale, Worthen, and Wessells 2011 and Onyango and Worthen 2010 for a description of similar challenges in a PAR project in Sierra Leone with girl mothers). This method is very challenging, but it did reveal the struggles of rural Sierra Leoneans, young and old, male and female, in their own terms. We do not claim that this is a “representative sample”; rather, what I report here are the discourses that we heard that either followed the conventional wisdom or surprised us. The goal is to stimulate some fresh thinking towards new policy and programming, especially in spaces where the state is absent or weak.

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Findings: Voices from Kambia District The first guiding question asks about the purpose of schooling, and starts to reveal some of the gendered logics behind differences in school attendance and completion. Guiding question: Why send children to school? Why might you not send children to school? Are the answers different for boys and girls? (July 2013) The answers to the question, “why send children to school” ranged from the practical to the idealistic. It is generally expected that children will support their parents in old age, and schooling was seen to raise the chances of good employment. It was also expected that educated children would become leaders in their families, communities, and the nation.5 Individually, it was thought that educated children would learn knowledge, skills, and self-discipline, and would know their rights. The Masiaka adults group said, “Send children to school, let them don’t be like us because we are illiterate.”6 A girls group said that education helped them to speak in public. School was also seen as a place to become socialized, and to learn to value culture and tradition. Reasons one might not send children to school were similarly diverse. Some talked about poverty, or having too many children to send them all. For example, “they cannot put their children to school because of their polygamous marriage; e.g., if you have three wives and ten children so he cannot put all of them in school so he will decide not to send all of them” (Kawula girls). Others explained that child labor was needed for farming, petty trading, or to “scare birds” off the farm. Sometimes, the parents themselves are uneducated or illiterate and therefore do not understand the value of education, or value farming more than education. One or two groups mentioned that people are less likely to send children to school who are not their own biological children, or who are disabled. Children who are “unserious” or who have a “lack of talent” may be seen as poor candidates for schooling. Interestingly, although some said that school was a place to learn to respect culture and tradition, others thought that school might lead children to not respect their cultures and traditions. Still others thought that school leads to bad habits, especially among boys. The Kukuna students’ group said, “If some of them are educated, they become a smokers/gamblers/drinkers and thief in the family.” The groups were also asked specifically about the different reasons given for boys and girls. The Kukuna boys group reported: “For boys, we fear not to practice the following: gambling, stealing, smoking, etc. Also not to avoid their original home for urban centres. But for girls, we fear of their early life such as teenage pregnancy, early marriage, etc.” Indeed, the fear of pregnancy was consistently cited as one of the biggest reasons parents may not send their girls to school. Generally in Sierra Leone if a girl becomes pregnant her educational trajectory stops.7 Parents fear that with one mistake, they may lose all that they have invested in a girl. (Boys who may impregnate girls do not face the same repercussions.) Another interesting line of argument ran in the opposite direction. Many claimed that educated girls would be more likely to “remember” their parents, and so parents would be more likely to see the eventual benefits of education. The logic of family reciprocity led many to argue that boys would eventually focus on their wives and their

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in-laws, forgetting about their parents. The Mafaray students’ group concluded, “Girls have sympathy for their parents.” There were arguments in both directions about who was more likely to complete an education. Some argued that boys were more likely to complete, since girls might have to drop out due to pregnancy at any point. The Masimera adults saw it the other way, arguing, “The boys will simply abandon education and join Okada [motorcycle taxi] riding, but the girls will never do such.” Happily, no one stated that girls should not go to school. Most seemed supportive of both boys and girls going to school, revealing changing views about the importance of education in the district. This could be a result of NGO and government “sensitization” about the importance of girls’ education, or it could be that participants knew to give the “right” answer acceptable in a public group. One adults group explained, “they sensitize the community about the essence of girl child education” or “[NGOs or Government] bring up programs to encourage girl child education.” Alternately, it could be an artifact of the sample, people who cared enough about education to invest their time in a monthly meeting on the subject. The next guiding question asked directly about educational challenges faced by boys and girls. Guiding Question: What challenges related to education do boys in this community face? What challenges related to education do girls in this community face? (November 2013) Both boys and girls faced the challenges associated with a weak educational system: lack of materials, lack of trained teachers, lack of infrastructure, etc. Both groups complained of a lack of parental support and monitoring, and the fact that they are sometimes called away from school to engage in labor (farm work for boys, trading for girls). Both groups are susceptible to material attractions, with “mobile attraction”—the desire for the flashiest mobile phone—cited for both genders. Both groups are reportedly led astray by “bad company.” For boys, the desire for fast money led them to Okada (or motorcycle taxi) riding, and “bad company” included hanging out at “Ataya bases” (locations where young men drink tea and talk), but also smoking, drinking, gambling and “jamba” (marijuana) smoking. Girls are lured by “disco jam and film shows” (Kukuna girls). The Mafaray adults group blamed this in part on the parents, saying one of the challenges that girls face is, “the negative attitude of some parent towards their girl child. Some parent does not encourage their girl child, that some people drive their girl child out of the house which can lead some children to the street and join bad friends that can make them drink and other bad attitudes like prostitution.” As above, the primary challenge for girls is the fear of pregnancy. The Kukuna adults report that, “When the girl give her first birth the illiterate family will refuse to continue paying her fees for fear of another pregnancy.” Greater distances between home and school compound this fear, as parents often do not want to send girls away to secondary school in a nearby big town because they do not feel able to adequately monitor them from a distance. The adult groups did not mention it, but some of the students and girls groups brought up the issue of family planning and contraception. The Kaskonday students

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report, “The girls problem in education is the lack of families’ support in this community because the support means to put them in family planning, if [they do so, the girls] will learn.” The Kukuna students group echoed this conclusion and gave a warning: “During the ages of 10-15 years [girls] will fail to join family planning, giving birth to one child will cause them to become a farmer.” Although a few groups mentioned early marriage as a challenge for boys, the impact of early marriage and early pregnancy are clearly felt much more severely by girls. The next guiding question asked more directly about early pregnancy, and in terms familiar to the community members. It was the question that elicited the most enthusiastic participation by the group members. Guiding Question: They say “after BECE8 belleh” (i.e., girls tend to get pregnant right after sitting the exam to pass out of primary school). Is that so? What are the reasons for this? And what are the outcomes? How do the causes and outcomes vary by gender? (October 2013) The vast majority of respondents agreed the phenomenon of girls getting pregnant after the BECE exam is real. (The Kukuna adults were alone in saying, “No, not so. The slogan seems to stimulate the girl child to do the act.”) The responses revealed plenty of blame to go around. Some blamed improper monitoring by parents, some blamed the peer group, and some blamed the older men who tempt the young women. Some blamed the broader culture of human rights; for example, Kawula students said, “Girls are not [afraid] of their parent[s] because of the human rights act against child abuse and child labour.” As above, girls were seen to be easily attracted to rides on Okada motorcycles or the use of fancy mobile phones. The Masiaka girls group seemed to confirm this, saying, “Girls, as you know, they like music and they usually go out at night to find boys to give them money instead of holding their books and study[ing].” The boys seemed to blame the girls and assumed that contraception is the girl’s responsibility. The Kaskonday boys said, “The girl never use condom when they are sexing with boys and mans. They never used [an] injection for them not to be pregnant.” Some groups talked about the exam itself, usually held far away and with insufficient supervision. The Kukuna boys group claimed that the exam was the moment the girls felt free and mature: “Both NPSC9 and BECE candidate especially the girl think that immediately after their exams that they have gain maturity and also gain their total freedom from their parents. And therefore, they could [take] whatever enjoyment as they feel like.” The Masimera boys group said that girls at that age lack “seriousness.” The outcomes of pregnancy, however, can be quite serious. Girls may drop out of school and be isolated from their community. These pregnancies add to the burden on the girl’s parents and can increase the family’s poverty. Health effects include the risk of STDs, abortions, or even loss of life. Frustrated girls may engage in prostitution. Generally, the girls bear the majority of the impact, as girls who become pregnant typically drop out of school while boys who impregnate girls stay in school. According to the Kukuna adults group, “In most cases the boy will continue his schooling with no drastic action against him.”

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However, this is not always the case. Mafaray students explained, “Some parent[s] take boys to human right officers which will later result to a family settlement/ imprisonment.” That is, it is possible for legal action to affect the boy and his family. Sometimes the boy is made to stop school as well. The Mafaray students gave an example from their community where the girl’s family insisted the boy should “stop school going until their daughter ends lactating period. [Then after] lactating, their daughter was to be taken back to school.” The Masiaka girls shared a similar example: “Some parent[s] take boys to court and after that they ask [the] boy’s parent to send back their daughters to school after suckling their baby.” Thus, there is some variation in outcome for early pregnancies, and pathways do exist for girls with early pregnancies to continue their educations. However, these examples are still exceptions, and in general, as the Kukuna girls group explains, “Boys are allowed to further their education while the girl child stay home during pregnancy and breast feeding. . . . Parents of the girl child become angry with her while the boy’s parents become more happier to see their bouncing grandchild being delivered.” The burden of early pregnancy is still uniquely borne by girls, and boys are rarely mentioned as either part of the problem or part of the solution. The next question attempted to understand girls’ success in school. To avoid excessive focus on the challenges, and in line with a “capabilities approach” (Nussbaum 2001, Unterhalter 2003), we wanted to identify factors that contributed (or could contribute) to a girl’s success in school and that could be supported further: Guiding Question: Do you know any girl in this community who is doing well in school? Why is she succeeding? (September 2013) Most said, yes, they knew a girl who was succeeding in school. However, the students, boys, and girls groups in Masiaka all answered no, saying that parents in their community only supported students to complete primary and not secondary schooling. They blamed this mainly on the fact that there is no secondary school in their community, and parents are afraid to send girls to live in a big town alone with no financial support. The other villages’ exemplary girls succeeded, it was believed, due to their character and their family support. The list of individual character traits given included patience, concentration, obedience, hard work, honesty, determination, discipline, respect for authorities, seriousness, and abstinence. Parental or family care took the form of encouragement, financial support, and limited work at home. Another often-cited factor was having an uncle or auntie in the big town who knows the value of education and who can offer a place to stay and monitor or even sponsor a girl’s secondary education. One particular example was given by the students in Mafaray, who described one successful girl as follows: She always goes to school on time, she has respect for teachers and colleagues above her level that always help her when she come across any problem in her studies. Her

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parent[s] are also monitoring her education by providing all necessary needs of her school. She did her secondary education in the district headquarter town where her uncle stay[s] who is also educated. She is always among with friends that discussed about education. She never joined any bad company. We find out that [her] parent are average people that is not poor not rich and they also valued education. This brings about her success.

Other groups gave examples of girls from their communities who finished college and now work for an NGO or bank in Kambia. They considered these women good models of what education could bring. Interestingly, and somewhat surprisingly, no one mentioned anything to do with the quality of the school or teachers to explain girls’ academic success. The next guiding question was suggested by group members at the midterm review workshop, who had the unfairness of government scholarship policy on their minds and requested that the issue be discussed. Guiding Question: What do you like about the government scholarship policies? What do you not like? (April 2014) The Koroma government supported the education of “the girl child” through its GirlChild Support Programme in junior secondary schools. Free education was available for both boys and girls at primary level but girls had added incentive of a free education up to the end of Junior Secondary School including examination fees (UNHCHR 2011). Participants reported generally liking the scholarship policy because they saw that its aim was to help children, parents, communities, and the nation as a whole, and they believed that education would bring economic development and peace. They also liked the scholarship program because they said it creates healthy competition among the students, which makes them more serious about school. They also said the existence of the scholarships has really motivated parents to send their girls to school. One group explained that it was the government’s responsibility to support education. However, there was great discontent with the policy as well,10 with the most common objection being that the policy only supported girls and not boys. Some saw this as unfair. The Masimera adults said that the government “care[s] more about girls when giving this scholarship.” The Masiaka students saw this as the government NOT considering gender equality, saying, “Government failed to realize that although girl child’s education is also important but some today who benefit from these facilities misused it and at the end they become drop out but yet still government will continue to help them more frequently instead [of] the boys.” The Masiaka boys group was even more outspoken, saying, “We found out that the government scholarship brought was only for girl child education. Moreover, the government try to make schoolboys to be drop outs of the school, because they did not give their scholarship to the boys education. Some of the school boys they did not have good supporting. For this reason I hate government scholarship.” There was a similar statement from the Kukuna boys group: “These scholarships are mostly provided for the girl child, who are the most careless and unserious people for education. Which one at the end becomes wasted.”

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Of course, these views represent a misunderstanding of the goals of the scholarship program, and do not grasp the larger picture for girls’ education in the district.11 But this kind of pushback against the goal of gender equity is important to note. Beyond disgruntlement from the boys, there was widespread feeling that the scholarships do not always go to the right person or for the right kind of education. We heard stories of deserving girls who did not receive help because they were not enrolled in formally sanctioned schools, or poor boys who were excelling in school but could not afford to continue. Although the groups did not put it in these terms, the gist of the complaint seemed to suggest that a scholarship for all girls did not make a fine-grained enough distinction of which students were really most deserving of assistance. Perhaps one could argue that the solution is to make scholarship decisions locally. However, another common complaint about scholarships was corruption, likely referring to a broader range of grants than only the girls’ Junior Secondary School scholarships. The Masimera adults say that those who hand out the scholarships “consider only those that have influence in the offices.” The Masiaka students group complained that, Government lacks monitoring to know whether these scholarships reached the diverse person or not. This is one of the reasons made us dislike government scholarship policy. . . . The scholarship government do offer are very limited even if those that deserve to have are many, few will benefit from it especially those with strong link are the lucky ones.

The Kawula boys group explained, “The higher authority who are our leaders they use this scholarship as a source of finding money that they sell this scholarship to those whose parent are rich to enrich themselves.” The Kawula adults agreed, revealing the “existence of kick-backs by inspectorate councillor and other monitoring authorities/community.” One charge is that parents or guardians are not aware of the scholarship given to their girl child, and so they end up paying the fees anyway while the headmasters or others “eat the money.” The Kaskonday girls group said, “Because of lack of understanding in scholarship guarantee, government [gives] scholarship to pupils and again parent[s] pay fee to school.” The Kaskonday adults recommend, “government should send [an] agency to the community for sensitizing . . . people of [the] community for them to make use of scholarship. Because even though some pupils have got the scholarship aid, principal or head teacher also ask money for their school fees.”

Summary of Findings From the perspective of the groups we worked with, there are many barriers to quality education in their communities: poor facilities, lack of trained or qualified teachers, poor conditions of service for teachers, lack of textbooks, and general poverty. Introducing a gender perspective, we also see barriers specific to girls’ experiences. Far and away the most commonly cited barrier to girls’ education was early pregnancy or the fear of early pregnancy.12 Schoolgirls who become pregnant are usually forced to

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stop their education (unlike the boys who impregnate girls). Even more troubling, the fear of early pregnancy keeps some parents from sending their girls to school at all. A related issue is that some girls do not continue to secondary school because secondary schools are located in larger towns, and parents often fear that girls will “go astray” without close supervision. Finally, boys harbored some resentment that girls receive special scholarships from the government; this is not a barrier to girls’ education, but is something to be mindful of when promoting gender equity in education. Perhaps these findings are not surprising to those familiar with Sierra Leone, but they are rarely articulated in this manner in policy spaces. I especially want to highlight the differences between our findings and the “conventional wisdom” about the barriers to girls’ education discussed in the introduction. The conventional wisdom (from experts in Freetown and the West) sees “backwardness” as the problem, arguing that Sierra Leoneans do not appreciate the importance of education for girls and therefore do not prioritize it. But we talked to many people—adults and children, male and female, educated and not—who do value girls’ education but still face challenges in this endeavor.

Policy Recommendations More flexibility in the education system is needed to allow teenage mothers to return to school. The Kukuna girls group agrees that, “Dropout girls should be encouraged to go back to school.” We found that even in the absence of formal policies, some families and communities were finding ways to do just that, and so there are pathways for girls with early pregnancies to resume their education. Formal policies to this end could include special programs for young mothers, rapid catch-up curricula, or alternate vocational or technical education. Family planning programming is linked to educational outcomes, and more should be done to explore in-school or out-of-school sex education curricula. Unfortunately, current reproductive health education has many problems. Denney et al. (2016) recommend improved reproductive health education practices, report on some of the issues faced with school-based clubs, and detail the misinformation they found in the existing curriculum and educational materials. The exclusion of pregnant girls from school after Ebola shows that girls continue to face an unfair burden when it comes to sexual activity.13 In a public statement at the Statehouse on May 20, 2015, President Ernest Koroma weighed in on the issue, saying that allowing pregnant girls to sit in class with non-pregnant ones “will not hold for now because society is not prepared for it.” He explained, “society cannot accept that, adding that if such decision is allowed at this moment, it will be rejected and resisted by the people.”14 Since the time of data collection, there has been movement on this issue. In December 2019, the regional ECOWAS Court of Justice ruled that the government of Sierra Leone breached the right of pregnant girls to education by prohibiting pregnant schoolgirls from accessing school. In March 2020, Sierra Leone’s Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education issued a statement announcing that the ban on pregnant girls from attending school and sitting exams was overturned with

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immediate effect. The decision was lauded by rights activists, though top journalist Umaru Fofana reported for the BBC that the stigma surrounding pregnant schoolgirls would likely continue.15 Denney et al. (2016) suggest that, in order to address early pregnancy in Sierra Leone, “programming to reduce teenage pregnancy should shift towards a focus on changing the context in which girls are getting pregnant, rather than focusing on changing the behaviour and decisions of girls” (p. vi). Their first recommendation to prevent teenage pregnancy is “Do not just focus programmes on girls as if they are the ones that need to change their behaviour; focus on communities as a whole, especially males and parents” (p. vii).

Conclusions One of the central questions of this volume is why the many post-war interventions related to gender and power in Sierra Leone have not had as great an impact as advocates had hoped. In some sense, the outcome points to the deep entrenchment of patriarchal power relations in Sierra Leone, but more than that we need to question the neoliberal assumption that education for girls will lead to women’s empowerment. Simply put, most post-war education initiatives were not genuinely transformative. They were mainly about access (i.e., increasing the number of girls in school), not about changing what happens in schools. How to transform the curriculum and culture of schools in Sierra Leone is a bigger question, one that Sierra Leone has yet to fully grapple with (Shepler and Williams 2017, Pai 2017). Maclure and Denov (2009), using interviews with former girl soldiers, also conclude that getting girls into school is unlikely to change entrenched patriarchal structures in post-war Sierra Leone. Commenting on ethnographic fieldwork in schools in Tanzania, Pincock describes “the limitations of school as a space in which ‘empowerment’ might be possible for girls” (Pincock 2018: 907). She points to “two interlocking factors—the neoliberalisation of empowerment discourse and the inherently normative way in which girls’ sexual agency is framed by development actors—and the ‘common-sense’ institutionalisation of education as a route for girls’ empowerment that these approaches facilitate” (Pincock 2018: 907). The project of women’s political empowerment must be built on a feminism that understands a full range of what is understood as “the political” and respects the voices of rural women’s experiences and goals. Eliminating barriers to girls’ education requires more than a scholarship program; it requires engaging in rural gender politics in ways that are transformative yet not patronizing. There are strong women in these communities, and in some ways, they are already working towards better futures for their children. It behooves us feminist scholars and education policymakers to listen to their concerns and learn from their solutions. Understanding how these barriers are perceived in locally relevant terms may allow for more successful programming towards girls’ school retention, and in turn, allow for a greater number of women in the education pipeline and ultimately participating in local and national politics. More importantly, we may learn more about how Sierra Leonean women themselves conceive

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of “women’s political empowerment” in post-war Sierra Leone (Abdullah and Ibrahim 2010). As we can see from the other contributions to this volume, “women’s political empowerment” can mean creating space for women to hold political office, a strategy primarily focused at the level of the educated elite. It can also mean taking “traditional” sources of women’s power seriously, whether located in the Bondo/Sande women’s societies, in informal trade networks, or in women’s honored positions within Christianity or Islam. It may also mean the power that comes from grassroots organizing, for example through labor unions or market women’s associations. I believe that a Sierra Leonean feminist movement must understand and operate on all of these levels together.

Notes 1 http://datatopics.worldbank.org/gender/country/sierra-leone (accessed: September 4, 2019). 2 A focus on building school latrines by UNICEF and others has been justified not only for public health reasons but to address the needs of menstruating girls who may skip school due to a lack of facilities. 3 See the report from Wessells, et al. (2012) on the gap between local and government models of child protection based on a rapid ethnographic study in two districts of Sierra Leone. Pai (2017) is also based on broad-ranging interviews with rural Sierra Leoneans about education. 4 The West African Ebola outbreak (2013–2016) mainly affected Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone and killed over 11,000 people. 5 See Bledsoe (1992) for an excellent discussion of how the meaning(s) of education have shifted since independence. 6 Throughout, I italicize direct quotes from the active research groups and use their own language. 7 See Cooper Inveen’s July 2019 Reuters article entitled “Sierra Leone school defies state ban on pregnant girls in class” for a description of a school that is challenging this state of affairs. 8 BECE stands for the Basic Education Certificate Examination, and it is the exam one takes to pass out of primary school and into Junior Secondary School. 9 National Primary School Certificate, the exam taken at the end of primary school. 10 Chapman and Mushlin (2008) report similar tensions. 11 According to a Situational Assessment of Girls’ Education (2010), approximately 93 percent of urban children who enter Class 1 reach Class 5 compared to 76 percent for children in rural areas. The Assessment suggests that the missing children are girls, as the number of girls in classes 5 and 6 are much reduced compared to the early classes. In Kambia District the percentage of children of primary school age (6 to 11 years) who are attending primary or secondary school is 72.8 percent of boys and 66.5 percent of girls, giving an overall figure of 69.9 percent (UNICEF MICS4 2010). 12 The Education for All Sierra Leone Coalition (2010) also found that pregnancy was the main reason cited for girls to drop out (though it is unclear exactly who they interviewed.). Anne Menzel, in a study of the new focus on teenage pregnancy post-Ebola, encountered widespread concerns over teenage pregnancy and the

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widely-shared conviction that girls’ lacking morals lay at the heart of the problem (Menzel 2019: 3). 13 See Amnesty International. (2015). Shamed and Blamed: Pregnant Girls’ Rights at Risk in Sierra Leone. London, Amnesty International, and Denney et al. (2015). Teenage Pregnancy after Ebola in Sierra Leone: Mapping responses, gaps, and ongoing challenges. 14 Government of Sierra Leone, “Sierra Leone: President Urges More Sensitization on the Issue of Pregnant Girls.” May 21, 2015. http://allafrica.com/stories/201505211367.html (accessed May 23, 2015). 15 “Sierra Leone Overturns Ban on Pregnant Schoolgirls” March 30, 2020. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52098230 (accessed July 23, 2020).

Appendix: Monthly Guiding Questions 1. [July 2013] What are the resources of the school? What are the resource needs of the school? Rank the resource needs of the school. 2. [August 2013] Why send children to school? Why might you not send children to school? 3. [September 2013] Do you know any girl in this community who is doing well in school? Why is she succeeding? 4. [October 2013] They say “after BECE belleh” (i.e., girls tend to get pregnant right after sitting the exam to pass out of primary school). Is that so? What are the reasons for this? And what are the outcomes? How do the causes and outcomes vary by gender? 5. [November 2013] What challenges related to education do boys in this community face? What challenges related to education do girls in this community face? 6. [December 2013] What challenges do male teachers face in this community? What challenges do female teachers face in this community? 7. [January 2014] How does the community support education? Give specific examples. 8. [February 2014] What are the Ministry of Education and District Council doing to support education in your community? 9. [March 2014] How do parents in this community support their children’s education? 10. [April 2014] What do you like about the government scholarship policies? What do you not like? 11. [May 2014] Are there UU (untrained and unqualified) teachers in your school? How is their work in the school? Are there community teachers in your school? How is their work in the school? 12. [June 2014] What changes in education have you seen in this community since the end of the war? 13. [July 2014] What makes teachers happy and willing to teach? How many teachers have left the school since last year? How many have started since last year? What is the difference between new teachers and the ones that have left?

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Where Does She Enter? (Re) Defining the Role of Traditional Birth Attendants in Sierra Leone Fredanna M. McGough

I help to support the clinic to provide health, advise and treatment on daily basis, also help the nurses in term of delivery and counseling 39-year-old traditional birth attendant, rural Sierra Leone (2014) We as traditional birth attendants we mobilize and motivate pregnant and lactating women to come to the clinic for safety delivery. 43-year-old traditional birth attendant, rural Sierra Leone (2014)

Background In 2002, the decade-long conflict that had plagued Sierra Leone officially ended. In the years following the war, attempts have been made to address the challenges Sierra Leone faces in all sectors of society. Six years after the war, in 2008, Sierra Leone ranked 178th out of 178 in the UN Human Development index (Government of Sierra Leone [GoSL], 2009), with 70 percent of the population living below $1 per day (GoSL, 2009). By 2020 the country was 182nd out of 189 countries, and it continues to be one of the least developed nations in the world (United Nations Development Program [UNDP], 2021). One marked concern among many is in the health arena, where women and children are particularly vulnerable. Prior to the war and during the conflict period, there was a vacuum left by professionals fleeing the nation. According to the Sierra Leone Association of Non-Governmental Organizations (SLANGO) (2006), many health professionals contributed to the brain drain as they left Sierra Leone to get away from the conflict and find better opportunities in other countries. During the war, women were not attended by skilled health personnel, and Sierra Leone had one of the lowest percent of births attended by skilled staff (43 percent), coupled with the highest fertility rates in the world (SLANGO, 2006). Historically in Sierra Leone, traditional birth attendants (TBAs) have been an integral part of pregnancy and childbirth (Oyerinde et al., 2012). According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “a traditional birth attendant (TBA) is a person 129

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who assists the mother during childbirth and initially acquired her skills by delivering babies herself or through apprenticeships to other traditional birth attendants” (WHO, 1992). This definition was updated in a United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) (2004) document indicating that a TBA is “a community-based provider of care during pregnancy and childbirth” (p. 7). TBAs have been considered a necessary aspect of childbirth, particularly in remote areas (Oyerinde et al., 2012; Rishworth et al., 2016). In countries like Sierra Leone, where the majority of the population live in rural and remote communities, TBAs have been “officially recognized by the health care system and permitted to practice, although with close supervision and support” (HigginsSteele et al., 2015, p. 9). In some communities, TBAs are relied upon for birthing because of obstacles to access skilled health care professionals. Obstacles include distance to health care facilities, financial burdens, and transportation constraints (Rishworth et al., 2016, M’Cormack et al., 2012). During its post-conflict years, poor maternal health outcomes in Sierra Leone reached astronomical heights. The chances of dying from maternal causes were 1 in 6 in 2007 when compared to Africa as a whole (1 in 16), or to industrial nations (1 in 4,000) (SLANGO, 2006; Ipas, 2006; Grieco, 2005). The World Health Statistics (2012) indicated that the maternal mortality ratio (MMR), which measures maternal mortality per 100,000 live births, was high both during and after the war (1990: 2,300; 2000: 1,300; 2010: 890 per 100,000 live births). Surprisingly, the percentage of births attended by a skilled health provider was higher at 60 percent compared to the sub-Saharan Africa region average of 48 percent (United Nations, 2015a). In 2017, seven years after the 2010 implementation of Free Health Care Initiative (FHCI), the MMR increased to 1,120 per 100,000 live births and Sierra Leone was still relatively close to the bottom of the maternal mortality spectrum, only coming ahead of South Sudan (MMR = 1,150 per 100,000) (World Health Statistics, 2020). Between 2010 and 2019 the percentage of births attended by a skilled health provider increased to 87 percent, which could be attributed as an achievement as a result of the implementation of FHCI, but Sierra Leone’s MMR remained high at 717 per 100,000 when compared to eleven other countries with similar percentages of child births attended by skilled health personnel, which averaged 281 per 100,000 live births (range: 70–544 per 100,000) (UNFPA, 2021; World Health Statistics, 2020). Women’s health indicators reflect a nation’s health, as maternal deaths and illness have a significant impact on society. A woman’s death or incapacity not only disrupts her family, but also affects economic life and the social fabric of her community (WHO, 2004). According to the WHO, about 75 percent of maternal deaths in Africa are a result of five main complications, which Sierra Leone mirrors in three: obstetric hemorrhage (33.9 percent), sepsis (9.7 percent), hypertensive disorders (9.1 percent) (WHO, 2005; World Health Statistics, 2020; GoSL, 2017b). Sierra Leone differs with indirect causes (16.7 percent) and HIV/AIDS (6.2 percent). Some of these complications can be addressed through timely management (GoSL, 2017b; WHO, 2005; World Health Statistics, 2020). For example, post-delivery hemorrhage (severe bleeding after childbirth) can be mitigated by injecting oxytocics, sepsis (infections) can be prevented with good hygiene and early treatment, and pre-eclampsia and eclampsia (high blood pressure during pregnancy) can be managed with the administering of magnesium

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sulfate during pre-eclampsia to reduce risk of eclampsia. Additional contributing factors to maternal mortality include chronic conditions like anemia and malaria, as well as ectopic pregnancies and unsafe abortion; these too can sometimes be addressed by public health and early interventions, such as providing services for the safe termination of pregnancies to reduce the incidences of unsafe abortion (World Health Statistics, 2020; WHO, 2005, 2012; GoSL, 2017b). To improve maternal health outcomes, health care providers in Sierra Leone have focused on addressing the “Three Delays”: 1) making the decision to seek appropriate help for obstetric emergencies, 2) having access to an appropriate facility, and 3) receiving necessary care (Barnes-Josiah et al., 1998). The “Three Delays” model is predicated on the premise that the high maternal mortality rates result from inadequate responses and interventions to complications in pregnancy at each of these three delay points. In Sierra Leone, these three delays manifest in several ways. The first delay involves poor or untimely decision making for a referral to seek appropriate medical care for obstetric emergencies. Traditional birth attendants and family members, who are not trained to recognize obstetric complications and emergencies as they arise, might not ensure a timely referral for assisted delivery protocols or understand the potential needs for an intervention for pre-eclampsia, blood transfusions for blood loss during hemorrhaging, a caesarian section delivery, or other conditions. As a result, women would be in labor for over the recommended number of hours or pressured to deliver their baby when there may have been an obstruction or breech delivery. One study found that when referral rates did not increase, it was because the TBAs failed to recognize complications; this delay could be addressed by training (Hernandez & Salihu 2004, p. 11). The second delay is due to lack of access to an appropriate facility for delivery. Such facilities would need to provide at least “supervised deliveries” such as those found at Maternal and Child Health Posts (MCHPs), which serve less than 5,000 individuals (Figure 8.1). Community Health Posts (CHP), which serve 5,000–10,000 individuals, provide additional protections against communicable diseases as well as rehabilitation, in addition to what the MCHPs offer (McGough, 2015). It is important to note, however, that neither of the facilities are equipped to handle emergency deliveries, such as a caesarian surgery. In these cases, the delivery would have to be handled at a district hospital, which serves populations of up to about 500,000 people and has physicians trained in surgery. There are a host of challenges that contribute to the second delay, hindering a woman from reaching a health care facility to receive necessary health care services. It is unlikely that a health care facility providing comprehensive health care services is located in or near one’s village. The distance to a comprehensive health facility when coupled with poorly maintained roads or obstacles like rivers and lakes without bridges poses access issues (Figure 8.2). Additionally, transportation, even a motorbike to navigate poor road networks, may be unavailable or cost prohibitive (Figure 8.3). The third delay involves the pregnant woman’s ability to receive appropriate and necessary care during deliveries. This may result from a woman being unable to pay for services, not having a facility nearby that can support services, or not having quality or skilled health care providers to provide the necessary interventions (Dorwie &

Figure 8.1 Maternal and Child Health Post. Note. MCHP located in villages and communities serves less than 5,000 individuals.

Figure 8.2 Rural Road in Remote Area. Note. Poorly maintained road can lead to lack of accessibility to health care facilities.

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Figure 8.3 Motorbike Transportation. Note. Author on the motorbike. Motorbikes are often used to navigate poor road networks and narrow passages.

Pacquiano, 2014, Oyerinde et al., 2013). According to the Ministry of Health, most maternal deaths occur inside health facilities (81.8 percent) (GoSL, 2017b). This could be due to the compounding factors of unrecognized complications, access, transportation, and the final third delay that incorporates “supply side challenges . . . resulting from inadequate health workers, low skills among health workers, inadequate equipment and other necessary supplies such as blood for caesarean section” (GoSL, 2017b, p. 23). More than a third (36 percent) of women who die between age 15–49 die during pregnancy or childbirth (GoSL, 2017b). Maternal mortality is often a result of socioeconomic and cultural factors. The root factors found in Sierra Leone are poverty, gender inequality, ignorance, and difficulty accessing health service delivery points (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women [CEDAW], 2012; Betron et al., 2018). The Commission for Africa report (WHO, 2005) states that “[d]isease burden and economic growth are intimately related. Healthy people are more productive and more likely to be able to take care of their children, benefit from education, and contribute to society.” Poverty affects health, as it limits access to basic human needs such as food, clean water, and shelter; economic strain can also exacerbate existing health problems. Generally, poverty, lack of financial assets and agency disproportionately affects women and children and may stem from structural

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gender inequality (Betron et al., 2018). Based on the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Report (2019), Sierra Leone has a high gender inequality index at .644 out of 1 and was ranked 153rd out of 189 countries in the world for gender inequality. According to an earlier report, 66.4 percent of the Sierra Leone population live below the income poverty line and 77 percent experience multidimensional poverty (United Nations Development Program, 2013). In subSaharan Africa, women have a 40 percent loss of achievement due to inequalities in income. This disparity means that women are more likely to be impacted by poverty and will be less likely to access health care and clean water (Government of Sierra Leone and European Commission, 2007). It is imperative to “examine broader indicators of well-being [such as] health indicators of nutrition, life-expectancy, maternal mortality [and] access to resources such as employment, participation and earnings, land ownership, and access to safe water and sanitation” (Institute of Development Studies Bridge, 2001, p. 6), when addressing poverty. The chapter visits historical international protocols and recommendations that shape national policy and influence local programs (McGough, 2015), while exploring current opportunities to identify sustainable interventions that use the social determinants of health (SDOH) framework. Possible collaborations between the formal (medical and scientific community that focus on Western-based international, regional and local health policies), gender-transformative approaches that include formal sector women providers, as well as informal service providers such as TBAs are explored and presented to address Sierra Leone-specific maternal health concerns. The framework used to understand intrapersonal, interpersonal, gendered, social, cultural, political, and economic challenges that affect health, well-being, and access to health care is known as the SDOH and is used to address maternal health concerns.

Social Determinants of Health Framework to Address Maternal Health Outcomes The social determinants of health “are the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life. These forces and systems include economic policies and systems, development agendas, social norms, social policies and political systems” (Definitions of the social determinants of health, 2020). For pregnant and lactating women in Sierra Leone, barriers to women’s health care can be explored, described, and addressed using a modified framework of the social determinants of health (Figure 8.4). Factors that contribute to maternal health outcomes broadly include policies and programs as well as cultural and social practices, all of which may inhibit women’s access to and use of health services and limit the availability of health care, prenatal care, and nutrition education. In Sierra Leone specifically, these factors include: environmental; such as biological, physical, and social; locality (where people live; urban versus rural), issues of migration and displacement, limited and poor infrastructure, poor road networks, limited access in rural areas, leading to a lower ability to reach clinics and hospitals.

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Figure 8.4 Social Determinants of Maternal Health Conceptual Framework for Sierra Leone. Note. The Social Determinants of Maternal Health Conceptual Framework for Sierra Leone. Adapted from Solar, O. & Irwin, A. (2010) A Conceptual Framework for Action on the Social Determinants of Health. Social Determinants of Health Discussion Paper 2 (Policy and Practice). WHO, Geneva.

Other barriers to health care access include lower educational level, socio-economic status and inadequate finances, limited availability and affordability of drugs, cultural practices and barriers, and poor communication (Government of Sierra Leone and European Commission, 2007). Additionally, there is lack of access to family planning resources; in 2007, only 4 percent of women in Sierra Leone had access to family planning (SLANGO, 2006). Other health concerns include communicable diseases, malaria and helminths infections, as well as limited access to potable water and sanitation. The situation is further exacerbated by what is believed to be a lack of qualified personnel, inadequate supplies, and a broader context of poor health status for women due to high gravida, high parity, short spacing between pregnancy, and teen pregnancy (SLANGO, 2006).

Current Policy, Protocol, and Recommendations On April 27, 2010, Sierra Leone launched the Free Health Care Initiative for pregnant women, lactating mothers and children under the age of five in an effort to curb the high infant, child and maternal mortality rates. The FHCI took a three-pronged approach. First, it removed fees from the public health care system, that were considered to be a major deterrent to seeking health care services, enabling those eligible—

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pregnant and lactating women and children under five years of age to easily access services (Dorwie & Pacquiano, 2014; Oyerinde, et al., 2013). According to the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation (SLMHS) report of 2008, the 2001 Abuja Declaration recommended that government “increase their per capita expenditure on health” to support economic growth to address maternal and child health in addition to the AIDS crisis, tuberculosis, and malaria (Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation, 2009). In addition, salaries for health care workers were increased to help retain staff. Finally, there was an increased focus on training of skilled health care providers and staff management to enable closer monitoring of those on the payroll to eliminate “ghost workers”. The increased focus on skilled health care workers curtailed the services of TBAs, who were not included in the salary uplift. This divide put a tenuous relationship between those considered skilled and the TBAs. The implementation of FHCI, ostensibly removed TBAs from the equation of childbirth in their communities and depicted them as a contributor to Sierra Leone’s high maternal mortality rate (McGough, 2015). TBAs who still wanted to support pregnant women and lactating mothers would have to do so either as community health workers (CHWs) or as volunteers; neither role is considered an official or paid member of the health care system (McGough, 2015). This policy was predated by other national efforts and international recommendations and mandates to address dire health indicators that is covered in a previous document study that explored the influences of historical external international interventions on Sierra Leone’s health sector (McGough, 2015; M’Cormack-Hale & McGough, 2016). The prevailing belief is that maternal health indicators can be improved by addressing education, nutrition, sanitation, access to skilled medical personnel, birthing centers, funds for medical equipment, access to medical treatments, support for women to continue caring for their children, and policies that take a gendered approach (Africa Commission, 2014). In addition, reducing maternal mortality has been couched within a human rights framework, where women have the right to the highest attainable standard of health (Hunt and de Mesquita, 2010). Many international, regional, and local policies, protocols, and recommendations have attempted to enact these goals, ultimately influencing Sierra Leone’s development of the FHCI.

International Policy, Protocol and Recommendations The Free Health Care Initiative and national policy priorities were built upon other health care policies in Sierra Leone that “are well linked to internationally endorsed strategies such as the Ouagadougou Declaration” on Primary Health Care and Health Systems (GoSL, 2009, p. 8). The Ouagadougou Declaration focuses on leadership and governance for health, health service delivery, human resources for health, health financing, health information systems, health technologies, community ownership and participation, partnerships for health and development, and research for health (WHO, 2010). The national policies supported international goals and targets such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the current sustainable development Goals (SDG). The MDGs strongly supported the global view that all pregnant women

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should be able to deliver at a health care facility under the supervision of a skilled health care provider (McGough, 2015). The SDG continues where the MDGs left off with SDG 3.1: Good Health and Well-being that sets a target to reduce the global MMR to less than 70 per 100,000 and promote healthy lives and well-being for all at all ages (United Nations, 2015b; Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs], 2020). Even with the implements, maternal mortality in Sierra Leone continues to be comparatively higher than peer nations (Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation, 2008; Government of Sierra Leone and European Commission, 2007). Sierra Leone policies and goals support article twelve of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and its Optional Protocol, which requires states to eliminate discrimination in access to healthcare, relating to family planning and postnatal care (1979). The Convention recommends that governments implement comprehensive national strategies to promote women’s health and guarantee women’s access to health care (UN Women, 2009). When Sierra Leone submitted their Shadow Report under CEDAW (2006), it raised a lot of other women-related concerns that highlighted the existing sociocultural challenges facing the nation including a lack of employment in the formal sector for women, a lack of qualified health providers and also the linking of rape to the moral character of the victim, early and forced marriages, and a practice that is often sanctioned by the community and by female elders held in high esteem, female circumcision, which is considered a human rights violation and inherently sexist (SLANGO, 2006). Africa region policies and recommendations found in the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights (Banjul Charter, 1981) and the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa Protocol (Maputo Protocol, 2003) also focus on freedom from all forms of discrimination, including those against women by addressing behaviors, practices, and attitudes, “which negatively affect the fundamental rights of women and girls, such as . . . right to life, health, dignity, education, and physical integrity” (2003). In addition, the Maputo Protocol (2003) sought to eliminate practices considered harmful, including female circumcision, provide resources to victims of violence and abuse, as well as ensure rights to healthcare, including sexual and reproductive autonomy, and the benefits of scientific progress (Africa Commission, 2014). Within this context, TBAs may provide a voice for women in their community and fulfill a cultural necessity for social transitions for girls and women.

Sierra Leone Policy, Protocol and Recommendations After the civil war ended in 2002, the GoSL developed a National Health Policy (NHP) to provide an essential package of services (primary health care, mainly for child and reproductive health) and to protect the vulnerable as part of Sierra Leone’s commitment to peace (Government of Sierra Leone and European Commission, 2007). By 2005, health functions were devolved to local councils, with drugs procurement following in 2007. This policy, which supports the Constitution of Sierra Leone (1991), set the stage for the Basic Package for Essential Health Services for Sierra Leone (BPEHS) (GoSL,

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2010) and FHCI. The NHP works in concert with the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers: PRSP I, & II (GoSL, 2005, 2012a) prepared for the International Monetary Fund as a requirement of membership. These documents provide a summary of the country’s “macroeconomic, structural and social policies programs over a three year” period, but can span five-year periods as well (GoSL, 2005, 2012a). The PRSP III (Agenda for Change (GoSL, 2012a) identified several priorities for women: reducing maternal mortality, preventing gender-based violence, mainstreaming gender parity, and women’s empowerment. The National Health Sector Strategic Plan 2010–2015 (GoSL, NHSSP, 2009) was developed to guide Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS) efforts for six years (GoSL, 2009) as the GoSL expanded their resource allocation to education and health supported by European and Japanese donors. The NHSSP aimed to fulfill “the health sector’s contribution to PRSP II, the Ouagadougou Declaration and the MDG goals” (GoSL, 2009, p. 8) and ensure the successful implementation of the BPEHS (GoSL, NHSSP, 2009). The long-term objective of the NHSSP was to provide universal access to quality health care for all vulnerable groups (GoSL, NHSSP, 2009). Components of the 2010–2015 NHSSP included maternal and newborn health, environment health interventions, health education, and regulatory bodies for skilled health care workers. The short-term objective of the NHSSP was to “abolish all charges to pregnant women, lactating mothers and children under 5 years of age” (GoSL, NHSSP, 2009, p. 35). The core elements of the NHSSP were: 1) Access to health services (availability, utilization, and timeliness); 2) Quality of health services (safety, efficacy, and integration); 3) Equity in health services (for disadvantaged groups); 4) Efficiency of service delivery (value for resources); and 5) Inclusiveness (partnerships). The BPEHS (GoSL, 2010) was to increase the use of health services for vulnerable populations (children, poor people, orphans, women, displaced persons, and the elderly) and to ensure adequate skilled staff, ambulance services, and a communication strategy to address issues of user fees and informal payments that posed barriers to access and delivery at health facilities (GoSL, NHSSP, 2009, p. 19) addressed the high child and maternal mortality and morbidity in the country, focusing on infants and pregnant women. There are six components to the BPEHS, which: 1) guaranteed specific programs afforded to infants and pregnant women; 2) set a minimum for skilled health professionals to staff facilities; 3) provided content for training programs considered beneficial for staff; 4) provided guidance for the types of drugs to be available at each level of health system; 5) forecast financial resources; and 6) provided a basis to complete monitoring and evaluation as well as a list of drugs to be dispensed (GoSL, NHSSP 2009). There were no clear guidelines, however, for informal staff and volunteers, including TBAs. An update to NHSSP was presented in 2017 as a result of the Ebola crisis that ended in 2015. In addition to a new Basic Package of Essential Health Services: 2015– 2020 (GoSL, 2015a) and a new National Health Sector Recovery Plan (2015–2020) (GoSL, 2015b) were developed to “put the health sector back to work . . ., resume and accelerate progress towards better health outcomes . . . especially . . . expectant mothers and their young children . . ., train . . . traditional healers and TBAs in specialized disease surveillance for epidemic-prone communicable diseases, sensitization

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campaigns to raise awareness of . . . reporting . . .” (GoSL, NHSRP, 2015, GoSL, 2017a). Finally, TBAs had a potential role in the formalized system.

Assessment of FHCI Implementation on TBA Work These initial shifts in health policies emphasized the use of skilled birth attendants with formal training in maternal health in order to combat high maternal mortality rates, and were echoed by the Ministry of Health and non-governmental organizations. Initial reports showed progress (Stevenson et al., 2012; CEDAW, 2012). Salary uplift retained staff, there was better management of staff through attendance monitoring contributed significantly to eliminating ghost workers (Stevenson et al., 2012). The CEDAW report (2012) found the following: sufficient drugs due to improved procurement and supply chain management system; increased used of health facilities; and increased health care workers, their base salaries and incentives based on performance. As a result, policies were put in place to curtail the practice of TBAs, who were considered a hindrance to the success of maternal health outcomes (Dorwie & Pacquiao, 2014; Oyerinde et al., 2013). However, the public did not share this negative reaction to TBAs. Traditional birth attendants were historically valued members of society. One study indicated that during the 1990s, up to 70 percent of deliveries were home births assisted by TBAs (Samai & Sengeh, 1997). According to the 2008 Sierra Leone DHS survey, TBAs were instrumental in the peripheral health units (PHUs), providing post-delivery check-ups and continued postnatal services after discharge. In a society where poverty is high and at a time when service fees for maternal health services were common, TBAs were a welcome alternative as they provided an affordable option (Oyerinde et al., 2013). The TBAs were seen as available and accessible, as they often live in the communities they serve as CHWs and work collaboratively with health care providers to perform non-clinical tasks, provide health education (Higgins-Steele et al., 2015, Adatara et al., 2018), family planning education (Adatara et al., 2018), and nutrition education. This proximity of TBAs is particularly helpful to the woman who is in labor. Based on a windshield and walking tour of Western Area Rural (M’Cormack, 2014), it was observed that in some communities and villages there was no PHU available. In many cases, one PHU was expected to provide services for 4 or 5 communities more than 5 miles away from the town in which the PHU was located (M’Cormack, 2014). Traditional birth attendants can be part of the support team for the pregnant woman, to help with daily needs and at the time of delivery. In addition, TBAs are perceived as compassionate, attentive, and wise, unlike the health workers, who were perceived as rude, often absent, and young (Oyerinde, et al., 2013). Often, the youthfulness of the MCH aides were associated with inexperience (ibid). In contrast, the TBA role held authority and commanded the respect of women and their families; these women were also members of high-ranking social clubs and could even be appointed by the chief and elders (ibid). Traditional birth attendants were a necessary part of a family as they delivered life. This part of family life has dwindled, as currently the profession of TBA is not being retained in Sierra Leone.

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However, the criticism of TBAs and their subsequent removal from health policy and practice may have been based on incomplete reasoning. Even though TBAs were no longer a factor in the child birth equation, the maternal mortality ratio in Sierra Leone in 2017 was still high, at 1,120 per 100,000 live births compared to the global MMR at 211 per 100,000 (World Health Statistics, 2020). Apart from the first delay, which involved poor decision making and untimely referrals to seek appropriate medical care, the other two delays appear to be less the fault of TBAs and more a result of inequalities in access to maternal health care between rural and urban regions or poor and wealthy communities. Rural regions have considerably less access to health facilities, skilled health personnel, contraception and family planning resources, and prenatal care services (United Nations, 2015a). For example, 49 percent of pregnant women in the sub-Saharan African region attended the recommended four or more prenatal care services (United Nations, 2015a). As discussed, obstacles for a woman in need of health care during pregnancy and childbirth include poverty, lack of transportation, lack of information, low literacy, and cultural beliefs and practices (World Health Statistics, 2020). These concerns are not the fault of TBAs but rather are areas where the TBAs can provide support. Instead of focusing solely on obstetric emergencies, it might be better to investigate the root of these complications. What risks exist that result in the inordinate number of complications that arise during childbirth of Sierra Leone women? If pregnancies are being attended by skilled health personnel (as 87 percent of pregnancies in Sierra Leone now are) and maternal services are covered through offering free health care, yet high maternal mortality persists, then the focus should shift to address the social determinants of health and the underlying factors that negatively affect maternal health outcomes, such as poverty, lack of education, and social climate. Traditional birth attendants might help to address these factors in rural communities, where they can provide services such as transportation and support for pregnant and laboring women or lactating mothers (Adatara et al., 2018). A literature review on the impact of maternal mortality interventions using TBAs found that “TBAs and village midwives [could] contribute to positive programmed outcomes” (Hernandez & Salihu, 2004, p. 10), and noted that in rural and isolated communities, banning TBAs could lead to deleterious conditions. Conversely, collaborative maternal interventions with TBAs have led to a 76 percent decline in the MMR in Angola, (1,241 out of 100,000 to 293 out of 100,000), a reduction in postpartum complications and improvement in morbidity related indicators in Guatemala, and reductions in retained placenta and intrapartum fever in Ghana (ibid.). Previous research with TBAs found that TBAs volunteered in their roles because they wanted to be affiliated with the health care industry or because they felt a sense of obligation to their community (ibid). Their work has included helping to reduce the mortality of infants, provide prenatal check-ups, conduct health and nutrition education, and under supervision, even help with the delivering of babies (ibid). Some TBAs were even able to support broader health goals by collecting and recoding data (M’Cormack-Hale and McGough, 2016, interviews with traditional birth attendants). Building on what has been discussed, there has been a shift to train ex-TBAs to be CHWs (GoSL, 2012b) or the UNFPA supported Community Wellness Advocacy Groups (CAGs) (Sierra Leone Multi-Donor Trust Fund, 2015), lay health volunteer

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positions under the direction of an MCH aide or other health professional attached to the PHU. In order to be considered a CHW, a person must complete a ten-day, eight module standardized training that focus on community engagement, water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), maternal and newborn health, infant and young child interventions, managing newborn and childhood illness and neglected disease, adolescent sexual and reproductive health rights, and sexual gender-based violence (GoSL, 2012b). Community health workers serve populations between 100–500 people (ibid) and CAGs focus on the promotion of sexual and reproductive health and the prevention of gender-based violence (Sierra Leone Multi-Donor Trust Fund, 2015). In their role as CHWs, TBAs serve as a conduit between their community (particularly pregnant and lactating women) and professional health staff. Although their services are limited (they do not provide emergency obstetric care (EmOC) or clinical maternal health services), they are encouraged to make referrals to PHUs if they identify/screen for danger signs in pregnancy, including swollen feet, bleeding, short height, etc. In some cases, CHWs, including trained TBAs, provide prenatal and postnatal care. In prenatal care, trained TBAs distribute supplements (iron, folic acid, and multivitamins), provide screening for anemia, and provide Information Education Communication (IEC) and Behavior Change Communication (BCC) on family planning, family life skills, the importance of antenatal care, birth preparedness, proper diet, rest during pregnancy and postpartum, use of ITNs for pregnant women, pregnancy danger signs, institutional delivery, exclusive breast feeding, and immunization. In postnatal care, CHWs and trained TBAs provide vitamin A, iron, and folic acid, provide counseling about birth spacing and educational programming about HIV and STIs. Once TBAs and CHWs have received specific training, they are encouraged to be part of the surveillance and case reporting of immunizable diseases, immunization activities, and supervision of expanded program immunizations (EPI) activities (GoSL, 2010; GoSL, 2009). Traditional birth attendants cannot distribute drugs, treat falciparum malaria, or conduct de-worming, nor can they screen for, manage, or treat eclampsia, anemia, HIV, STIs, or mal-presentation of twins. In regard to labor, childbirth, and pregnancy complications, TBAs must always refer to the community health center (CHC) or district hospital. After delivery, TBAs must refer if puerperal sepsis, anemia, or urinary tract infection is detected, if there is nipple or breast pain, or if constipation or hemorrhoids occur (GoSL, 2010). Initial challenges with the training provided have been addressed by the Policy for Community Health Workers in Sierra Leone (GoSL, 2012b), which provides guidelines for training. Intermediate strategies that came about as a result of the Ebola crises provided additional training that broadened the skill set of TBAs, who were then able to work as CHWs and CAGs (GoSL, 2017a; Sierra Leone Multi-Donor Trust Fund, 2015). Even though universal policy guidelines exist, there is no uniform training, so CHWs may not have identical skill sets or may have different roles within their scope of work. It cannot be assumed that a CHW or a trained TBA is knowledgeable about contraceptives if they are, for example, a vaccinator. A TBA may therefore be limited in volunteer capacity based on the type of training that she has received (GoSL, 2010).

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Conclusion The global push for deliveries to be performed by skilled health personnel in an attempt to address maternal mortality in recent years led to removal of TBAs in the formal sector. Following international protocols, there was emphasis on formal avenues of health provision as the most appropriate to ensure reduced mortality rates. However, such an emphasis is unsustainable in Sierra Leone and other developing countries, where health care personnel resources remain extremely low. As described by Graybill (this volume), the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone exposed the problems of diminished human resource capacity to share vital prevention messages in rural communities, despite increased funding and attention from FHCI (WHO, 2014). Thus, despite the fear of using TBAs and the potential adverse health cost of turning to them, their role as trusted community members made them valuable supplementary staff during this outbreak. The provision of free health services is an admirable policy; however, in a nonsocial welfarist state such as Sierra Leone, the state’s ability to implement this policy is weak (M’Cormack-Hale & McGough, 2016), especially if the infrastructure and staffing are not there. It is therefore important that Sierra Leone leverage non-formal, culturally-embedded resources that can complement the State’s initiatives, such as TBAs, who can still be an integral part of the health care team if properly trained. They can be trained to be community health workers and provide health education and behavior modification, and can serve as a conduit between the community and health professionals or local leaders by advocating for the needs of pregnant women. In addition, TBAs as community health workers can negotiate as a group to earn a salary. As volunteers, they are not on payroll; however, if they are identified as a health worker in the labor force, their skills can be regulated, monitored, and certified, allowing TBAs to earn a living in the formal sector. The use of skilled health care workers alone has not solved the high maternal mortality issue in Sierra Leone, as is evidenced by the high number of maternal deaths that occur in hospital settings, because the delivery of health care services does not exist in a vacuum. The social determinants of health can truly help clarify how and why there are huge disparities in health outcomes across the globe and within communities, and can help us determine ideal areas for intervention and where communities should put their resources. This framework could help explain why targets fell short for the millennium development goals and explore ways to address and meet the targets for the sustainable development goals. In the context of maternal health outcomes in Sierra Leone, it is clear that investments need to be made in the informal and traditional sectors as well as in the formal health sector to address the social determinants of maternal health. Therefore, collaborations between the formal and informal sectors can be beneficial, where the roles are shared to encourage access to safe and timely maternal health care services and interventions to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality, thus improving the reproductive health of women as well as neonate and child development. Clinical interventions coupled with public health practices of health promotion and health education, are critical to achieve positive maternal health outcomes. Beneficial are

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positive prevention tactics, including encouraging girls to stay in school beyond elementary years, to wait until after the age of eighteen to get married or have children, provide education about the importance of family planning and use of contraception to manage family size (fewer gravida and parity), the importance of using insecticidetreated nets, and nutrition education. Despite their initial marginalization with the onset of the FHCI, TBAs, fought to stay relevant. They maintained a presence in their communities, became volunteers at the overwhelmed and understaffed PHUs, and provided support for the Maternal and Child Health Aides and other health care workers. They used their social capital to be indispensable as the liaisons between the community members and formal health workers, and explored potential new opportunities for participation in the changing healthcare climate after implementation of the FHCI. When the opportunity arose, they could engage and participate in a recognized informal application of health services. Even though childbirth delivery remains in the hands of trained and skilled health personnel, TBAs can still help pregnant and lactating woman through health education, advocacy, and support in their new role when trained as community health workers. In this capacity, they are able to address the concerns of other members of the community and provide services on child health, sexual and reproductive health, and preventive measures against gender-based violence. In their expanded role, they have more opportunity to address the factors that make up the contextual framework of the modified social determinants of health for maternal health in Sierra Leone. To conclude, the question should not be whether Sierra Leone should incorporate TBAs into Sierra Leone’s health care, but rather how. It is encouraging to see that Sierra Leone’s government has changed its initial stance and now recognize the roles of community health workers and community advocacy groups. Sierra Leone’s membership in international and multinational organizations and participation in several treaties and referenda obliges the country to revise policies that contain gendered perspectives and mainstream gender, support women’s equality, promote women’s health, protect women from harm at all levels, including reviewing discriminatory practices that inhibit access to health care services, and explore conditions that have social explanations. Thus, interventions must be domesticated, with local cultural contexts considered, and the State must provide both the financial backing and the human resources to enforce policies for women’s rights. However, domestication does not only mean addressing longstanding cultural and traditional practices, such as female genital cutting, the refusal to educate girls, and the suppression of women’s voices; it also means building on positive cultural capital and practices that currently exist in the country, particularly with those who are respected, welcomed, and appreciated in their communities, such as TBAs. This is the time to build on the nation’s capacities and explore the ways that indigenous knowledge and formalized training can be married within existing frameworks to legitimize health-promoting contributions and support a synchronistic approach to address the social determinants of health.

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Gender-Based Violence Post-war to Post-Ebola: “One Step Forward, Three Steps Back” Lyn S. Graybill

“It’s like we had taken one step forward before Ebola, and now we’ve taken three steps back.”1

Introduction African women in post-conflict countries have generally benefited in the post-war environment from higher rates of representation in legislative bodies and more legal reforms upholding women’s rights than women in non-post-conflict countries. The reasons for this are myriad, and include changes in gender relations during the conflict, the emergence of autonomous women’s organizations, and the diffusion of international gender norms (Tripp, 2015, pp. 193–194). However, Sierra Leone is something of an outlier. Unlike Rwanda, for example, which after the 1994 genocide eventually became the world’s leader in numbers of women parliamentarians (UN Women, 2018), Sierra Leone experienced no dramatic changes in women’s political representation following its civil war. Rather, women’s representation in parliament has been stagnant, prowomen legislative reforms have been gradual, and gender-based violence has increased. The focus of this chapter is on gender-based violence in Sierra Leone, but this cannot be examined in a vacuum. Conventional wisdom suggests that gender inequality increases the risk of violence against women (World Health Organization, 2021).2 Therefore, in this chapter gender-based violence is examined alongside the limited reforms in other areas (political, legal, health, and education) that have been enacted with the goal of empowering women. Not surprisingly, countries in which women’s representation in legislative bodies is high are also countries that have paid attention to women’s rights, including the right not to be physically violated (Tripp, 2015, p. 223). Given that Sierra Leone has taken no steps to increase women’s representation in Parliament and has enacted very limited pro-women legislative reforms followed by even weaker enforcement, it is hardly surprising that its commitment to women’s physical security has been deficient under the onslaught of a health crisis. This chapter—based on government reports, data from international organizations, and 145

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local and international media reporting—explores the limited progress made since the war toward reducing gender-based violence in Sierra Leone, with special attention to the impact of the Ebola epidemic on rolling back earlier gains. Both the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the Special Court for Sierra Leone exposed the reality of sexual violence committed against women during the decade-long civil war (1991–2002). As part of its work, the TRC— whose mission was to address the war’s causes, to expose the human rights violations that had been committed, and to make recommendations going forward—held hearings across the country. The hearings on gender, in which women testified about the sexual violence they had experienced during the war, had the largest audiences of any of the TRC hearings, which led to optimism that this attention paid to violations against women would raise consciousness about gender-based violence more broadly and pave the way for meaningful reform. Likewise, the concurrently established Special Court—whose mandate was to investigate war crimes, crimes against humanity, and serious violations of humanitarian law—prosecuted rape and forced marriage as crimes against humanity, leading some observers to anticipate that this would have a far-reaching impact on Sierra Leone jurisprudence. However, despite some commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment, as evidenced by the passage in 2007 of the Gender Bills on domestic violence, intestate succession, and customary marriage, and the passage in 2012 of the Sexual Offenses Act, women’s physical security in Sierra Leone remains uncertain and sexual violence against women has actually accelerated.

Gender-Based Violence during the War During the civil war in Sierra Leone, women were the victims of widespread sexual violence. According to Physicians for Human Rights (2002), one out of eight households was impacted by sexual violence during the conflict (p. 2), while Human Rights Watch (2003) estimates that between 215,000 and 257,000 women were raped (pp. 25–26). These women, who included mothers and grandmothers as well as young girls, were individually and gang raped by all the warring forces, including the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), the Sierra Leone Army (SLA), and the Civil Defense Forces (CDF), as well as by the external peacekeeping forces with UNAMSIL (the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone) and ECOMOG (the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group). Rebels also took women as long-term “wives” in forced “marriages,” many of whom were young girls perceived as virgins and therefore considered especially desirable. Among the crimes prosecuted in the Special Court—which had been established in 2002 to try those persons “who bear the greatest responsibility” for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of humanitarian law—was rape (Statute of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, 2002). The court’s first prosecutor, David Crane, initially indicted RUF and AFRC defendants for rape, but later added the charge of “forced marriage” as a crime against humanity, arguing that this was even more egregious than rape as these women were held for long periods of time and forced to

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clean, cook, and porter for their captors who also demanded sex. The Court eventually found the AFRC and RUF defendants guilty of rape, and the RUF defendants guilty of the crime of “forced marriage.” The CDF defendants were not tried for any acts of sexual violence as the Court determined the prosecution had waited too long to amend the original indictments, which had omitted them. There were no prosecutions of peacekeeping forces. When the RUF verdicts were handed down, lead prosecutor Stephen Rapp exclaimed: “The Court today for the first time in world history convicted each of these individuals of ‘forced marriage’ as a separate ‘crime against humanity.’ In doing so, it recognizes the very deep and long lasting suffering inflicted upon women through conscription as ‘bush wives’ during the Sierra Leone conflict” (Special Court for Sierra Leone, Office of the Prosecutor, Press Release, February 25, 2009). He predicted that the decision would set a precedent for other cases before the International Criminal Court and possibly act as a deterrent against forced marriages in future conflicts (AllAfrica, 2009). Women’s organizations in particular hoped that the rulings on rape and forced marriage would have an impact on domestic law by encouraging the outlawing of these practices. Rape had rarely been prosecuted in the Sierra Leone courts prior to this; the first successful rape conviction came only in 1999 (Coulter, 2006, p. 359). When rape was addressed, it was typically under customary law, which is unwritten and varies from place to place.3 In traditional thinking, the rape of a married woman or a nonvirgin unmarried woman was not considered a crime (Nowrojee, 2005, p. 88). It was only considered wrong to have sex with a girl under fourteen if she were not a prostitute or someone of “known immoral character.” Thus, women’s organizations anticipated that the verdicts could help the country to domesticate international human rights norms, including norms affirming the rights of girls and women not to be sexually violated. They hoped that the successful prosecution of the AFRC and RUF for sexual crimes committed during the war would help to deter rape during peacetime as well (Graybill, 2017, p. 57). Because just a handful of cases were tried, very few women actually testified before the Special Court about sexual abuses. However, many more were able to speak in front of the TRC, whose sessions ran contemporaneously to the Special Court. Held in the capital Freetown over three days in May 2003, the special hearings on women examined the specific ways in which women were targeted during the war. Witnesses testified about rape, sexual abuse, sexual slavery, trafficking, enslavement, abductions, amputations, forced pregnancies, forced labor, and detention. These hearings had the largest audiences of any of the TRC hearings, which seemed to bode well for the crime of sexual violence being taken seriously (Nowrojee, 2005, p. 95). In addition to the special women’s hearings, one day was set apart in each district for women to testify before all-female commissioners and staff in closed hearings. Surprisingly, despite the cultural stigma of rape, many women chose to testify publicly in the regular district hearings, breaking down a culture of silence surrounding rape in which the victim is often blamed. The public’s sympathetic response to these witnesses was a hopeful sign that going forward it would become more socially acceptable for women to bring charges against perpetrators for rape in the courts.

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TRC Recommendations on Gender In its final report, the TRC issued a number of recommendations to promote women’s rights. Foremost was providing free health care and monthly pensions for life for the survivors of wartime sexual violence (Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2004, vol. 2, p. 174, p 243). By highlighting victims of sexual violence as a prioritized category eligible for reparations, the TRC elevated rape to the level of a serious human rights violation. It was not until seven years after the war ended and five years after the TRC submitted its recommendations, however, that the government began disbursing limited reparations to war victims. Of the 20,107 war victims who received reparations in 2009, 2,917 were victims of sexual violence (Government of Sierra Leone, 2014, pp. 51–52). They received a payment of 300,000 leones ($75) in 2009, and another payment of 940,125 leones ($225) in 2011, followed by smaller disbursements in 2012 and 2013 (Standard Times, 2010. See also Suma and Correa, 2009). These payments—distributed to only about 1 percent of Human Rights Watch’s estimated number of victims of sexual violence—fell far short of the TRC’s recommendations for lifetime monthly pensions and did not address the need for free health care. To end the marginalization of women in political and social life, the TRC recommended quotas of 30 percent women in political offices, with the goal of 50/50 gender parity within ten years (Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, vol. 2, 2004, p. 172). (Post-conflict nations have been more likely to adopt gender quotas than non-post-conflict nations, often in the context of writing a new constitution, according to Tripp, Konate, and Lowe-Morna [2006]) Rejecting the TRC recommendation, the Constitutional Review Committee tasked with reviewing the 1991 Constitution for revisions did not include the 30 percent quota in its draft report (Standard Times, 2009), making Sierra Leone an anomaly among post-conflict nations.4 None of the political parties have come close to this benchmark, and women remain poorly represented in politics.5 In 2007, just 12.90 percent of parliamentarians were women, and in 2012 the number was 12.40 percent. In 2018, the first election since the Ebola epidemic, this number was just 12.33 percent (Inter-Parliamentary Union, http:// archive.ipu.org/parline/reports/2281_E.htm). The TRC also advocated for reforms in the legal, judicial, and police systems to make it easier for women to report cases of sexual and domestic violence. In particular, it mandated that laws linking the prosecution of sexual offenses to the moral character of the complainant be repealed and advised the government to campaign against the customary practice whereby a victim of rape is obliged to marry the rapist. The TRC also urged the government to enact specific legislation to address domestic violence, help facilitate the prosecution of offenders, and empower women to access protective orders (Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2004, vol. 2, pp. 169–170). The TRC also called for the codification of customary law with special emphasis on the rights of women, as well as the harmonization of customary law and common law to comply with international standards. Pointing to the structural inequality of women, the TRC report called for the repeal of all laws that discriminate against women in the areas of marriage, inheritance, divorce, and property ownership (Sierra Leone Truth

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and Reconciliation Commission, 2004, vol. 2, pp. 168–171). This recommendation was partially enacted in the 2007 Gender Bills.

“One Step Forward”: 2007 Gender Bills The two institutions’ focus on gender-based violence may have helped to raise consciousness about these crimes as a serious human rights issue. On International Women’s Day on March 8, 2007, various women’s groups marched to the National Stadium demanding that then-President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah enact the three gender bills that had been proposed, emphasizing that even after independence the “laws remain exactly the same” (Teale, 2007). On June 14, 2007, the Domestic Violence Act, the Registration of Customary Marriage and Divorce Act, and the Devolution of Estates Act were passed, along with the Child Rights Act, and were widely hailed as positive steps toward gender equality.6 The Child Rights Act repealed the 1960 Children and Young Persons Act, which had defined a “child” as someone under the age of fourteen. The new act defined a child as anyone under the age of eighteen, and criminalized child marriage. This new legal threshold was especially important since early marriage is prevalent in Sierra Leone; 16 percent of women marry before the age of fifteen, while 50 percent marry before the age of eighteen (Government of Sierra Leone, 2014, p. 38). The Act also forbade any practice that “dehumanizes or is injurious to the physical and mental welfare of a child” (Child Rights Act, 2007, section 33(1)). Campaigners against female genital mutilation/ cutting (FGM/C), the partial or total removal of the external genitalia, would have liked this clause to be interpreted as banning the practice for children. However, unlike in most post-conflict countries (Tripp, 2015, p. 222), no national law has been passed to criminalize the traditional practice of FGM, although a Memorandum of Understanding was signed in 2012 by community leaders in eight of the nation’s fourteen districts, rejecting the practice among children and requiring the consent of those over age eighteen (Irin, 2012). Nevertheless, about 90 percent of women in Sierra Leone have undergone this practice (Government of Sierra Leone, 2008). The Domestic Violence Bill included sexual abuse in its definition of domestic violence, and criminalized spousal rape. This bill also empowered Family Support Units (FSU), specialized units within the Sierra Leone Police, to investigate cases of domestic and sexual violence, to gather evidence for court, and to make referrals for medical treatment for victims. The Registration of Customary Marriage and Divorce Act required that marriage be consensual (protecting girls from early and forced marriages) and registered with the government. This act also allowed women to acquire property in their own names and ensured that they would not be required to pay back dowries if their marriages ended. Even so, very few customary marriages have been registered, because rural women, who are the most likely to be in informal marriages, would have to travel great distances to the district capital to register their unions. The Devolution of Estates Act provided for inheritances to pass to the decedent’s wife and children rather than revert to the parents and brothers, thus bringing an end

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to “wife inheriting,” the practice whereby widows are forced to marry their husband’s brother (Teale, The Monitor, 2007, pp. 11–12). However, because most land is regarded as community property, under the authority of (mainly male) chiefs and traditional leaders, the new inheritance law has had little effect outside of the capital Freetown and commercial centers in provincial towns. Thus, accessing the formal justice system and the benefits of these legal reforms remains a challenge for most women. Moreover, certain sections in the Constitution, in particular Section 27 (4) (d), exempt areas of family life from protection against gender discrimination, putting aspects of the Gender Bills at odds with the Constitution. To date, the Constitution has not been amended, and any changes that Parliament may make in the future would then need to go to public referendum for final approval. This means that over 70 percent of the country’s population (those who live outside the cities) is still governed by unwritten customary law, and most chairmen of local courts are male (Government of Sierra Leone, 2014, p. 34).

Progress on Rape Convictions Despite the new legislation, high rates of gender-based violence and domestic violence continued to be reported (Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone, 2009). In the year the gender bills were passed, there was not a single conviction in Freetown courts for sexual violations (Teale, 2009, p. 80), nor were there any convictions arising from the 927 sexual abuse cases reported in 2009 (Kamara, 2010). Writing two years after the passage of the gender bills, one analyst writes: “Since enactment, little has been done in the process of implementing the key provisions of the Act” (Adeyemi, 2009). An even tougher law, the Sexual Offenses Act, was passed in 2012, which made age eighteen the age of consent for sexual intercourse, protected girls from abuse by teachers, religious leaders, and traditional authorities, and imposed steeper sentences for rape (five to fifteen years compared to just two years under the Domestic Violence Act of 2007).7 It also established “Saturday courts” to prosecute sexual offenses, but these were established only in Freetown, and not in the provinces where most people live (Government of Sierra Leone, 2014, p. 42). In the first eight months of 2013, more than 6,500 instances of gender-based violence (Government of Sierra Leone, 2014, p. 51)8 were reported with 399 convictions, an improvement from earlier years (Irin, 2013). In 2012, in comparison, 6,210 cases of gender-based violence had been reported, resulting in only 152 convictions (Government of Sierra Leone, 2014, p. 51). Low conviction rates are attributed to the fact that the FSUs are chronically underfunded and ill-equipped to collect evidence and prosecute offenders. According to a 2012 UN report, there was only one doctor in the Western area (in which Freetown is located) and one doctor in each of the twelve provincial districts who could provide the required medical examinations to confirm sexual abuse (Irin, 2013). Although both the 2007 Domestic Violence Act and the 2012 Sexual Offenses Act mandated that free medical exams, treatment, and certificates should be provided to victims of domestic and sexual abuse, this requirement was not actually implemented, according to a government report (Government of Sierra Leone, 2014, p. 21). Furthermore, FSU officials state that most families prefer to deal with these crimes outside the formal

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legal system, and that only cases resulting in death tend to be prosecuted (Government of Sierra Leone, 2014, p. 19).

Progress in Education for Girls The TRC also called upon the government to ensure women’s and girls’ access to education and skills training. It recommended that the government should work towards providing free and compulsory education for girls up to senior secondary school and should stop expelling girls who become pregnant (Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2004, Vol. 2, p. 173). Unfortunately, since the TRC’s final report was published, the female literacy rate has failed to significantly increase.9 In 2004, the female literacy rate was 24.16 percent (in contrast to male literacy at 46.65 percent), and in 2013, it was 24.86 percent. Gains were more impressive in the age 15–24 demographic, rising from 37.36 percent in 2004 to 50.86 percent in 2013. According to UNESCO, in 2008 70 percent of girls in Sierra Leone completed primary school, compared to 92 percent of boys, and only 19 percent of girls were enrolled in secondary school, compared to 27 percent of boys (UNESCO Institute for Statistics). By 2011–2012, the girl–boy enrollment ratio at primary school was near parity at 0.99 but dropped to 0.91 at junior secondary school and plunged to 0.75 at senior secondary school (Government of Sierra Leone, 2014, pp.47–48). In response to this gender imbalance, the government began paying fees for girls entering junior secondary school in the eastern and northern regions, areas marked by especially low attendance for girls (Government of Sierra Leone, 2014, p. 9). While education at the primary level heretofore had been theoretically free, in practice there were so-called “chalk fees” for supplies, uniforms, and teacher “contributions.” When money is tight, families prefer to pay fees for their sons to attend school and keep girls home to provide domestic labor. With the new government support, female enrollment in secondary school gradually rose from 33.37 percent in 2011, to 35.44 percent in 2015, 38.59 percent in 2016, and 39.81 percent in 2017 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics). Fees are not the only reasons for lower attendance for girls than boys post primary level; early marriage and pregnancy are also key factors. One out of four girls become pregnant before the age of eighteen, often by much older men (Government of Sierra Leone, 2014, pp. 38–39). Despite the TRC recommendation against the practice, girls who are pregnant continue to be expelled from school. Some households also keep girls from school because of sexual abuse by male teachers. Furthermore, families have traditionally not seen the value of educating girls, since the advantages accrued will go not to them but to the family into which the girl marries (Government of Sierra Leone, 2014, p. 15).

Progress in Health Care for Women Providing free health care to pregnant women (and to their children up to age five) was one of the most significant achievements in the post-war period.10 In 2000, the maternal mortality rate in Sierra Leone was the highest in the world at 1,800 per 100,000 births. By 2008, this number had dropped significantly to 857 (Sierra Leone Ministry of

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Health, 2008, p. 7), but by 2013, despite government-provided free health care since 2010 for pregnant and lactating women, the number had climbed up to 1,100—30 to 40 percent of whom were teenagers (Government of Sierra Leone, 2014, p. 10).

“Three Steps Back”: The Ebola Crisis 2014–2015 The small gains in female empowerment made after the war through investments in health care and education, and through the establishment of a more progressive legal environment, were jeopardized by the onset of Ebola in May 2014, which eventually took the lives of 3,956 Sierra Leoneans (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). The first confirmed positive case in Sierra Leone was a woman admitted to the government hospital in Kenema following a miscarriage. The source of the infection was a popular traditional healer in the area, who was so well known that her reputation extended across the border to Guinea. As the Ebola outbreak in Guinea surged and patients sought her care, the healer became infected and ultimately died. Hundreds of mourners, including the Sierra Leonean woman who miscarried, came to the healer’s funeral and participated in the burial ceremony, which included touching and hugging the body. Health officials point to this case as the entry point of the disease into Sierra Leone from neighboring Guinea.

Ebola’s Impact on Maternal Mortality The Ebola epidemic had serious consequences for women in Sierra Leone, not the least of which was an increase in maternal mortality. Many women died in childbirth during this time. Some could not reach clinics because of the quarantine, roadblocks, or lack of transportation, while others avoided going to the hospital for delivery for fear of being exposed to the virus. Unattended pregnancies, especially among high-risk teenagers, often led to maternal deaths.11 Even those expectant mothers who did seek a hospital delivery were at risk: stories have circulated of pregnant women being refused treatment by medical personnel, since attending to births put health workers in direct contact with bodily fluids, increasing their risk of catching the disease. The pre-Ebola achievements in improving maternal mortality rates have therefore faltered. The World Bank calculates that because of the epidemic, maternal mortality rates in Sierra Leone rose by 74 percent to levels not seen since before the end of the civil war. Maternal mortality rates that stood at 1,100 per 100,000 live births in 2013 were 1,916 per 100,000 live births by May 2015 (Evans, D.K., Goldstein, M. and Popova, A, 2015). This number can be explained partly by the inability of expectant mothers to access proper medical care during the crisis for the reasons mentioned above, but also by rampant rumors that health care providers were injecting patients with the Ebola virus, harvesting their blood to sell, or misdiagnosing patients because they were paid extra to make referrals to Ebola treatment centers, which kept the mothers-to-be away. Furthermore, pregnant women were at greater risk of dying from Ebola than other people because Ebola increases the risk of hemorrhage, which is already elevated in childbirth (Hayden, 2015).

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The death of health personnel also contributed to the rise of maternal mortality rates. Strikingly, 6.85 percent of health workers died while treating patients during the epidemic, compared to 0.06 percent of the population at large. Sierra Leone lost seventy-nine doctors, nurses, and midwives by the end of May 2015; the deaths of the mainly female nurses and midwives outnumbered those of mainly male doctors (Evans, D.K., Goldstein, M. and Popova, A, 2015). Unless the ranks of health workers, especially midwives, can be restored, one can expect even higher levels of maternal mortality in the future. In 2018, the new government pledged to allocate 15 percent (up from 10 percent) of its next budget to the health sector in an effort to increase the number of medical personnel (APA News, 2018).

Gendered Division of Labor and Ebola In addition to pregnant women, all girls and women were disproportionately vulnerable to Ebola because of the gendered division of labor. Of the total number of infected people in Sierra Leone, 56.7 percent were women, and 44.3 percent were men (Sierra Leone Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs, UN Women, Country Office-Sierra Leone, Statistics Sierra Leone, Oxfam GB/Sierra Leone, 2014, p. 11). This disparity is attributed to women’s gender-prescribed roles as front-line caregivers, care workers, cross-border traders, nurses, and mothers (UNDP, 2015, p. 2). It is mainly women, for example, who are the family’s unpaid caretakers, expected to nurture and care for the elderly, children, and the sick. This explains their higher rate of infection as women came into contact with vomit and other bodily fluids of infected family members. In the early months of the epidemic, the high rate of infection was also attributed to women’s roles in performing traditional practices and rituals, such as washing and dressing the body of a loved one for burial, and thereby becoming infected by exposure to the virus (Ibrahim, 2017, p. 169). When a parent became sick or died, it fell to the daughter to take over the caregiver role, including venturing out to fetch water and firewood as well as buying food. According to UNICEF, despite the fact that sex with a minor was illegal, girls turned to “transactional sex,” selling their bodies for necessities to support their families (Irin, 2015), including exchanging sexual favors to police guards for free passage out of their quarantined homes to perform needed tasks (Sierra Leone Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs, UN Women, Country Office-Sierra Leone, Statistics Sierra Leone, Oxfam GB/Sierra Leone, 2014, p. 13). The Ebola epidemic spawned 12,000 orphans who, without parental oversight, are themselves vulnerable to sexual exploitation and early marriage (The Guardian, 2015).

Sexual Assaults During the Ebola Epidemic Ebola also contributed to soaring rates of gender-based violence, making women as vulnerable as they were during the war (Sierra Leone Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs, UN Women, Country Office-Sierra Leone, Statistics Sierra Leone, Oxfam GB/Sierra Leone, 2014, p. 43). The national head of the FSUs noted an alarming increase in sexual assaults after May 2014 when Ebola first struck.12

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There were 1,481 recorded assaults in 2013 and 2,201 in 2014 (Massaquoi, 2015). By comparison, in 2012, the first year that official police statistics were collected, there were just 632 cases (Schneider, 2019). Christopher Braima, national coordinator of Humanist Watch Salone, attributed this spike in sexual assaults to the Ebola outbreak (Ahmed, 2015). Unfortunately, those numbers quadrupled in 2018 with 8,505 reported cases of gender-based violence resulting in just twenty-six successful convictions (Bah, 2019), 70 percent of which involved girls under the age of fifteen.13 This prompted newly elected President Julius Maada Bio to declare a national emergency on rape, coinciding with his wife’s “Hands Off Our Girls” campaign14 to protect girls from sexual abuse, early marriage, and teenage pregnancy (Karasz, and Searcey, 2019). In addition to the surge in rapes, there was an increase in consensual sex among teenagers, resulting in an uptick of teenage pregnancies. Estimated figures suggest that teenage pregnancy rate in some areas increased 65 percent during the Ebola outbreak (Yasmin, 2016). Those who wanted to use contraceptives were hampered by the fact that health facilities had been shut down or were too overwhelmed with Ebola cases to offer these services (Irin, 2015).

Limiting Girls Access to Education Teenage pregnancy impacted girls’ access to education. When schools re-opened in April 2015, nine months after they were shut down in an effort to stop the spread of the Ebola virus, girls who were “visibly pregnant” were prohibited from returning to class or from sitting for school standardized exams, such as the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) and the West Africa Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE). They were thus essentially prohibited from graduating from secondary school and attending university. Their presence in the classroom would have a negative effect on “innocent girls,” reasoned minister for Education, Science, and Technology Minkailu Bah (Ahmed, 2015). This prohibition further disempowered girls, since the data indicate that for every year a girl stays in school, her income increases by 10 percent to 20 percent (Denney, Gordon, and Ibrahim, 2015, p. 9). Many other non-pregnant girls did not return to classes either. Some girls married, despite the law against child marriage. Some stayed home to support their families, who may have lost a breadwinner, and take care of siblings (Jalloh, 2015). In October 2015, in response to condemnation by the Sierra Leone Human Rights Commission and NGOs, the government, with assistance from UNICEF, launched an educational initiative for pregnant teens, including after-hours learning sessions in schools, classes at forty-four community learning centers, and radio programs for home study. Funding for these studies for some 3,000–11,000 pregnant girls (the exact number is unknown) was provided through July 2016 by foreign donors (Kassaye, 2016). Still, this solution was criticized for contributing to the alienation and marginalization of these girls. Expectations that the new administration of President Bio would reverse the policy were shattered when he announced in August 2018 that he would continue to enforce the ban on pregnant students (Peyton, 2018). But in

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December 2019, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Court of Justice, ordered the abolition of these learning centers and required that Sierra Leone allow pregnant girls access to schools (Hodal, 2019). Bio did follow through on his campaign pledge to pay the school fees for primary and secondary school students, a promising move toward keeping girls in school, since school fees were historically an impediment for girls staying enrolled. In September 2018, the government announced it had paid the school fees for 1.1 million children in 3,500 schools and would be paying for 158,000 more students (Africanews, 2018). Even before this move, gender parity had already been achieved in primary school enrollment rates; however, the completion rate for boys was still higher than for girls—69 percent of boys to 67 percent of girls (World Bank Education Statistics)—and the enrollment rate for boys at junior secondary school was 67.5 percent compared to 63.8 percent for girls in 2016 (Global Partnership for Education, 2018, p. 63).

Ebola’s Impact on the Justice System Ebola impacted the justice system as well. The restrictive measures put in place by the government as part of a state of emergency in response to the virus kept the police service and justice system from addressing other concerns. The increase in the number of sex crimes in 2014 was “not unrelated to the fact that the police have been too engaged in monitoring and enforcing government imposed Ebola response measures such as enforcing quarantines and tracing affected or suspected cases of infection,” according to an NGO representative, rather than investigating cases of sexual assault. One human rights campaigner insisted that most perpetrators were taking advantage of the breakdown in policing during the Ebola crisis (Massaquoi, 2015). Additionally, constant lockdowns prevented victims from reporting sexually based crimes in a timely manner. The outbreak also weakened court capacity to prosecute gender crimes. The “Saturday courts” put in place to provide confidentiality for victims were suspended, and gender-based cases were incorporated into the regular court sessions (Kallay, 2015). The sixty-two Family Service Units, chronically under-funded, were deprioritized as resources were directed toward the health crisis. Lack of staff and basic equipment made it impossible to conduct adequate criminal investigations or provide counseling and treatment (Center for Accountability and Rule of Law, 2015). Although doctors’ reports—which are required to file a charge—are supposed to be free, doctors nevertheless often charge fees that are prohibitively expensive for victims, a practice that preceded and survived the Ebola crisis (United States Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Law, 2019). Without the medical evidence of sexual violence, cases stall; sexual assault cases are dismissed after five adjournments if no medical evidence is presented (Irin, 2015). After hearing the story of an Ebola survivor who had been repeatedly raped, President Bio in February 2019 declared gender-based violence a national emergency (BBC, 2019). He announced the formation of a special police division to investigate rape of minors which would be separate from the Family Support Unit; recommended that the Chief Justice create a special division within the courts with assigned judges to

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deal with sexual violence cases; publicized a public hotline to report sexual violence; pledged that victims of sexual assault would be provided free medical services at public hospitals; and recommended life sentences for rapists of children (State House, 2019). However, critics noted that the Ebola crisis had absorbed government funds to the exclusion of the criminal justice sector, and with the exception of the hotline, none of these policies have yet been implemented. One activist remarked, “You see after Ebola all the funding was re-directed towards the health sector. Nothing remains for the criminal justice sector now” (Jefferson and Schneider, 2018).

Suspension of FGM One positive consequence of the Ebola crisis was a suspension of FGM.15 The traditional practice takes place as part of an initiation ceremony marking the entry of pre-pubescent girls (typically between the ages of nine and 12) into the secret society called the Bondo, and is carried out by the society’s leaders, known as soweis. The practice aims to ensure that girls remain virgins before marriage and faithful to their husbands after they wed, and it is associated with complications in pregnancy and high infant mortality rates (up to 40 percent) for babies born to the circumcised girls (Irin, 2012). FGM also risks spreading the Ebola virus, since the sowei uses a single knife on the girls, which could spread the virus from girl to girl. As noted earlier, although a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) initiated in eight of the country’s fourteen districts had been in place since 2012 to ban the initiation rite among children, FGM continued, nevertheless. However, even before the Ebola outbreak, activist campaigning had reduced the prevalence of the practice; in 2010, 84 percent of women had undergone FGM, down from 94 percent in 2005, according to UNICEF (Irin, 2012). While the government has not criminalized FGM, the travel restrictions and bans on public gatherings put in place during the year-long state of emergency from July 2014 to July 2015 brought at least a temporary halt to the practice, since the cutting is part of a public ceremony. The government also initiated fines of 500,000 leones ($118) to discourage the soweis from performing the excisions during the state of emergency. One might view this as a promising sign that even “deeply embedded socio-cultural norms and practices can be halted” in response to a crisis like the Ebola epidemic (Sierra Leone Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs, et.al., 2014, p. 19). However, YaBundu Thomas, Secretary General of the National Sowei Council of Sierra Leone, insisted that the soweis had not permanently stopped the practice, but only suspended it temporarily in light of the public health emergency. Since the loss of business impacted the approximately 2,000 soweis across the country, Thomas said they would only stop the practice permanently when the government provides an alternative source of income for them (Koroma, 2015). In 2018, a country-wide MOU was signed between the soweis and the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender, and Children’s Affairs in which the traditional leaders agreed not to initiate minors. Although the FSU reported no new cases of minors that year, anecdotal evidence suggests the practice continues (United States Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Law, 2019).

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Conclusion While there were high hopes, especially from international observers, that the TRC’s and Special Court’s emphasis on addressing gender crimes and viewing women’s rights as human rights would impact Sierra Leone’s domestic jurisprudence—in particular by elevating the status of women—this expectation proved overly optimistic. Despite several new laws and policies seeking to improve the status of women and ensure greater protections for them, culturally accepted traditions and practices are hard to transform, and so implementation remains sketchy at best. Because of their genderspecific roles, girls and women also bore the brunt of Ebola’s impact. If anything, the epidemic revealed how fragile and ephemeral were the gains made toward the promotion of women’s rights and equality since the conclusion of the civil war. The case of Rwanda is instructive. At 67 percent women’s representation in parliament (Kwibuka, 2018), Rwanda has the top female-dominated parliament in the world16 and a 30 percent quota guarantee written into its constitution, but despite this status Rwandan women have discovered that legal guarantees are only a first step toward women’s security. As expected, Rwandan women have used their power in government to enact policies for gender equity, and markers such as girls’ education and maternal mortality rates have improved. However, gender-based violence continues apace. According to the most recent Rwanda Demographics and Health Survey, 22 percent of women aged 15–49 have experienced sexual violence (Government of Rwanda, 2016, p. 273). The lesson for Sierra Leone from the Rwandan case is clear: Women’s representation in parliament is a necessary but not sufficient condition for women’s security from sexual violence. Women in Sierra Leone should continue to strive for the 30 percent gender quota recommended by the TRC, advocated by local women’s organizations such as 50/50, and enshrined in international instruments with the expectation that a minimum threshold of women’s voices will be helpful to promote policies for gender equity. However, gender-based violence in Sierra Leone is influenced by multiple factors, including the pre-war subordinate status of women, the wartime acceptance of rape as a weapon of war, and weak implementation of legal reforms. Long-standing cultural norms and beliefs in male supremacy are stubborn, widespread, and not easily changed despite women’s representation in government and a gender-sensitive legislative framework.

Notes 1 2

3

Shuman Sengupta, Sierra Leone country director for NGO Marie Stopes, cited in Hayden, 2015, p. 26. The data is mixed. One study found that increased educational attainment of girls (after removing school fees in the 1990s) reduced the likelihood of sexual violence in Uganda but not in Malawi.(See Behrman, Peterman, and Palermo, 2017). There are three separate legal frameworks in Sierra Leone—customary law, common law, and statutory law.

158 4 5 6 7 8

9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16

War, Women, and Post-conflict Empowerment Only Sierra Leone, Chad, and Liberia of post-conflict countries do not have quotas. (See Tripp, 2015, p. 197). On women candidates, see Abdullah; Denzer; Dumbuya; and M’Cormack-Hale, this volume. See Dumbuya; Smythe; Abdullah; and Day, this volume, on the gender bills. See M’Cormack-Hale, this volume, on the Sexual Offenses Amendment Act of 2019. Types of sexual and gender based violence include domestic violence, unlawful carnal knowledge, rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, indecent assault, child/human trafficking. See Ibrahim; M’Cormack-Hale; and Shepler, this volume, on gender equity in education. On maternal mortality, see Ibrahim; and McGough, this volume. 29 percent of post-quarantined pregnant women were not receiving antenatal check-ups mainly out of fear of contracting the virus. See Sierra Leone Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs, UN Women, Country Office-Sierra Leone, Statistics Sierra Leone, Oxfam GB/Sierra Leone (2014), p. 12. See M’Cormack-Hale, this volume, on sexual violence following the Ebola epidemic. See Skran, this volume, on rape and teenage pregnancy. On “Hands Off Our Girls,” see Dumbuya; and M’Cormack-Hale, this volume. On FGM, see Denzer; and M’Cormack-Hale, this volume. Rwanda became the first nation with a female majority parliament in 2008.

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UNHCR’s Gender Policy for Refugees and Returnees in Sierra Leone: Health, Well-Being and Political Agency Claudena Skran

Introduction The challenge of ensuring the full participation of female refugees and returnees in post-conflict Sierra Leone has been a significant one. According to UNSCR 1325, a landmark resolution on women, peace, and security, women play an important role in conflict resolution and peace-building.1 But how is the representation and active engagement of women to be accomplished, especially in post-conflict societies characterized by traditions of male dominance? As the editors of this volume have pointed out, the literature on the success or failure of interventions designed to promote women’s political participation at all levels of decision-making within Sierra Leone has been minimal. While multiple scholars have written about the roles of women in peacebuilding in Sierra Leone and elsewhere,2 little attention has been paid to refugee women in that process. This is an oversight, given that repatriation of refugees is an integral part of democratic peacebuilding3 and their reintegration is key to sustainable development. Moreover, the active engagement of all women is especially needed when a society must confront a crisis, such as the Ebola (and now, COVID-19) outbreak in Sierra Leone. Ensuring the successful reintegration of returnees is a difficult task, as they are faced with the challenge of recreating their lives in changed economic, political, and social circumstances, often after an extended absence. This was especially true in the case of Sierra Leone because of the very large number of people, the majority of whom were women and children, uprooted by the conflict during its decade-long civil war, including more than 460,000 refugees who fled to other countries and at least 500,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) within Sierra Leone.4 Many women and girls faced double marginalization—once in flight and again in exile. Common problems affecting female returnees to Liberia, Bosnia, Guatemala, and elsewhere include living with the experience of sexual violence, an increased risk of infection with HIV/AIDs, their new status as a head of household, added responsibility for supporting their families, and a lack of political space in communities of return.5 Although various reintegration 161

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programs directed by international governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have sought to address women as a vulnerable group, few studies have systematically considered women as active agents in reintegration, nor determined the efficacy and sustainability of gender-oriented programming.6 While the literature on the reintegration of former soldiers, including child soldiers as well as female combatants and bush wives, is considerable, less has been written about the reintegration of returning refugees and former internally displaced people. The studies that have been conducted often focus only on the work of a particular NGO or the plight of a specific group, such as young mothers or children.7 What is missing is attention to the broader gender programs designed for returning women and girls within Sierra Leone. This chapter seeks to close this gap by considering the impact in Sierra Leone of the Community Empowerment Projects (CEPs), a reintegration program launched by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), on the promotion of well-being and political agency for women. Like Shepler (this volume), the focus is on a project implemented by an international entity. As the principal United Nations agency charged with refugee assistance, UNHCR has a long history of assisting people forced to flee their home countries, providing legal protection and one of three “durable solutions”: repatriation, resettlement, or local integration.8 Assistance for reintegration goes one step further, attempting to link refugee support with longer-term development goals.9 UNHCR’s 2008 policy framework defines reintegration as “the progressive establishment of conditions which enable returnees and their communities to exercise their social, economic, civil, political, and cultural rights, and on that basis to enjoy peaceful, productive, and dignified lives,”10 and notes that this process should be linked with gender concerns. The CEPs guidelines reflect this approach, emphasizing that women should be involved in decision-making and that projects should also benefit them.11 This research is based on a review of the secondary literature on politics, history, and conflict in Sierra Leone12, as well as primary documents of the United Nations, the Government of Sierra Leone, and NGOs. In addition, I conducted field research in Sierra Leone between 2006 and 2013, including site visits to 10 percent of all CEPs and to 92 percent of the Gender Based Violence (GBV) centers for women sponsored by UNHCR.13 Due to the Ebola outbreak, no site visits were conducted in 2014–2015, but further data collection continued in 2016–2017. Permission to interview beneficiaries was gained from local authorities; at each site, a semi-structured interview of community members closely associated with the project was conducted on or near the project’s physical location. I conducted interviews in English and Krio, and with the aid of a translator, in Mende and Kono. In addition to these site visits, I conducted over 100 semi-structured interviews with officials from the national and local governments in Sierra Leone, UNHCR and other UN agencies, and staff of both international and national NGOs, primarily in the capital Freetown and regional headquarter towns. This chapter is divided into four sections. The first section examines the position of female refugees in both flight and exile, using Amartya Sen’s concept of agency as an analytical framework.14 The second section explores the conceptual foundation of UNHCR’s reintegration program in Sierra Leone as well as its dual commitment to

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community participation and gender equality. The third section assesses and evaluates the impact and sustainability of the UNHCR’s reintegration program, especially the extent to which CEPs improved the health and well-being of women. The focus of this section is on Kailahun district in eastern Sierra Leone, the location of nearly half of all CEPs. The fourth section considers the impact and sustainability of women’s centers, which originally began as CEPs as a method of promoting political agency. The primary argument of the chapter is that these centers encouraged a more active role for female leaders during elections (2012) and the Ebola outbreak (2014–2015).

Women Refugees and IDPs in Sierra Leone: Agency in Flight and Exile Women and girls living in Sierra Leone before and during its ten-year war, 1991–2001, lacked the freedom and agency that Amartya Sen has identified as being necessary for development. For Sen, development is “a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy”; this process is “thoroughly dependent on the free agency of people.” While development requires the expansion of both freedom and agency, it also “requires the removal of major sources of unfreedom,” including, most prominently, poverty and tyranny, but also repression, lack of economic opportunities and public services, and social deprivation. According to Sen, the enhanced capability of individuals is promoted by political freedoms and economic facilities as well as opportunities for social advancement, guarantees of transparency, and security.15 The use of an agency-approach offers the possibility to focus on “the less visible forces crucial in peace building – such as women’s organizations”.16 Through this lens, it is also possible to identify programs and policies, such as literacy training and incomegenerating programs, that help women and girls to exercise more personal agency, even though their choices continue to be constrained in formal political and economic institutions. In pre-war Sierra Leone, legal and customary traditions kept both women and girls from exercising political, economic, and social agency, creating a situation of “unfreedom” for many.17 With the advent of war, the status and condition of women in Sierra Leone plummeted. Although the conflict affected people of all genders and ages, young women and girls were especially targeted for violence and abuse. According to the report of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC),18 “women and girls became particular targets of malice and violence during the conflict,” suffering from abduction, exploitation, rape, sexual slavery, mutilation, and kidnapping by multiple factions in the war. As a result, many females fled their homes, making displacement the most common human rights abuse perpetrated during Sierra Leone’s war; 24 percent of all rights violations against women fell into this category.19 Moreover, a full 25 percent of rape victims were twelve or younger, while 50 percent of those forced into sexual slavery were fifteen or younger at the time of their abduction.20 While the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) committed more human rights abuses than the other combatant groups, it is chilling to know that “all armed groups perpetrated human rights violations against women and girls”.21

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War and conflict had a decided impact on women and girls, even those who were not displaced, as social opportunities for both education and health care diminished. By 1995, Sierra Leone had the lowest ranking in the world on the Human Development Index (174), and life expectancy had dropped to just 35 years of age. The war took its toll on health facilities and the under-five mortality rate hit 284 (per 1000 live births), one of the top three rates in Africa.22 By 2000, this rate had soared to 316, the highest in the world23, in part due to a decline in births assisted by a trained health attendant; in 1993, 75 percent of birthing women had this opportunity, but by 1996 the figure had dropped to just 25 percent. 24 Many women and girls who sought safety in camps for refugees in the neighboring countries of Guinea or Liberia or who were displaced within Sierra Leone found their position compromised. For instance, women might be excluded from decision-making because of their illiteracy. Usually NGOs sought to communicate to all refugees through a camp head who could read and write in English or French, the languages typically known by aid officials. This meant that complaints and input had to be channeled through one camp representative, generally a male elder. Other factors in camps also limited social agency, including domestic violence and poor medical care. Women in IDP camps, in particular, suffered from poor health and thoughts of suicide. 25 In refugee camps outside of Sierra Leone, health services varied, with some actually offering significantly more medical services for women and children than were available before the war. While some aspects of camp life restricted agency for women, other elements promoted it. As noted by Meintjes, conflict can provide opportunities for women to take on new roles.26 Many of the returning women refugees interviewed for this study reported being part of a women’s group or cooperative while in Guinea. Upon return to their home villages, these women continued these groups, taking on new members that had not shared their camp experience.27 Camp administrators also often treated women as “heads of households.” In Lebanese Camp for IDPs in Bo district, for instance, 55 percent of heads of households were women. As some “heads” were as young as 20 years old, this was a strong departure from the traditional practices, which emphasized the authority of male elders, of the Mende and Kissi-speaking areas of Kailahun from which most of the people had fled.28 Overall, the experiences of both flight and exile for women limited the freedom and individual agency of returnees at the end of the conflict, but also opened up some possibilities for greater freedom. According to Barnes, “the aftermath of conflict constitutes an opportunity to rebuild or transform old, discriminatory structures . . . into ones that offer new possibilities for women’s empowerment and participation in the post-conflict phase.” 29 It is with this possibility in mind that the UNHCR in Sierra Leone began programs to assist returnees and, at the same time, hoped to promote greater gender equality and agency for women.30

UNHCR, Gender Policy, and Reintegration UNHCR’s reintegration efforts within Sierra Leone should be considered within the wider context of its African operations. Although UNHCR was originally designed to

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assist European refugees produced by two world wars,31 by the late 1960s the organization had become deeply involved in assisting African refugees generated by anti-colonial conflicts, including refugees created by the Algerian independence struggle with France, Rwandans fleeing conflict in the Great Lakes region, and people fleeing Portuguese-administered Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea Bissau, and elsewhere.32 While at first these refugees often quickly returned to their home countries once independence was achieved, this became less feasible for later refugees from new conflicts. By the 1980s, UNHCR was assisting refugees in protracted settings and, as a result, began considering linking refugee relief with development aid both in host countries and countries of origin.33 Interest in promoting a continuum between relief and development continued in the post-Cold War period and, after 2001, became linked with the liberal project of rebuilding failed states.34 Also in the early 2000s, UNHCR policy expanded the concept of “sustainable return” and aimed to link reintegration and peacebuilding in a select group of countries: Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.35 UNHCR first became involved in Sierra Leone in a significant way in 2001, when it launched Quick Impact Projects (QIPS) to help with the most crucial needs for returning refugees. As the scale of repatriation accelerated, UNHCR became one of the largest agencies operating in Sierra Leone. UNHCR then adopted a new orientation, asking “what [do] communities want?” This differed from previous approaches that determined projects based on a needs assessment done by outside experts.36 From 2003 through 2006, UNHCR promoted community empowerment, involving returning refugees, former IDPs, and people who had never moved in decision-making. These communities were encouraged to select, plan, and supervise their own projects in coordination with an implementing partner, generally an international NGO. Although NGOs were supposed to be intermediaries in this process, they could exercise significant impact on both the process and outcomes.37 Projects fell into five main sectors: water and sanitation (44 percent), livelihoods (21 percent), education and community services (20 percent), community buildings (12 percent), and health (3 percent).38 UNHCR’s program for returnees in Sierra Leone directly linked reintegration strategy with gender equality. Since its creation in 1951, UNHCR’s determination of refugee status has sometimes undercounted the actual number of female refugees. In South Africa, for example, only 18 percent of refugees assisted by UNHCR in 1998 were female.39 Since the late 1990s, however, UNHCR has prioritized sensitivity to gender issues and concerns for refugee women, although with uncertain results in implementation.40 Its policy parameters indicate that UNHCR has institutionalized the participation of women as a way to both achieve gender equality and deliver efficient humanitarian aid.41 In formulating its policies in Sierra Leone, UNHCR focused on women as a “vulnerable” group, referring to their role as victims. This approach to women in African settings has been criticized by feminists who argue that it does not take into account the multiple roles played by women in civil society, including advocacy, protesting, and negotiating.42 However, UNHCR’s strategy did have the potential to increase agency for women, as they could take part in a “bottomup” process whereby communities selected projects, and could also play a continuing role in their implementation.

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UNHCR’s Reintegration Program: The Neglect of Health Care Although UNHCR sponsored reintegration programs in five districts in Sierra Leone, nearly half of all projects were located in Kailahun, which borders both Liberia and Guinea.43 The site of the first shots of the war in 1991, Kailahun sustained the thirdhighest damage rating during the war44 and was the last district disarmed. Additionally, Kailahun suffered high levels of infrastructure destruction; 80 percent of private homes and 95 percent of all schools were damaged. The long conflict tore the social fabric of the district as well. Kailahun had the largest number of people displaced; at least 87,000 (25 percent) fled as its fertile agricultural fields were trampled by war.45 Most IDPs returning to Kailahun came back to burned villages in need of reconstruction and social services.46 Returning by foot, bus, or boat, returnees had experienced trauma and dislocation. Family structures had changed as well, as more women were heads of households, either as widows or single mothers.47 Many of the CEPs implemented in Kailahun enhanced the well-being of women by providing them with cleaner water (47 percent of projects), supporting their livelihoods in agriculture (13 percent), and offering opportunities for girls to attend school (18 percent).48 However, the projects only marginally improved health care. Of 618 CEPs, only 24 (4 percent) primarily addressed health care, even though medical services in the district were extremely poor. At the end of the war, each Primary Health Unit (PHU) in Kailahun served about 16,000 people, far above the national average of 8,000.49 The low priority placed on health persisted despite the fact that women often wanted improved clinics and more maternity services. Health-related projects also lacked long-term sustainability. Community members interviewed in Kailahun district voiced dissatisfaction with the health projects largely because they did not last; medical supplies had quickly run out and had not been replaced. In addition, the physical construction of clinics and health posts did not lead to more accessible medical services, including doctor’s services, emergency care, and drug availability.50 This result supports Enrico Pavignani’s argument that “the shortterm horizon shared by donors and national officials encourages decisions” about health care that are unsustainable. 51 The contrast between the paucity of health projects and the popularity of community buildings is striking. For example, many Court Barries, traditionally a legal court and the space for the chief and elders, were damaged or destroyed during the war.52 Upon reaching a village, invading forces singled out chiefs and elders, often the largest property owners in the area, who were then abused, tortured, and killed.53 According to one UNHCR official, nearly 40 percent of all CEP requests in the eastern region were to replace damaged Court Barries, 54 resulting in the construction or rehabilitation of 96 such structures between 2003 and 2005.55 In selecting the Court Barrie projects, the CEP community decision-making process supported the traditional, male-dominated system of governance. While women and youth participated in this deliberation, their preferences failed to carry significant weight. Local chiefs, on the other hand, heavily influenced the selection; typically these were older men from a “ruling family” elected to their positions for life, thus giving them considerable influence. In these cases, the “community” decision

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came to express the power and desires of the local chiefs, and represented a return to “traditional” and customary norms in a post-conflict setting, which has been identified as one of the major obstacles to social change by Peter Dumbuya and others.56

UNHCR Switches Policy: Women’s Centers and Political Agency In 2005, UNHCR made an abrupt policy switch; they stopped approving projects for Court Barries and instead pushed for women’s centers that explicitly addressed GBV. According to a high-level UNHCR official, one reason for this change was criticism from both outside and inside UNHCR that gender balance in decision-making had not resulted in policies that favored women. In order to win over local communities, staff of UNHCR and NGOs engaged communities in discussions about violence against women and the need to overcome feelings of shame held by its victims. Even the mention of GBV itself was controversial, and it took several visits to a community for members to even begin to talk about the issue.57 In focusing on GBV, the centers sought to address the silence and shame surrounding sexual violence and rape perpetrated during the war. Beyond this, they addressed the continuation of domestic and sexual violence, a social phenomenon that has been found to be “endemic” after wars end.58 UNHCR sponsored 12 CEPs that served as GBV centers, including five in Kailahun, four in Kono, two in Kenema, and one in Pujehun. Typically a GBV center involved the creation or development of an alternative space where all ages could meet. While the exact functions of the GBV centers varied, they often included the following features: a meeting place, literacy training, skills training, economic cooperatives, and, in some cases, a counseling area and safe house for victims of domestic abuse. Most of these functions required frequent meetings, and the women interviewed consistently stressed this aspect of the center, which affirmed both social agency and protective security. These women’s centers created “a unique type of public sphere to enlist popular participation” and involved a mix of economic and political activities.59 The Upper Bambara Women’s Centre in Pendembu, for example, provided “a safe place” for the women of the community. The building itself consisted of a concrete block structure originally built by a grant from the US Department of State and then maintained by the International Rescue Committee (IRC); in 2005, UNHCR provided a grant for activities at the Centre. In 2006, the Centre served an estimated 140 women and girls, ages 15 through 80, and hosted programs and workshops on combating GBV and encouraging women’s political participation. Leaders also developed their own agenda, identifying teenage pregnancy, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, domestic violence, and rape as key issues that affected women and girls in the community.60 Leaders at the Pendembu center emphasized both the economic and social dimensions of problems facing women in the community. In Koindu, the women’s center ran a vegetable cooperative, originally funded with its CEP grant in 2005 and continuing more than five years.61 In Buedu, the CEPs offered skills training; five years later, women of the center sold soap to generate income for themselves and the center. Some centers had an even stronger economic focus; at the Sandiyallu and Bandajuma Sinneh centers, CEPs

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supported construction of an open pavilion and income-generating activities for local women. This economic role is especially important as economic revitalization is often neglected in post-conflict peacebuilding. While GBV centers directly benefited women initially, their sustainability over time varied. Of the eleven centers visited for this study, only 30 percent (4) maintained their operation and focus on gender issues for at least a five-year period. In these cases, the centers received on-going program and staff support from the IRC.62 This American NGO helped to maintain the buildings and also sponsored workshops on democracy training and women’s rights. Assistance of this kind could be seen as an example of “NGO-ization”, which Sonia Alvarez suggests includes not only the increase in the number of feminist NGOs “with paid, professional staff and funding from government, multilateral and bilateral agencies and foreign donors . . .” but also the “official sanctioning of particular forms and practices among feminist organizations.” 63 However, this example of Northern support and funding does not seem to have caused the controversy created by US involvement in Latin America.64 One possible explanation for this could be that the IRC and other international NGOs limited their use of foreign workers, instead employing and investing in the careers of national staff members. Indeed, this result supports what Aili Tripp has suggested is the greater cohesion of the women’s movement in Africa, as manifested by linkages between rural and urban activists.65 Without international support, the lifespan and functions of the centers dramatically changed. In the Sandiyallu and Bandajuma Sinneh centers, also in Kailahun, programs connected to GBV were dropped as soon as GTZ, their implementing partner, withdrew; the women’s groups, however, did continue their economic focus by running a successful town market.66 In Kenema and Pujehun, two primarily agricultural districts with a similar ethnic composition to Kailahun, none of the centers continued to address GBV issues after the withdrawal of their donors. Of the three centers, one became a school, another was kept as a meeting place for NGOs, and another was utilized as a toilet.67 In Kono, the diamond-mining region, the once flourishing GBV centers did not survive the pull-out of the partner organizations. Of the three centers, only one continued as a women’s center68; another was abandoned and the last one was transformed into a storage shed for the local chief, a highly symbolic action to restore traditional authority. Although other types of CEPS promoted social and economic agency for women, the women’s centers had a greater impact on their political agency. This was because the centers required an on-going role for a Project Management Committee (PMC), one that was central to the creation of the centers and their on-going operations. The PMCs in Koindu and in Kainkordu, Kono, had roots in refugee camps, and so the groups had a long history with UNHCR. Although UNHCR insisted on a selfmanagement structure, they did not follow a pre-determined blueprint. Some PMCs included both men and women, affirming the conclusion of Cheryl Hendricks that “within African feminism, the importance of family and cooperation with men to achieve gender equality” seems to be paramount.69 In Buedu, the Executive Committee of the PMC started out with both genders but then became all female, as they had

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found that men tended to dominate the group. In Koindu, in contrast, leading men in the community formed an important part of the management of the center.70 Perhaps most uniquely, the centers promoted political agency directly by fostering elements central to participation and democratic citizenship: education about rights, sensitization, lobbying, and service provision.71 The physical structure of the center provided an available place for workshops on topics related to human rights and women’s issues, sometimes sponsored by the center itself but more commonly offered by an NGO. In some cases, the centers provided services and lobbied local governments; this was particularly true of the centers supported by the IRC, which maintained counseling for victims of domestic violence. At the Buedu center, for instance, victims of domestic violence could stay up to three days with their children. Counselors at the center also helped them explore options and, if needed, pursue a legal case against their attacker.72 In addition, the women’s centers collaborated with each other in a regional network and hosted activists and programs associated with national women’s organizations, such as 50/50.73 These activities suggest that women’s organizations in rural Sierra Leone may be following the pattern set by Uganda, Kenya, and elsewhere; according to Aili Tripp, women’s organizations in Africa are growing, becoming more independent, and showing willingness to take on issues “which had been considered taboo in the past”, such as rape.74 The experience of women’s centers in Sierra Leone also suggests that, if supported over the medium-term (5 years), these centers could serve as incubators for political candidates for local office. One surprising outcome of the 2012 elections in Sierra Leone was the unusually high rate of female representation in Kailahun district (41 percent), against the national average (19 percent). Of the 29 wards in Kailahun, 12 elected female representatives. Of the areas that hosted a women’s center, Wards 2, 7, 8, and 13 all elected a female representative; only voters in Ward 10 failed to do so.75 It has been suggested that the active efforts of NGOs within Sierra Leone to educate aspirants in Kailahun about the political process gave women in the district the confidence to run for elected office.76 While this training certainly played a part, the role of the Pendembu center as an incubator for female aspirants is also important. The first woman elected to the District Council of Kailahun was a former member of the PMC at the Pendembu women’s center. In the 2012 elections, two females were elected to represent the two wards in Upper Bambara Chiefdom; in interviews, both said that being a part of the center had been important to them.77 One of the officials interviewed suggested that the women’s center especially gave her the confidence to speak in public, something traditionally discouraged in her society.78 This suggests that the women’s centers, through their day-to-day operation, provide women with socialization, leadership opportunities, and management skills that are extremely helpful to those seeking to enter elected office.

Political Agency and the Challenges of Ebola Any evaluation of the impact of UNHCR’s reintegration efforts on enhancing the wellbeing of women and promoting their political agency must recognize the difficult

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conditions prevailing in Sierra Leone at the end of its long war. Overall, the CEPs implemented by UNHCR in Sierra Leone resulted in the selection of projects that benefited women in the sectors of water and sanitation, and livelihoods. However, the small number of health projects selected, compared with the large number of Court Barries, indicates less success in achieving gender equity. UNHCR’s shift in policy and its decision to support women’s centers represents a move away from procedural equality in the treatment of men and women to a policy of advocacy for women. By supporting a small but high-profile group of women’s centers, UNHCR improved the social and economic agency of women, enhanced their protective security, and, in the longer term helped to promote both political agency and participation. While the centers that continued beyond five years depended on donor funding from international agencies, more importantly, their continued operations depended on the ability of members to set their own priorities, agendas, and working methods. As a result, the centers provide a starting place for some female elected officials to begin their careers. Nevertheless, the low priority placed on health projects in the CEPS unfortunately contributes to poor health outcomes for women in Sierra Leone. In 2009, Amnesty International issued a report on maternal health care in Sierra Leone, which concluded, “The discrimination women face in almost all aspects of their life in Sierra Leone is reflected in the lack of priority given to their health needs and undermines their right to health.”79 This lack of attention to health care is especially troubling given that Kailahun district found itself on the front lines of the Ebola outbreak of 2014–2015. The Ebola crisis revealed the weaknesses of the health centers, as many lacked equipment, supplies, and pain medicines.80 The Ebola outbreak presented a new test for the agency and participation of women in decisions that concerned them. With the declaration of a National Emergency in July 2014, all the women’s centers closed. During the outbreak itself, the Koindu center lost at least ten members and the Pendembu center over fifteen, creating a deep sense of loss for the surviving members. During the continued disruption of the outbreak, the frequency of rape and sexual violence increased, as did the incidence of teen pregnancy.81 This suggests that women and girls lost much of the “protective security” enabled by the existence of the women’s centers as safe spaces. Both centers also experienced theft and damage during their closure and ceased their income-generating activities. This, in turn, added to the economic stress on the members, many of whom could not engage in trading or farming due to restrictions on freedom of movement. Despite the closure of the women’s centers, some of their members sought to influence and participate in community efforts to fight Ebola. According to Lucy Gondor, a leader in a Women in Governance network and one of the original founders of the Pendembu women’s center, “women played a vital role in the Ebola crisis” by building on their role as care-givers and helping to shape implementation of the bylaws used to control Ebola, a disease spread by touch. In particular, women leaders advocated for women to be involved in changing norms around burials, one of the cultural practices most resistant to modification. 82 Thus, as a result of enhanced agency that, at least in part, was cultivated by the UNHCR’s reintegration programs in Sierra Leone, some women leaders demanded a

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political voice at the local level and helped to reduce the severity of the Ebola outbreak. The “bottom-up” approach of the CEPs, supported by international NGOs, helped to develop women leaders in local communities. This suggests that UNHCR’s investment in gender advocacy in programs for refugees and returnees can have a long-run benefit for increasing political participation and agency for women in a post-conflict society.

Notes 1 United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1325, “Women and Peace and Security,” October 31, 2000, http://www.un.org/en/sc/documents/resolutions/2000.shtml. Karen Barnes, “The evolution and implementation of UNSCR 1325: an overview,” in Women, Peace, and Security, ‘Funmi Olonisakin, Karen Barnes and Eka Ikpe (eds.) (London: Routledge, 2011). 2 Karen Barnes, “Lost in translation? UNAMSIL, UNSCR 1325 and women building peace in Sierra Leone,” in Olonisakin et al, 121–137; Elisabeth Porter, Peacebuilding: Women in International Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2007); Theodora-Ismene Gizelis, “Gender Empowerment and United Nations Peacebuilding,” Journal of Peace Research 46, no. 4 (July 2009), 505–523. 3 Olajide O. Akanji, “Reconstruction, Peacebuilding and Elections in Post-war Sierra Leone,” African Insight 42, no. 4 (March 2013), 17. 4 UNHCR, UNHCR Global Report: 1999, 119; UNHCR, 2005 UNHCR Statistical Yearbook, 486. 5 Victoria Ijeoma Nwogu, “Safe and suitable return for women fleeing conflict in Liberia,” Forced Migration Review 36 (Nov. 2010); Manuel Carballo, et al, “Post-conflict transition and HIV,” Forced Migration Review (Oct. 2010), 20; Sarah Blue, “Including Women in Development: Guatemalan Refugees and Local NGOs,” Latin American Perspectives 32, no. 5 (Sept 2005), 111–112; Alison Crosby, “Return to the Nation: The Organizational Challenges Confronted by Guatemalan Refugee Women,” Refuge: Canada’s Periodical on Refugees 19, no. 3 (Dec. 2000), 34. 6 An exception is Elissa Helms, “Women as Agents of Ethnic Reconciliation: Women’s NGOS and International Intervention in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Women Studies International Forum 26, no. 1 (Jan. 2003): 15–33. 7 Krijn Peters, “Reintegration Support for Young Ex-Combatants: A Right or a Privilege?” International Migration 45, no. 5 (2007), 35–59; Chris Coulter, Bush Wives and Girl Soldiers: Women’s Lives Through War and Peace in Sierra Leone (Cornell University Press, 2009); Lakshmi Ramarajan, “In the Space between Employees and Clients: The Impact of Organizational Context on a Refugee Program in Sierra Leone,” Refuge 25, no.1 (April 2008), 35–43; Miranda Worthen et al., “Reintegration of young mothers,” Forced Migration Review 40 (Aug. 2012), 25–26; Save the Children, “No Place Like Home? Children’s experiences of reintegration in the Kailahun District of Sierra Leone,” (UK: Save the Children Fund: 2004). 8 Alexander Betts, Gil Loescher and James Milner, UNHCR: The Politics and Practice of Refugee Protection (London: Routledge, 2012), 18–48. 9 Jeffrey Crisp, “Mind the Gap! Humanitarian Assistance and the Development Process,” International Migration Review 35, no. 1 (Spring 2001), 173–176.

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10 UNHCR, “UNHCR’s Role in Support of the Return and Reintegration of Displaced Populations: Policy Framework and Implementation Strategy,” February 2008, para 8, 6 [EC/59/SC/CRP.5], 5, para 7, 6. 11 UNHCR, Freetown, Community Empowerment Guidelines. 12 Joe A.D. Alie, A New History of Sierra Leone (Oxford: MacMillan-Africa, 1990); William Reno, Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone (New York and Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995); Paul Richards, Fighting for the Rain Forests: War, Youth & Resources in Sierra Leone (Woodbridge, Suffok: James Currey, 1996); Lansana Gberie, A Dirty War in West Africa: The RUF and the Destruction of Sierra Leone (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005); Peter Penfold, Atrocities, Diamonds, and Diplomacy: The Inside Story of the Conflict in Sierra Leone (Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Military, 2012); Diane Frost, From the Pit to the Market: Politics and the Diamond Economy in Sierra Leone (Woodbridge, Suffolk: James Currey, 2012). 13 Claudena Skran, A catalyst and a bridge: An evaluation of UNHCR’s community empowerment projects in Sierra Leone (UNHCR: January 2012), PDES/2012/01. 14 Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor Books, 1999). 15 Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom.1–10. For an alternative approach, see Martha C. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 16 Veronika Fuest, “ ‘This is the Time to Get in Front’: Changing Roles and Opportunities for Women in Liberia,” African Affairs, 107, no. 427 (April 2008), 203. 17 Claudena Skran, “UNHCR’s Gender Policy for Refugees and Returnees in Sierra Leone: Enhancing Well-Being or Promoting Political Agency?” Journal of African and Asian Studies 14 (2015), 113–116. 18 Lamin, Abdul Rahman. “Building Peace Through Accountability in Sierra Leone: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Special Court,” Journal of Asian and African Studies. 38 (2003): 295–320. 19 TRC, Witness to Truth, Vol 3B: 136, #201 and Vol 2: 35. The TRC documented 7983 instances of forced displacement or 19.8 percent of all violations. 20 TRC, Witness to Truth, Vol. 3B: 259 and 268, #153. 21 TRC, Witness to Truth, Vol. 2: 100, # 496 and # 502. 22 UNDP, Human Development Report 1998 (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 20–22. 23 UNDP, Human Development Report 2002: Deepening democracy in a fragmented world (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 177. 24 GoSL, Sierra Leone National Human Development Report, “Child Survival and Development.” Human Development Report 2002 gives a rate of 42 percent over the period 1995–2000, 169. 25 Lynn L. Amowitz, et al., “Prevalence of War-Related Sexual Violence and Other Human Rights Abuses Among Internally Displaced Persons in Sierra Leone.” JAMA 287, no. 4 (January 23/30, 2002): 517. 26 S. Meintjes, M. Turshen, and A. Pillay (eds.), The Aftermath: Women in post-Conflict Transformation (London: Zed books, 2002). See also, Fuest, 201–224. 27 Chairlady, Diom Piloor GBV Centre, Koindu, Kissi Teng, Kailahun, 9/2006, and Chairlady, Kainkordu, Soa, Kono, 7/2011, interview by C. Skran. 28 Council of Churches in Sierra Leone, Relief and Rehabilitation Department-Bo, “Registration list for displaced people living in Lebanese camp, March 1999, National Commission for Social Action, Sierra Leone Archives.

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29 Barnes, “Sierra Leone,” p. 128. See also Melanie M. Hughes and Aili Mari Tripp, “Civil War and Trajectories of Change in Women’s Political Representation in Africa, 1985–2010”, Social Forces (June 2015), 93, no. 4, 1513–1540. 30 This perception, of post-conflict contexts providing windows of opportunity for women’s empowerment is now a widely held observation as also pointed out by other contributors in this volume; while the editors point out that questions can be raised about how success is defined and operationalized, this chapter shows that international actors, working in partnership with community members and implementing a bottom-up approach, can succeed in influencing women’s agency and empowerment. 31 Claudena Skran, Refugees in Interwar Europe: The Emergence of a Regime (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1995), 7; Gil Loescher, Beyond Charity: International cooperation and the Global Refugee Crisis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 32–74. 32 UNHCR, State of the World’s Refugees, (UNHCR: Oxford University Press, 2000), 37–50. 33 Crisp, “Mind the Gap,” 169–171. 34 Michael Barnett, “Humanitarianism with a Sovereign Face: UNHCR in Global Undertow,” International Migration Review 35, No. 1 (Spring 2001), 246. 35 Betts, Loescher, and Milner, UNHCR , 87. 36 UNHCR official, Freetown, 3/2006, interview by C. Skran. 37 On the role of international NGOs in Sierra Leone, see “Fredline A.O. McCormackHale, ‘NGOS and Women’s Capabilities in Post-war Settings: The Case of Sierra Leone,’ jENda: A Journal of Culture and African Women’s Studies 15 (July 2009). 38 Skran, Catalyst, 51. 39 Nahla Valji, Lee Anne de la Hunt, and Helen Moffett, “Where are the Women? Gender Discrimination in Refugee Policies and Practices,” Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity (2003), no. 55, 61. 40 Jane Freedman, “Mainstreaming gender in refugee protection,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 23, no. 4 (Dec. 2010), 589–607. 41 Elizabeth Olivius, “(Un)Governable Subjects: The Limits of Refugee Participation in the Promotion of Gender Equality in Humanitarian Aid,” Journal of Refugee Studies 27, no. 1 (2013), 43. 42 Eka Ikpe, “Nigeria and the implementation of UNSCR 1325,” in Olonisakin et al, 90; Barnes, “Sierra Leone,” 126. 43 Skran, Catalyst, 1, 51–52. 44 Sierra Leone Encyclopedia: 2005. 45 Sierra Leone Information System Development Assistance Coordination Office, Data Pack: Kailahun District (October 2004), 1–2. 46 Peter Ganda, District Co-ordinator NaCSA, Kailahun town, 8/ 2006, interview by C. Skran. 47 Nana Pratt and Haja Fofana, “Republic of Sierra Leone,” in Security Council Resolution 1325: Civil Society Monitoring Reports 2013, Mavic Cabrera-Balleza ed. (Global Network of Women Peacebuilders: October 2013), 6. 48 Skran, Catalyst 51, 30. 49 DataPack: Kailahun, 2. 50 Site visits, Gbieka, Njaluahun and Kigbai, Kpeje West, Kailahun, 3/2008. 51 Enrico Pavignani, “Human resources for health through conflict and recovery: lessons from African countries,” Disasters (2011), 35, no. 4, 663. 52 GoSL, Sierra Leone Information Systems, Map, Code 1051, 3 Nov. 2004, “Court Barries: Building Damage,” Map. 53 TRC, Witness to Truth, Vol. 3A, 509–511. 54 UNHCR Head of Office, Kenema, 3/2006, interview by C. Skran.

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55 Skran, Catalyst, 30. 56 Peter Dumbuya; in this volume, Tigist Shewarega Hussen, “Empowering the nation, disempowering women: The case of Kitcha Customary Law in Ethiopia,” Agenda 23, no. 82 (2009); Nelson Tebbe, “Inheritance and Disinheritance: African Customary Law and Constitutional Rights,” The Journal of Religion 88, no. 4 (October 2008): 466. 57 UNHCR official, Freetown, 2/2006, interview by C. Skran. 58 Sheila Meintjes, “Introduction: The Aftermath: Women in Post-war Reconstruction,” Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity (2000), no. 43, 4; Jacqui True, The Political Economy of Violence Against Women (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 135–159. 59 Sujay Ghosh, “NGOS as Political Institutions, ”Journal of Asian and African Studies 44, no. 5 (2009), 482. 60 Site visits in 3/2006, 3/2008, 7/2011, 9/2013, 3/2017 and 7/2017. Chairlady and PMC, Pendembu Women’s Centre, Upper Bambara Chiefdom, Kailahun, interviews by C. Skran. 61 Site visit, Diom Piloor Center, Koindu, Kailahun, 7/2011. 62 IRC staff member, Freetown, interview by C. Skran in 3/2008 , 4/2013 and 9/2013. 63 Sonia E. Alvarez, “Beyond NGO-ization? Reflections from Latin America,” Development (2009), 52, no. 2, 176. 64 Sonia E. Alvarez, et. al, “Encountering Latin American and Caribbean Feminism”, Signs, 29, no. 2 (Winter 2003), 552. 65 Aili Mari Tripp, “Women in movement: Transformations in African political landscapes,” in Gender and Civil Society: Transcending boundaries, Jude Howell and Diane Mulligan (eds.) (London: Routledge, 2005), 94. 66 Site visits, Women’s Centers, Sandiyallu and Bandajuma Sinneh, Luawa, Kailahun, 7/2011. 67 Site visits, Juro, Gaura, Kenema, 7/2011; Gegbema, Tunkia, Kenema, 7/2011; Fario, Pujehun, 9/2013. 68 Site visits to Women’s Center, Masundu, Sandor, Kono, 7/2011; Soa, Kainkordu, Kono, 12/10. 69 Cheryl Hendricks, Gender and Security in Africa: An Overview (Uppsala, Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2011), Discussion Paper 63, 15. 70 Site visits to Women’s Center, Masundu, Sandor, Kono, 7/2011 and Dion Pillor Women’s Centre, Koindu, Kailahun, 3/2016. 71 Ghosh, 481–491. 72 Site visit, Bewondoo Women’s Centre, Buedu, Kailahun, 7/2011. 73 Interviews, IRC, Kailahun Field Office, 3/17; IRC, Freetown office, 9/2013; 50/50, Freetown, 2011. 74 Tripp, “Women in Movement,” 98. 75 GoSL, National Election Commission, “2012 Local Council Elections: Notice of Certified Final Results of Local Council Candidates.” 76 Nana Pratt and Haja Fofana, “Republic of Sierra Leone,” 97. 77 District Councilors for Ward 7 and Ward 8, Pendembu Women’s Centre, Pendembu, Kailahun, Sept. 13, 2013, interviews by C. Skran. 78 District Councilor, 3/2017, interview by C. Skran. 79 Amnesty International, Out of Reach: The Cost of Maternal Health in Sierra Leone, September 2009. 80 Field Visits by C. Skran to primary care clinics in Kailahun district, 3/2008 and 7/2017. 81 IRC—Kailhun Field Office staff, 3/2017, interviews by C. Skran; Site visits to Koindu and Pendembu women’s centers, 7/2017. 82 Lucy Gondor, Pendembu, 7/2017, interview by C. Skran.

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From Local Discussion Groups to Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp: Sierra Leone Women Mobilizing for Women’s Rights in Sierra Leone (An Activist’s Approach) Amy Smythe

Introduction Women in Sierra Leone have faced tremendous challenges in recent decades, ranging from the country’s civil war to the efforts to establish a post-conflict democracy to the crisis resulting from the dreaded Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), which saw the deaths of many of the country’s citizens. In all of these crises, women experienced particular vulnerabilities due to their gender, but also were able to leverage their shared knowledge and connections to help drive the activist and political response. During the Ebola crisis, women from various walks of life locally and internationally mobilized and responded vigorously, advocating for a gender perspective in programs to combat the disease, and drawing from their experiences with strategies previously utilized to promote gender equality. These efforts included building on cooperative relationships through which they had helped to end the civil conflict and influence the transition to democratic governance, as well as new partnerships and skills acquired as a result of developments in communication technology. The culture of activism that had developed over the years motivated women across local and international boundaries to organize meetings and consultations, and to take advantage of social media techniques of the twenty-first century in their response. This chapter analyzes women’s sustained efforts at home and globally to address those structural and inequitable barriers which continue to affect governance and development planning initiatives in Sierra Leone, particularly in crisis response. Although gains have been made, the struggle still continues. The importance of a gender-sensitive approach, which seemed so obvious to activists in Sierra Leone implementing programs to address the Ebola epidemic and to advocates trying to influence the UN mandate on Ebola in West Africa, still has yet to take root in all spheres of decision-making. This chapter is based on information collected from the day-to-day communication of the women of Sierra Leone, through emails, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube, 175

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video clips, newspapers, and online productions developed and used by Sierra Leone women activists. It focuses on aspects of mobilization locally in Sierra Leone and internationally to influence the UN intervention in addressing the Ebola crisis in a more robust and coordinated manner. It reflects lived experiences of Sierra Leonean women activists in leadership, reflected in the language and style used in writing the chapter. I was among one of the women who helped strategize and work with other women in addressing the crisis. Although living in the US during the outbreak, I had served in Sierra Leone in various capacities, within government, as a former Minister of Gender and Children’s Affairs as well as a Diplomat; I had also worked with civil society, serving as President of the Sierra Leone YWCA between 1993–1996.

Historical Perspective on Women’s Mobilization and Action since the Civil Conflict Sierra Leonean women in the mid-1990s, as the civil conflict raged, had seen the necessity of mobilizing for solutions to end the eleven-year war. At the same time, as they got together to prepare a National Report for the Beijing Fourth World Conference (held in 1995) and for the preparatory meeting in Dakar, women leaders in Freetown realized that their sisters in the frontline areas of the conflict had been forced to take action to liberate some of their compatriots captured by the RUF fighters. This period coincided with a new, younger and more progressive leadership at the helm of affairs at the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), the oldest women’s organization, which had been in existence for over eighty years. Although the impact of the conflict had still not been felt in the capital city of Freetown, the YWCA had branches in all regions of Sierra Leone and membership in several districts, and so had been receiving news of the atrocities suffered by its members as a result of the ongoing war, which had been raging in the eastern part of the country for over five years. As women came together at the YWCA to prepare for the Beijing conference, they had the opportunity to discuss the conflict situation in the east of the country. As they received and shared concrete information of exactly what was happening to their sisters in other parts of the country (sometimes by telephone, which was rare at that time), the women were moved to establish a permanent forum to discuss the war and its implications on a regular basis. At such weekly meetings, the women present were urged to go back and share information with their constituencies in Freetown and the rest of the country. At the same time, the YWCA, through its normal reporting channels to its main partner at the World YWCA office in Geneva, apprised its international partners of the war and its impact on women. Thus Sierra Leone became one of the areas of focus of the World YWCA, together with its work with the women in conflict zones in Lebanon and Syria, among others. As information was shared by different women’s organizations and groups participating at these weekly meetings, it was discovered that in areas closest to the frontline of the war like Kenema and Pujehun, some brave women leaders had been attempting to meet directly with the warlords in the RUF to talk peace. One particular woman whose story impacted the women in Freetown in 1994 was Elizabeth Alpha

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Lavaley, who subsequently became a Member of Parliament and Deputy Speaker of Parliament after her husband was killed by the rebels in Kenema in 1994. She had attempted to confront the fighters but instead of winning their hearts, the mission had ended with several people killed and a number of women abducted. Mrs. Lavaley’s report moved the women in Freetown, who came to understand more fully the realities of the situation in the east of the country, which was quite different from the city where everything seemed calm and normal. There were few reports in the print media, and not even much on the national radio, which at the time was the main source of information. Journalists at that time did not travel to the war front and therefore authentic information was difficult to come by and the gravity of the war was not being conveyed to Freetown. It took the efforts of the women’s groups and organizations to raise awareness in the capital. The women decided to start knocking on doors of key stakeholders of the war and decision-makers to make the information of the murdered people and abducted women known to them. This was happening at the same time as the women continued with their preparations for the Dakar preparatory meeting.1 The abducted women and attempts to free them therefore became a major item on their agenda. At the same time, Dr. Fatmata Boie-Kamara, a pediatrician who had recently emerged on the scene from England, began to call on key individuals in government and civil society who were indifferent to the war situation in the east of the country.2 Dr. Kamara conferred with the women about mobilizing for participation in the peace process, eventually forming an organization to which many women subscribed called the Women’s Movement for Peace. By this time more news had been filtering into Freetown that the conflict was engulfing areas in the North and South of the country; people were being ambushed, attacked, and killed in the buses plying the routes between Freetown and several Headquarter towns in the provinces. This access to information in Freetown about actual incidents that occurred as a result of the war, especially the stories of women who were being raped and violated by the RUF, prompted the women in Freetown to make peace the main issue on their national report to the Dakar meeting. The women’s participation en masse in Dakar, and their exposure to similar situations of women from other parts of the African continent at the meeting, emboldened them to launch the Women’s Movement for Peace immediately after returning to Freetown. A team of four women who were the strategists and drafters of the earlier Women’s Forum meetings now took the discussion points from the Forum meetings, organized public meetings, drafted press releases for the approval of the group, and called for the military government to keep to its word and hand over power to a democratically elected government. In 1995, the Women’s Forum organized a debate where they argued that the conflict had become too serious to be left to the military government. Spurred on by women in Kenema and other areas, women in Sierra Leone maintained that they had specific skills to address the conflict that neither the male-dominated military government nor the fighting forces had. Muslim and Christian prayers were also organized from time to time to seek divine assistance in their endeavors.3 In addition, the women organized a big Peace March in Freetown in 1995, which took place simultaneously in other Headquarter towns in the provinces. Much of the population, including even some members of the

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police and military, took part and demanded peace. The BBC gave full coverage to the march. Mobilizing and organizing such actions enabled women to gain acceptance amongst male leaders in civil society organizations, and so their opinions held weight and their activities were very often widely reported in the local media. The women widened their networks to include women from all walks of life and from varied backgrounds from community to national levels. Christian and Muslim women supported each other’s activities. Together, women lobbied the international community as well as the government and the RUF to opt for democratic governance. When the Interim National Electoral Commission (INEC) was formed, women established contact with its leadership and set about learning the processes of democratization. Several training sessions were held for the entire membership of the Women’s Forum at the YWCA. By the time the decision was made to conduct national elections, women in the Forum were fully involved and working very closely with all political parties, training them to integrate women’s concerns in their manifestos. Following this were the Bintumani I and II conferences in August 1995 and February 1996, during which women successfully championed the call for elections before peace. The women’s participation in the Beijing conference in 1994 had sufficiently empowered them on many issues of governance, development, and democracy, and by 1995, the Women’s position chapter to the Bintumani Conference demanded at least 30 percent participation in decision-making, in line with the Beijing Platform for Action.

Women in Action after the War By the end of the civil war, Sierra Leonean women had accumulated hard-won wisdom in mobilizing for peace and democratization, which had served them since the 1990s and continues to be used by Sierra Leonean women today. In addition to strengthening women’s organizing capacities, civil society in general had benefited from the organization, mobilization, and actions of women in Sierra Leone and out of the country. A core of women leaders emerged within Sierra Leone following the end of the conflict in 2001. Although the conflict had extended to Freetown and adversely affected some individual women leaders who had been at the forefront of fighting for peace and democracy, nevertheless Sierra Leonean women throughout the country became politicized and empowered, and many have continued working in various sectors across the country. Some found themselves in decision-making positions in local NGOs and international agencies, continuing to influence the development scene in the country. Others found themselves in the international arena, working to influence processes and programs in many countries. In 2000, Sierra Leonean women participated in the processes leading to the drafting and adoption of the United Nations Security Council landmark resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security. One of the lessons learned from this history is that it only takes a few passionate and sufficiently energized women in society to mobilize others for action. A few strong, honest, women, with the right professional and communication skills, can mobilize,

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organize, and initiate strategies and processes to influence transformation. Another lesson, which provides useful context for the first, is that people seem more ready to come together and more receptive to change during periods of intense crisis, compared to during times of peace. In 2009, women mobilized to support Madam Simbiwa Torto/Iye Gbandagblabla, who tried to use the provisions of the Chieftaincy Act to stand for chieftaincy in a chiefdom that had no tradition of allowing women to stand. In 2010, twelve attempts were made by Sierra Leonean women to advocate for the 30 percent minimum quota in decision-making. This came at a time when the violent conflict had ended, and although it seemed as if democratic governance was taking hold, the campaign was not successful as explained in detail by Day (this volume). In July 2014, under the leadership of the 50/50 Group, women in Sierra Leone joined the international advocacy effort entitled “Bring Back our Girls and End Abduction of Girls and Women in Nigeria.” Numerous Sierra Leonean women and schoolchildren from various organizations dressed in black and marched to the Nigeria High Commission in Freetown, where they delivered a petition to The President of The Republic of Nigeria through the Nigeria High Commission in Freetown, and copied in the African Union, ECOWAS, MRU, the UN Secretary General, and other members of the international community in Sierra Leone. An invitation was extended to all men and women from all over Sierra Leone to join in the rally, using all types of media: print, broadcast, and social media to design and display placards with the campaign slogan hash tag “Bring back our Girls.” These existing social and political connections proved incredibly useful during the outbreak of the EVD in 2014, which brought women together for national action once again. This time, in fact, with social media and communications skills acquired over the years, women mobilized from the local to the national level and even beyond national boundaries to the international world. Sierra Leone women’s networks had been enlarged during the war and in the years since, and the Ebola outbreak saw these networks galvanized at various levels in multiple continents, adding their action to the fight towards ending the EVD in the West African sub-region.

Strategizing and Initiating Action in Response to the Ebola Outbreak in Sierra Leone Early government statements tried to assure the public that EVD, which had broken out in eastern Sierra Leone in the spring of 2014, was being brought under control by the Ministry of Health, but instead it seemed to be spreading. Different stakeholders responded to the call for support to assist the government in addressing the scourge. The President of the 50/50 group, in an email sent to all the networks that she had used two days earlier in mobilizing action towards the release of the abducted girls, alerted Sierra Leone women leaders in civil society about the Ebola virus and the need for women to get involved in the fight against EVD, given their experiences in advocacy and action since the end of the war in 2001. She advocated for the data on affected victims and the dead to be disaggregated by gender and surmised that since the

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majority of health workers are women and in Sierra Leone’s culture women are normally first responders and caregivers for the sick at home, it was likely that they were being affected more than men. She called on women’s networks as activists to take immediate action in addressing the outbreak. No time was wasted in suggesting for a meeting to strategize on possible intervention by women. The response of some key women leaders in civil society was prompt. Again, the same medium was used and copied to all who had received the previous email, establishing a system for communicating in a quick and easy way and reaching out to many leaders in the country. The Gender Expert in the Office of the President of Sierra Leone was among the first women to respond, reporting that there was sensitization taking place in 14 out of the 16 chiefdoms in the Kenema district by the Kenema Sowei Council, and that a proposal had been submitted to the Ministry of Health for a national sensitization of Soweis in local communities. She confirmed that although the data had not been disaggregated officially, more women victims of the disease were emerging, including nurses and traditional leaders, because of their care-giving roles. Even at this initial stage, the women began thinking ahead about raising their own funds to support their activities without resorting to making demands on already overstretched government funds.

Actions Initiated by Women The first action that emerged was a draft press release dated July 18, 2014, entitled “Empower all citizens, especially women and girls, to win the fight against Ebola.” The grave situation had been thoroughly discussed through email exchanges, and the women decided that stopping the spread of the virus would require strategies similar to those used in fighting a war. They had already participated in bringing peace to their country once, and they thought they could do it again. Their first press release showed that they were committed to complementing the government’s efforts to implement its National Response strategy to the deadly outbreak. A few specific and concrete actions were identified. The first was supporting the Ministry of Health’s Toll Free Call Center 117 by offering volunteers from the various women’s groups and organizations with experience in social mobilization who were trained in passing messages in English and the national languages. The second was promoting hand washing and improved hygiene in public spaces, especially the markets in the Western area. In addition, they requested that gender-disaggregated data on infected persons, patients, fatalities, and survivors be part of the Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MOHS) reports, and that priority protection be given to frontline health workers through the provision of appropriate protective gears in health centers and at the household level, as families are the providers of initial care to the sick. Other issues raised in the press release included information on how to use and dilute bleach and chlorine for effective hand washing and cleaning, the need to address the stigma against infected persons and survivors of families and orphans, and calls for attention to be given to tracing methods, poor facilities, and practices at check points in strategic areas operated by the police. The press release was already looking ahead,

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suggesting that planning by government should address the longer term educational, economic, and psycho-social and public health impacts of the crisis. The authors also called for the authorities to provide accurate relevant information to the public to discourage rumor mongering, maintaining that “Ebola Rumors are causing deaths.” After the initial drafting, the press release was sent out by email to all members, who were encouraged to send in their reactions and recommendations so the draft could be finalized and sent to all media houses. At the same time, members and organizations were asked to share it by email with their own networks and contacts. In addition, the women planned a brief solidarity visit to the Minister of Health at the time, herself a woman. Although the women were not able to see the Minister, they were given audience by her deputy and several directors of the Health Ministry, who listened carefully to the reading of the press release and responded substantially to several of the points raised. The Deputy Minister promised the women that the press release would later be discussed at the highest level within the Ministry. In the meantime, the women began proceeding with the first two activities from their press release. Those who could not be physically present at a meeting had been urged to send in their suggestions by return email on their decision to support the toll free telephone call center (117) in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, and their decision to support installing and maintaining hand washing machines in markets across the country. Text messaging was added to email as a tool for sending out information for meetings. In addition, women were encouraged to pass on the message by word of mouth and other means. The listserv was updated to reflect the names of people as they joined in, and the group expanded daily, with meetings held regularly with the participation of high profile women leaders in the society. Some men also began commending the action of the women and asking what role men could play in the women’s initiative. The group’s membership also began to reach outside of Sierra Leone, as new members such as the former Minister of Energy and Power as well as the FIFA Representative in Sierra Leone and head of the Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA), both women, added their contacts to the group. The FIFA representative brought welcome news that the President of FIFA had made a substantial donation towards Ebola in Sierra Leone in a bid to help combat the crisis. The third meeting of this growing group produced a concept note by the women outlining the two identified activities that had been envisaged, and a third action supporting women of Kenema for a sensitization with funds donated by IRC/Irish Aid. Other organizations like Goal and ACF (Action Contre La Faim) offered to train volunteers and develop stickers with Ebola messages to be attached to the handwashing facilities, while UNICEF offered to train women on how to respond to questions at the call center. These special projects did not prevent the women from also adding their voices to activities being undertaken by the government. Advocacy on the welfare of health workers and their families continued. Radio sensitization as well as disseminating positive, honest, and clear messages on social and other media to counter scaremongering were recommended. Relevant networks like WIMSAL (Women in the Media Sierra Leone), the Nurses Association, and The MOHS (Ministry of Health and Sanitation Sierra Leone) were identified as partners as women recommended forward-

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looking strategies to avoid the recurrence of the pandemic. In one email, a proverb from one of the local languages was used to capture the idea of sustainable interventions. When translated literally, the Temne proverb means “The hunger (in this sense, Ebola) which has affected me this year, should not affect me again next year.” Despite these efforts, the disease was still spreading. The spiritual tool of prayer was also evoked at meetings, typical of the Sierra Leonean culture. This aspect had played an important role in their fight to end the rebel war and they were once again calling upon it, asking people to pray for the sick and infected, their families, the bereaved healthcare workers, and others. One former Sierra Leonean broadcaster, Hannah Neale, now living in London had become a member of the clergy. She mobilized lay Sierra Leonean members, discussed the frightening reports coming from their homeland about the spread of the disease, and sent out an invitation which included the following: “Friends, at times like this far from home, one feels helpless. I know many churches and individuals are already praying, but no matter what faith or denomination we belong to, we should cry with one voice at the same time to God through His son, Jesus or to Allah if a Moslem, for this epidemic to be stopped in its tracks”. She went on to ask, “Will you join us at 6pm today wherever you are, in stepping outside (or indoors) and cry out ‘Jesus, come out and save us’ or if you are of another faith then say the words relevant to your faith. In situations such as this, only the hand of God can save our kin in Sierra Leone and friends in other areas.” This email had been sent from London to Sierra Leoneans, but when some women activists in the USA saw and read it, they joined their counterparts in Sierra Leone in support of the women’s campaign.

Online Fundraising in Support of Ending Ebola Early in the campaign in 2014, members were urged to make fundraising contributions individually or as an organization, with recommended amounts of Le100,000 or Le500,000. Now, Sierra Leoneans in the Diaspora started expressing solidarity with the women’s campaign group and beginning online fundraising efforts for the campaign, which had been named WRESL—Women’s Response to Ebola in Sierra Leone. The Proprietress of GO magazine, Ms. Vicky Remoe, presented an online fundraising strategy through GoFundMe, an online crowdfunding platform. She outlined weekly audience targets on social media and asked for the President of the 50/50 Group to authorize them to use its name to raise funds for the women’s fight against Ebola in Sierra Leone. GoFundMe was a new concept to many in Sierra Leone, so she explained the process, confirming that funds would go to her PayPal account and she would make sure they were then transferred to the group in Freetown with payments made on a weekly basis. To convince the leadership, she reported that she could reach 800,000 thousand people online globally and had previously raised $1,000 within 48 hours using just social media. For accountability purposes, she would require a report back on how the funds donated were spent. Early support for the online funding effort came from the Founder-President of the 50/50 Group, who was in London at the time. Soon the suggestion was supported by other Sierra Leonean women who were visiting

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countries abroad that summer. The proposal by Ms. Remoe, and the wide-reaching audience established by the campaign, then also helped to spread online donation appeals from three health care organizations working to fight Ebola (Médecins Sans Frontiers, Kings Partnership with the Connaught Hospital in Freetown and Americas). The campaign in Sierra Leone circulated the websites of these organizations to their audience as well. The GoFundMe strategy was approved by the 50/50 Group and Ms. Remoe was given the green light to use WRESL as the online name for her fundraising initiative. After getting approval, Ms. Remoe set up the link the following day, and the WRESL social media feeds spread the word. The funding campaign was planned to run for 30 days with the aim of raising $10,000/00. The campaign attracted a lot of support, including from the Office of the Gender Adviser in Sierra Leone, which made a donation of two million Leones and committed to continuing to mobilize funds in support of the campaign. The Campaign for Good Governance, Christian Aid, and others also joined in. In addition to the cash donation, the Office of the Gender Adviser shared recommendations to fight the epidemic from the MOHS and the late Dr. Khan, the medical doctor from Kenema who was among the first victims to succumb to the Ebola disease. Meanwhile, the Ebola disease was creating a scare even beyond the borders of West Africa. The day after the online fundraiser was launched, the Mirror newspaper of London reported that staff at the Gatwick Airport were concerned when a jet from Banjul in West Africa was quarantined after the death of a Sierra Leonean, who was reportedly sweating and vomiting before she collapsed and died. It is impossible to say whether the media reports of that incident precipitated the success of the online fundraising exercise, but the first fundraising report from the GoFundMe platform on August 6, 2014 reported that about $800 had been raised within the first few hours of the campaign’s launch. All the women’s groups and organizations were urged to share the link with their networks, families, and friends in the Diaspora to increase the chances of meeting the goal within the shortest possible time. In addition, efforts were made to publish online the names of all thirty-six nurses who had been reported dead after caring for victims of the disease. Ms. Remoe requested that data be disaggregated to support the hypothesis that women were more at risk as caregivers. A short update after the first day of fundraising revealed that twenty-three donations had been made in 24 hours. To strengthen the online publicity, plans were made to record a video appeal and reach out to international press networks. The launch of the GoFundMe initiative motivated the women in Sierra Leone to intensify their activities. The email below from one member to colleagues in the listserv clearly demonstrates the vigor and enthusiasm with which they carried out their tasks: Thanks to Vickie for the massive “leap” to raise funds to meet this challenge. We have had two meetings since last week and volunteers for the call centers have been identified. They are ready for training and we await training dates from the Ministry of Health. Our personal contributions in both cash and check donations are adding up please ensure you fulfill your commitment. You will be updated on

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the exact amount collected by Friday August 8. A Facebook account has been opened, if you are on Facebook, please send a friend request to WRESL Salone; feel free to post on the timeline or share any interesting initiatives with WRESL. Monies/donations will be collected via Go woman to avoid complications and duplication of efforts. The objective of the Facebook account is a forum for sharing salient information with the public. Indeed many pictures of the several activities undertaken across the country were posted on the Face book account depicting WRESL responses throughout the country. The hand washing machines in the markets features most prominently.

In addition to the online initiatives and the personal efforts of the women in the WRESL network, some Sierra Leonean women took advantage of wherever they found themselves at that time to promote the women’s initiative. The International NGO community in Sierra Leone (INGO) was one such opportunity, as a female Sierra Leonean heading an INGO shared the WRESL campaign with the INGO forum. She was strategic in disseminating the information to all listed INGO members a day before their meeting to allow them time to study the efforts being made by the women, and communicated the bank account and the GoFundMe online link. At the same time, information on the spread of the epidemic in the interior of the country was shared with the women’s network to inform their decisions to initiate any further action in outlying areas in the country. The expansion of the outreach strategy led the 50/50 President to regularly update the listserv as more and more women from within and outside the country learned about the WRESL and wanted to join in, including some traveling for the summer. They stayed connected and received regular updates from their colleagues back home, linking up by telephone, and even by text messaging. In addition to information sharing, this network conferred about the first Sierra Leonean woman doctor who succumbed after carrying out her medical duty, with Sierra Leonean doctors, members of the West Africa College of Physicians, and some WRESL activists in the Diaspora exploring the possibilities of a Medical Evacuation for better treatment abroad, up until the day the doctor unfortunately passed away.

Sierra Leone Women Mobilizing Internationally—An Advocacy Strategy for the UN Ebola Debate In spite of the continued intervention of the women of Sierra Leone in responding to the epidemic locally, it was becoming evident by September of 2014 that the epidemic needed a more robust approach to support these local efforts on the ground. News that British military and humanitarian experts would be setting up a medical treatment center in Sierra Leone with a 62-bed facility reached leading WRESL members in the Diaspora, and they then turned their attention to advocating for a UN mission to be established in West Africa. Meanwhile the in-country initiative by the women continued to expand, and regular updates and reports were produced by WRESL in the form of press releases.

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The experiences from which Sierra Leonean women had drawn to fight the EVD in their country had come from a continuous and unbreakable record of activism and political consciousness started during the civil war and sustained through efforts to fight for better political representation and for the release of the abducted girls by Boko Haram in Nigeria. These experiences had stood them in good stead in preparing them locally for their fight against the epidemic in their country and positioning them politically for international influence. As news filtered into Freetown that the disease was continuing to spread, the women’s efforts intensified to promote hand-washing facilities, materials, and sensitization all over the country. Commensurately, as the news made the international airwaves, Sierra Leonean women in the Diaspora also intensified their contribution towards implementation of programs on the ground, mainly through advice and financial support. Many who were not even members of any organized group in civil society became interested, and information sharing across continents was intensified. In an article published by the Guardian newspaper in London on September 13, 2014, Professor Piot recommended the approach taken by the Republic of Congo (DRC) to successfully manage and contain the disease, and called for the intervention of the international community and the UN. This information reached the ears of some Sierra Leonean women in the Diaspora with international experience. When Professor Piot recommended “a UN Peacekeeping force ought to be mobilized in Sierra Leone and Liberia with huge donations of beds, ambulances and trucks as well as an army of clinicians, doctors, and nurses”4, these women became convinced that this proposal needed serious consideration. Some Sierra Leoneans in Britain contacted Professor Piot about his suggestions, and soon frequent emails on meetings with the professor were flying between London and Washington, where some Sierra Leonean women doctors and others had been marooned since going abroad for the summer vacation. However, in Sierra Leone the MOHS continued to assure the population that their efforts at containing the disease would yield the desired results, so many Sierra Leoneans at home did not appreciate the professor’s pessimism. International attention continued to grow, with Britain’s COBRA National Emergencies Committee discussing the crisis, and the African Union (AU) offering to intervene in the countries affected if they were given support in the areas of addressing infectious disease. All the while, the women continued to share updates across and within continents through their communication network. The announcement on CNN on September 15 that President Obama was planning a major Ebola offensive gave a lot of hope to some Sierra Leonean women activists in the Diaspora and their counterparts in-country. The news the following day that the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) would be having a debate on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa sent a group of women into immediate collaborative action.

West African Women’s Effort to Influence the UN Debate on Ebola Through telephone calls, emails, text messages, WhatsApp, and one-on-one consultations, Sierra Leonean women used all their expertise and professionalism to

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draft and disseminate a letter to reach the UNSC by September 18 when the debate was to be held in New York. Between September 16 and 18, hundreds of emails were exchanged between women in the US, London, and Sierra Leone. A video clip of a television panel interview including one of the leading women activists seemed, in hindsight, to have spurred other women into action. One woman activist residing in Maryland because of the epidemic at home in Sierra Leone, who had previously participated in mobilizing women in Sierra Leone in the 1990s, saw the video and immediately began contacting others to ask their opinions. The interview revealed that the local communities on the ground in Sierra Leone had not been kept fully informed or involved in decisions affecting them, and also clarified the opinions of several members of the international community. Médecins Sans Frontiers argued that whilst the crisis had gone international, it had not been properly addressed; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention likewise called for more resources, technical experts, and a coordinated approach. Mention was also made of an emerging food crisis as a result of the epidemic, which it was reported had gone beyond the borders of West Africa by mid-July 2014 and included Nigeria (reporting 17 confirmed cases) and the northern DRC (reporting 31 cases and 13 deaths). The grim picture that was conveyed during that interview, however, was tempered by President Obama’s assurance soon after that the epidemic could be contained. This again energized some Sierra Leonean women in the Diaspora to aggressively mobilize other compatriots with experience in advocacy to quickly try to influence the UNSC debate. The meeting time and date were sought through the Sierra Leone UN Mission in New York, as some of the women had the contacts of the staff at the mission. Simultaneously, emails flew in from other Sierra Leoneans in Darfur, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Freetown, and London, urging that a letter or a press release should be sent to the UN, with the hope of influencing whatever mechanism the UN would come up with to address the grave situation on the ground in West Africa. Very quickly, the women sought out West African contacts within the UN. Concrete data on the effects of the Ebola crisis on women were not readily available for Sierra Leone or Guinea, so it was decided to seek information from Liberia to help prepare the draft. The tightness of the deadlines and the necessity to work with speed and professionalism seemed to have been conveyed to everyone involved, with inputs already being received from activists and experts for the draft. The debate was set for Thursday September 18 at 3:00 p.m., but in order to give members of the Security Council time to study the draft, the women sought to find a way to get copies of the document into the possession of the members or their assistants as soon as possible. To this end, they contacted the Sierra Leone mission to see whether the Ambassador’s office could be of help, other colleagues in New York with experience in Security Council debate processes (and especially resolution 1325), the FemmesAfrica-Solidarite office in New York, and the UN Peace Building Office. Additionally, the women learned by email that Sierra Leone’s Foreign Minister was expected to arrive the same day the debate was happening and would be going directly to the meeting from the airport to present the country’s position. The women immediately began to strategize to make contact with him. Fortunately, the Gender Expert in the Office of the President of Sierra Leone was part of the listserv of WRESL, and in fact would be

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attending the meeting and thus could convey the position of the women to the Minister in her professional capacity. Since the Minister would have access to his email whilst in transit in Brussels (as SN Brussels was the only flight from Sierra Leone at this time), the women decided to prepare some bullet points for his attention, to be sent via the Gender expert. At this point, there were less than forty-eight hours to the meeting. One of the women soon drafted a ten-point framework expressing the views of the group that the Ebola epidemic had not been given the attention it deserved, that what was needed was a high quality coordinated intervention from the international community that would focus on the effect of the epidemic on women and would include agencies and organizations addressing the immediate medical and social issues as well as the longer term development and political concerns. To deepen the analysis, a Liberian contact and Mano River Women’s Peace Network (MARWOPNET) member shared some concrete experiences Liberia had used in fighting the epidemic in their country. Her email noted that women make up the majority of health care providers and that women generally are the caregivers for sick members of their families, resulting in disproportionately high rates of women dying from Ebola. Additionally, she reported economic impacts on women’s livelihoods due to Ebola and increased vulnerability exacerbated by poverty and ignorance of the disease. The report from their Liberian counterpart was circulated to the five or six women comprising the Sierra Leonean team who had come together virtually to work on the advocacy initiative for the UNSC meeting. The colleague from Liberia, in that same email, had gone on to recommend that appropriate interventions needed to be put in place to strengthen the relative capacities of women to fight the epidemic at the household level as primary caregivers and as local civil society organizations (CSOs) working to educate women and other vulnerable populations in the rural communities, especially along the borders of the four Mano River countries: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and La Cote d’Ivoire. Equipped with this information, the Sierra Leonean team set about producing the letter to the UN Security Council on behalf of the women from the West Africa subregion, planning to produce a short statement explaining the issues that had been so far collected and then moving on to recommendations for the global community to address the gender dimensions of the immediate, medium, and long-term impacts of the disease. Just as the group was preparing to start their work, a press release dated September 15, 2014 was received from WANEP (The West Africa Network for Peacebuilding), outlining the implications of the Ebola scourge on Human Security. Further armed with information and highly motivated, the women’s group got to work. Another outstanding issue was observer representation at the Security Council. Luckily, another Sierra Leonean woman who had worked with the WRESL campaign and offered professional and editorial services to the advocacy team, volunteered to attend the Security Council as an observer, as her home was in close proximity to the UN headquarters in New York. The next hurdle was accessing the meeting venue. Once more, it was necessary to draw from the networking resources of the group. NGO networks, family, UN contacts, Member States, and Sierra Leonean networks were all explored, as everybody in the group went to work with emails flying from all corners of the globe. By this time it was night in Sierra Leone and London and evening

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in Maryland. Members continued working on the two outstanding issues: finalizing the draft before the close of business the next day, and getting permission granted for access by one of their members into the UNSC meeting on Thursday. Words of encouragement came pouring in via email as a colleague in London worked on the draft, and as new information needing to be incorporated came in from a Washington Post article. From Liberia came this: “with a little speed, we will make it.” It was September 17 already, the day before the meeting. The Washington Post5 article gave a vivid and concrete picture, quoting a spokesperson for the grassroots initiative Community Response Group called Suafiatu Tunis, who said, “When a family member is sick and tended at home, women cook and some serve food to the sick, clear after them and wash their clothes . . . This role extended to the medical field where, women and mostly nurses and cleaners at hospitals do not get the same support and protection as doctors who are predominantly men”. This was useful confirmation, and immediately a new question was posed to the group: did anybody know the woman mentioned in the article so that she could be contacted to verify the information in the Washington Post? A response came back as quickly as the question had gone out: she was a member of WRESL. This information was received at the same time as that on LAWYERS (Legal Access through Women Yearning for Equality Rights and Social Justice)—the Sierra Leone-based women lawyers group. It was good timing because the LAWYERS president was immediately informed about the advocacy initiative on the Security Council meeting. Legitimacy from such a group was very helpful, especially as the organization was based in Sierra Leone. As the draft was awaited, key members sent in answers to some other outstanding issues concerning facilitating dissemination of the document once it was complete. Other questions remained outstanding: Would the Foreign Minister agree to integrate their concerns into his presentation to the Security Council? Was the document a press release or a letter? Although the document was an initiative of the women of Sierra Leone, would it be legitimate to send it to the Security Council on behalf of all women in West Africa? All these questions were answered during the day, with communications bouncing back and forth as the zero draft was fleshed out into a first draft and then a second to be finalized. Meanwhile, churches and other religious groups were asked to pray for divine favor for the initiative; an email widely circulated to the intercessors on the ground in Sierra Leone asked “ALL IFSL brethren to lift up the UNSC meeting on Thursday.” As this email was going out, women on the listserv of WRESL were receiving another press release, outlining the various activities they were undertaking around the country in Sierra Leone. Also, within the United Nations organization, colleagues in the field were reaching out to others in New York with connections to members of the Security Council to inform them that Sierra Leonean women were preparing a letter, whilst also seeking to observe the meeting and report back to their counterparts. Tasks were shared amongst the group of women to expedite the process. Another email caused a new flurry of activity: “If we could get our position into one sentence, the UK delegation had offered to take it.” As this latest task was being addressed, with the draft document still pending, others were sending out emails to

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colleagues with plans for publicizing the letter. “NETRIGHT—The Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana, GWS—Gender and Women’s Studies Network in South Africa, and others might want to add their names in support if we add the 1325 component”, one of the colleagues wrote, going on to suggest that the letter could be set up electronically for people to add their signatures and then forwarded to the various governments, the UN, and international donors and agencies. The zero draft reached all the colleagues before midday and the response was immediate. Inputs were coming from all members of the team so that a final document could be ready for posting to the mail boxes of the relevant stakeholders. At the same time, a compatriot in the Sierra Leone UN mission informed the team that the Ambassador had been briefed about the women’s advocacy initiative at the UNSC meeting and that he had given his consent for the representative identified by the team to observe the meeting. Things were moving fast. By this time it was 1:00 a.m. in London and about 10:00 p.m. in the US. More inputs were still being made and sent by email to the colleague in London who was supposed to be finalizing the document. It was only then that it dawned on colleagues in the US that they were operating on a different time zone from that of the colleague in London, who might very well be asleep. Yet emails kept coming in. One colleague had spoken to a friend with connections to the secretary of Global Issues, who could forward the document to the Senior Advisor for Global Issues so that it could reach the US policy community as well. Another member of the group who had been reading the story of the female Nigerian doctor who survived the EVD sent in a piece from the story she had just recently received, suggesting that it could buttress their position on 1325. Despite all efforts, the document had not reached the mailboxes by close of business on September 17. By daybreak in the US, colleagues had received the first draft and it was back to work to produce the finalized document. As they continued working, information came from the Gender expert that the Minister might incorporate a one-page statement from the women into his presentation. In no time, a one-page document was produced. At the same time the final draft open letter to the UNSC was ready. To solve the problem of inclusivity of all women from West Africa in the advocacy initiative, the President of MARWOPNET decided that the letter could be sent out by MARWOPNET using their letterhead and signed by her, on behalf of women in all countries in the sub-region. It was already mid-morning on September 18, the very day of the debate at the Security Council on Ebola in West Africa. When the letter was done, it was immediately sent to a UN contact at the Security Council, who immediately sent it to the boxes of all the members. The colleague representing the group sent a message that she was in the train en route to the UN headquarters in New York. After arriving at the meeting, she gave a live, minute-by-minute report by phone throughout the proceedings. She became a radio journalist and continued this role until the charge in her phone ran out and she resorted to sending emails via her computer. The draft resolution was passed surprisingly quickly. It was said that it was passed with the most signatures ever at the Security Council and adopted unanimously later on for debate. Many of the members of the Sierra Leone women’s group, not being

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conversant with UNSC procedures and proceedings, were wondering whether that was the end, but other colleagues assured them that the debate by Members of the Council would follow after the adoption of the resolution. Though the women were not satisfied with the gender references in the interventions of some representatives from countries affected by the epidemic, they were consoled that others made specific interventions focusing on women because they were being disproportionately affected by the EVD. Several members from the international community seemed to have understood that gender considerations were necessary in the mandate implementation of whatever mechanism was going to be put in place. West African women therefore had reason to continue their advocacy, as the mandate would be implemented in the countries affected. Following their advocacy initiative, the women did an evaluation of their efforts the following day. A gender analysis of the resolution was done, in preparation for further action in the mandate implementation stage, and suggested that some of the women’s concerns could indeed be taken into consideration as the UN mission to West Africa proceeded. In Sierra Leone, as a result of further advocacy, a Gender Advisory board was set up to support the work of the UN mission on Ebola response, whilst consideration was given to having a senior gender advisor in place within the mission headquarters in Ghana to work closely with the Secretary General’s representative and head of mission.

Conclusion The detailed accounts of women mobilizing in Sierra Leone and internationally in response to the Ebola epidemic of 2014–2015 confirms that Sierra Leonean women have increasingly developed their capacity to advocate for their rights to participate in decision-making and programming interventions, building on their history of political activism. Alongside other noteworthy women’s activities targeting health and related issues affecting victims, survivors, and their families, WRESL attempted to go further and look at the broader issues impacting international action. The women’s mobilization efforts were a vehicle for ensuring that their voices were factored into addressing the crisis, which affected not only health workers and victims but entire communities across the nation. The use of modern communication technologies facilitated quick mobilization and responses as the situation evolved, allowing the women to brainstorm across continents and tap into information being generated around them and through the interventions of stakeholders from the community to the national level. Women were able to establish partnerships and alliances with likeminded colleagues and counterparts in other countries, energizing and sustaining their actions. The establishment of this communication network gave their activism a global reach and near-immediate access to colleagues regardless of location, allowing for speedy action when deadlines were short. Although several programmatic initiatives enabled the women to bring about some behavioral transformation, such as increased washing of hands, WRESL did not

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necessarily produce those structural changes required to impact national and international policy makers. As an example, the challenges regarding generating gender-disaggregated data in every sphere of development planning and programming remains an issue in spite of all the efforts of women. This makes equal access to decision-making and programmatic interventions for and by women an area of continued concern.

Notes 1 For an extensive discussion about the prominent role African women played both in the 1995 Beijing conference as well as preparatory meetings held across the continent, see Tripp, A.M., Casimoro, L., Kwesiga, J. & Mungwa, A. (2009). African Women’s Movements: Transforming Political Landscapes. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. 2 For a longer discussion on the role that women played in ending the civil war. See Press, R. (2015). Ripples of Hope: How Ordinary People Resist Repression Without Violence. Amsterdam University Press; Tripp et al. (2009). 3 For a similar discussion in Liberia, see Gbowee, L. (2013). Mighty Be Thy Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayers and Sex Changed a Nation at War, A Memoir. New York: Beast Books. 4 Cited in, Thomas, A.R. (2014). Mano River Union facing a complex Ebola emergency, Sierra Leone Telegraph, accessed from: https://www.thesierraleonetelegraph.com/ the-mano-river-union-facing-a-complex-ebola-emergency/ 5 Hogan, Caelainn (2014). Ebola striking women more frequently than men, The Washington Post, accessed from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/healthscience/2014/08/14/3e08d0c8-2312-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html

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The Politics of Religion and Women’s Activism: Women’s “Choices” in the Abortion Bill and Constitutional Review Debates Aisha Fofana Ibrahim

The women’s movement in post-war Sierra Leone, though fragmented, has been able to achieve a number of victories when they have worked together to push for a common agenda. In many ways, solidarity, even amidst multiple intersecting identities and dissent, has been the cornerstone of the women’s movement in Sierra Leone. However, like in many other places, it has become clear over the years that such solidarity is not automatic and women can become polarized instantaneously depending on the issue under consideration and the political and religious dimensions from which the issue emanates (Htun and Weldon, 2012). This chapter therefore examines the glaring split among women during the advocacy for the enactment of a Safe Abortion Bill in 2015. The chapter also examines the paradoxical relationship of women to religious politics in Sierra Leone and the varied meanings and expressions of gender identity revealed through the advocacy for the abortion bill. I argue that the ways in which women negotiate their activism in different contexts manifest the complexities of women’s activism in a post-war but yet still conservative Sierra Leonean society, in which many women are more comfortable advocating for less controversial issues. The advocacy for this bill saw women and human rights advocates on either side of the debate viewing each other as the “enemy” and thereby highlighting the fragmentations within the movement. In this case, the fragmentation was exacerbated by religion and religious convictions that stemmed from men in religious authority. As Le Roux and Du Toit (2017, pp. 28–29) argue, “the majority of African faiths and faith communities do not accept the autonomy of women and still uphold religious and cultural traditions that marginalize women through their support of patriarchal societal structures.” Women’s mobilization and advocacy for gender equality and women’s inclusion in public life in Sierra Leone predates independence but intensified post-war, though with a number of hiccups. From advocating for the presence of young girls and women in formal educational institutions, pre-independence, to brokering peace that ended a decade-long war, Sierra Leonean women have often found a common ground on pushing the women’s agenda when the issue is not politically affiliated or religious. The oft-cited women’s peace mobilization to end the civil war remains even more relevant 193

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today as deep fissures fueled by politics, religion, and class have weakened and threatened to dissolve the women’s movement. Social Movements continue to provide marginalized individuals a platform for their collective grievances and demands to be heard (Arnfred et. al., 2007) and have been examined from a variety of perspectives: how movements frame issues for collective action (Dütting and Sogge, 2010), how they tap into the emotions of target audiences (Tarrow, 2006), why political process opportunities often lead to more movement success (McAdam, 1982),“how a social movement succeeds or fails in becoming a collective actor” (Melucci, 1995, p. 55), and how individuals come to build and maintain a sense of belonging to a movement over time (Della Porta & Diani, 2006). African scholars have also paid particular attention to understanding women’s mobilization and social movement organizing/building in Africa. Amanda Gouws (2016, p. 402) uses Nancy Fraser’s theory of redistribution, recognition, and representation to explain Women’s activism around gender-based violence in South Africa, showing “how different ways of mobilisation can have very different outcomes for redistribution and recognition”; Anyidoho et. al., (2020) reveal how strategies, movement infrastructure, and framing, as well as political context and support of allies, mediate the impact of the women’s movement for the implementation of the Domestic Violence Act in Ghana; Beoku-Betts and Day (2015, p. 2) in their study of the Sierra Leone Women’s Peace Movement (SLWPM) argue that “without centering gender equality in a postwar agenda, the movement is limited in its ability to tackle the challenges women face in achieving tangible policy gains in postwar Sierra Leone”; and Tripp et. al., (2009) examine the diverse relationships between women’s movements and women’s political representation across Africa, arguing that customary practices and traditions are the greatest obstacles to women’s political participation. In essence, women have mobilized and strategized variedly depending on the issue under consideration and in line with the identity they want to express. Collective organizing by women in Sierra Leone has led to the enactment of laws between 2007 and 2012 that have in various ways changed the lives of women. This was a sustained campaign in which women’s organizations collaborated with the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs as well as with female parliamentarians and male allies in parliament to advocate for the passing of these laws. The Domestic Violence Act (2007) for the first time criminalized domestic violence; the Devolution of Estate Act (2007) protects the rights of women to inherit from husbands and parents; the Registration of Customary Marriage and Divorce Act (2009) formalizes both practices; and the Sexual Offences Act (2012) prohibited marital rape and sexual harassment and in 2019, was amended to include stricter penalties for rape. The advocacy efforts for the enactment of all of these gender justice legal instruments saw women working together and supporting each other irrespective of their multiple identities—location, class, political party, or religion. This solidarity is espoused in the non-threatening nature of the issues selected for advocacy. In other words, religion and morality were not in contention. In addition, women can experience one form of domestic violence and/or marginalization irrespective of religion, class, ethnicity, etc., and thus the issue became a locus for solidarity (Htun and Weldon, 2012). The struggle for women’s rights, autonomy, and bodily integrity continues on a daily basis in Sierra Leone, and was manifested in the abortion bill uproar, which involved an

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overwhelming number of male religious leaders, backed by a throng of women of all creeds, violently opposing the enactment of a bill that they may not have fully understood. Society has found ways to exert control over women’s bodies through laws, customs, and traditions, as well as value systems embodied in the consistent denial of women’s right to bodily autonomy, through practices such as the criminalization of abortion and the denial and policing of women’s access to sexual and reproductive health services. Moreover, the resistance to this bill shows the salience of religious identity for some women in the struggle; an intersectional lens helps us to understand that for certain issues, some identities supersede others. In this case, some women’s religious identity took precedence over their identity as gender activists. Shocking for many is the fact that this split happened in the midst of a constitutional review process in which women were individually and collectively demanding the recognition of the full human rights of women. In many ways, these women activists have to negotiate their positions based on context and issue being advocated for. For example, postwar, there have been three major advocacy campaigns in which women worked together with little or no contention. In these cases, the issues were neither seen as controversial nor as disrupting religious and/or moral values. These include the advocacy for the passing of the three Gender Justice Laws, the gender-friendly constitution, and the 30 percent quota campaigns. On the other hand, the campaigns for the lifting of the ban on pregnant schoolgirls and the Safe Abortion Bill became points of contention and ultimately division in the movement. I also argue that the rift in the movement shows how “women’s sexual agency is demonstrated not only to be a point of significant intersection between the private and the public but also a site where broader social, political and professional powers have been contested”(Lee and Logan, 2017, p.4). The fact that seemingly everybody, from religious leaders to politicians to ordinary citizens, weighed in on the abortion bill to try to determine state sanctions on women’s sexuality and bodily integrity manifests these contestations. In addition, the president’s lack of support for the decision of lawmakers was not necessarily influenced by the constitution but by arguments made by the religious lobby. This level of influence by religious bodies in a secular and democratic state shows the different levels of power contestations. In order to understand these complexities and contestations, I examine the arguments used by both pro- and anti-abortion bill advocates, analyzing what they think this clash did to the women’s movement and what they suggest as the way forward in this impasse. As has been argued, a gendered right such as abortion is often fraught with obstacles and opposed transnationally in ways that other women’s political and economic rights are not, and as such the issue has become a contested site of political struggle (Asal et. al., 2008; Nathanson et. al., 2008; Aniteye and Mayhew, 2019; Nowicka 2011). This was the case in Sierra Leone, where tempers ran high, and everyone had an opinion either for or against the enactment of the bill. It was easy for men to use equality and rights discourses to perpetuate gendered power relations that undermined women’s autonomy over abortion decision-making because of the fissures within the women’s movement. Those who led the campaign propagated the right of the fetus and the rights of women of faith to protect their religious doctrine. In many ways, the women of Sierra Leone “failed to shape abortion policy, not because they were short of organizational resources,

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but because their road to influence was strewn with public ideas in which they, too, unequivocally believed” (Yishai, 1993, p. 209).

Methodology To understand, among other things, how sisters in the struggle for equality became so violently opposed to each other, I reviewed numerous related documents and between 2018 and 2020 interviewed various players in the abortion debate. Interviews were conducted with 127 people in Freetown, Bo, and Makeni, comprising 95 women and 32 men, including parliamentarians (6—3 men, 3 women), government officials (4—2 men, 2 women), religious leaders (20—14 men, 6 women, medical professionals (4—3 women, 1 man), women and human rights activists (35—30 women, 5 men), lawyers (6 women), students (28—24 women, 4 men), Commissioners of the Human Rights Commission (3 women), market women (4), and practicing members of the two dominant religious faiths—Islam and Christianity (17—14 women, 3 men). Most of the study participants were purposively selected and identified as active advocates on both sides of the campaign through lists provided by Ipas and the InterReligious Council. Other participants were contacted through a snowballing approach whereby their names were suggested by other research participants. All participants were contacted through phone and were provided with a cover letter explaining the purpose of the study. All those who consented to be interviewed were asked to specify a convenient date and venue. Interviews lasted between forty-five minutes and an hour and were conducted at either the offices or homes of participants. Semi-structured and open-ended questions that enabled participants to elaborate, question, and rephrase the questions, if needed, were used during the interviews. Interviews were recorded with the permission of participants and were transcribed by ten research assistants. Notes were also taken during the interviews and were triangulated with the recorded interviews. Except for the interviews with the market women, which were done in Krio (a lingua franca in Sierra Leone), all interviews were conducted in English. I used a narrative analysis technique in order to better understand how different respondents represented or contextualized their experiences and knowledge on the issue and how they made sense of the position from the other side of the divide. Because I was part of the pro-choice movement, I was aware of my biases and thus was constantly reflexive of my position while analyzing data. Before going on to the analysis of the interviews, I briefly present the state of women’s access to sexual and reproductive health services as well as the criminalization of abortion in the country.

Sexual and Reproductive Health Women in both rural and urban settings in Sierra Leone continue to face huge challenges in realizing their sexual and reproductive health rights; additionally, their health is affected by complex biological, social, and cultural factors that are interrelated.

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The health system is plagued by inadequate and poorly paid health personnel as well as inadequate medical facilities, drugs, equipment, and supplies. The WHO Health Report (2019) indicates that there are 1,360 deaths to every 100,000 live births in Sierra Leone, making it one of the countries with the highest maternal mortality rates. These avoidable deaths caused by obstructed labor, post-partum hemorrhage, pregnancyinduced hypertension, post-partum sepsis, and complications from illegal abortion are due to limited access to ante-natal and post-natal services and exacerbated by cultural and gendered practices. It has been estimated that between 10–15 percent of these deaths result from unsafe abortion procedures. It is therefore not surprising that the pro-choice discourse was couched in the language of health and well-being rather than on women’s oppression, rights, and self-determination. While considered taboo, premarital sex and unwanted pregnancies are increasingly common among adolescents and young people in Sierra Leone. Teenage pregnancy contributes to 40 percent of maternal deaths and 90 percent of abortion services are sought by adolescents and young people between the ages of 14 and 25; these can be linked to early marriage, rape, and the lack of comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights education in the school curriculum (Children Bearing Children, 2011). A 2013 study by UNICEF entitled “Sierra Leone: An Evaluation of Teenage Pregnancy Pilot Projects in Sierra Leone” pointed out that teenage pregnancy and motherhood was the second most prevalent child abuse practice in Sierra Leone. According to the report, this constitutes a national and community-wide problem, with a prevalence of 68 percent pregnancy rate among sexually active teenage girls, with a mean age of 15, and with 28 percent of teenage boys having caused a pregnancy. While 49 percent of sexually active teenagers had frequent sex, only 35 percent had ever used a condom. In general, there is a low contraceptive prevalence rate of only 8 percent, leading to unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, and ultimately many deaths. Unsafe abortion in Sierra Leone ranges from self-induction to consulting backstreet abortionists, traditional healers, chemist shops, and health professionals operating outside of the law and thus illegally. In light of these preventable deaths, the Reproductive Health Partnership Network (RHEPAN), which includes Planned Parenthood Sierra Leone (PPA-SL) and an American-funded International NonGovernmental Organization named Ipas, came together with allies to advocate for the drafting and enactment of the Safe Abortion Bill 2015. The aim of the bill was to prevent maternal deaths and injury, safeguard reproductive rights, and determine the circumstances and conditions under which pregnancies may be terminated. The archaic 1861 Offenses Against the Person Act, imposed under British rule, criminalized the procurement and performance of abortion except in cases where it is necessary to preserve the physical health of the woman. Sections 58 and 59 of this act made it “unlawful for any ‘woman being with child’ to procure her own miscarriage by administering to herself any poison or using any instrument to do so. It is also unlawful for a woman to cause any person to do the same to her”. The penalty, at the discretion of the court, ranged from a term imprisonment not exceeding two years with or without hard labor or in solitary confinement to life imprisonment. Although this law was not expressly enacted by the Sierra Leone Parliament, it was applicable because of

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the Courts Act of 1965 that made all statutes of general application in England before January 1, 1880 applicable in Sierra Leone.1 Thus, because of this law, long discarded by the country that formulated it, thousands of Sierra Leonean women have been unable to access safe abortion services, leading to many deaths and reproductive health complications. The global resistance and negativity towards women freely accessing abortion services has contributed to the high maternal mortality rate in many countries. As Berer (2017, pp. 22–23) explains, “the fact that abortion is still legally restricted in almost all countries is not just a historical legacy but indicative of the continuing ambivalence and negativity about abortion in most societies, no matter how old or where the law originally came from.” It is within this negative and restrictive space that women from many African nations decided to launch a long and protracted advocacy campaign that started in 1995 for the ratification of a continental instrument that will address the full and equal rights of women on the continent. This instrument came to be known as the Maputo Protocol.

When “Us” becomes “Them” The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, known as the Maputo Protocol, came into effect in 2003 after almost a decade of intense lobbying. According to Faiza Mohamed (2014, p. 72), “the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR) coalition, in collaboration with the Women, Gender and Development Directorate of the African Union (AU) Commission, worked tirelessly to secure the minimum fifteen ratifications that were necessary for the instrument to enter into force.” Key players of the coalition include Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF), who convened the first meeting in 1995 in Togo for the development of a protocol on women’s rights, as well as Equality Now and the African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET). After intensive lobbying, the first draft of the Protocol was submitted to the then Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 2000 and was improved and adopted by the AU in 2003 (Mohamed, 2014). Sierra Leone was one of fifteen countries that did not ratify the convention in 2003, but did so in 2015 after intensive advocacy from local and international organizations such as Amnet in Sierra Leone and Equality Now. The protocol covers a wide range of issues that include access to education for women and girls, the elimination of harmful traditional practices, protecting women in armed conflict, the inclusion of women in decision making, and rights around HIV status, abortion, and widowhood. In 2016, the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) called for the decriminalization of abortion across Africa and went further in 2017, at the African Leaders Summit, to acknowledge that safe and legal abortion was a human right. However, getting African heads of state to adopt and ratify the protocol was a significant challenge: When pressure was put on states to move from ratification to action (domestication and implementation) patriarchal norms that have sustained the gender inequalities, which the Protocol seeks to address resurfaced. They resurfaced in the form of

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massive resistance through “reservations” and minimal resources dedicated to implementation. An examination of the articles that most states have consistently placed reservations on – Articles 5, 6, 7, 14 and 21 – all centre on the control of women’s reproductive and productive capacities. Full implementation of these articles would place greater decision making power in the hands of women, thus beginning to restructure gender inequalities. SOAWR, 2013, p. 8

In 2003, without any formal reservation, Sierra Leone signed the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol), which guarantees comprehensive rights to women, including full political and social participation and control of reproductive health; however, the country did not ratify it until October 2015. The ratification of the Maputo Protocol became an opportunity for Ipas and partners to push for the Safe Abortion Bill, which had been in the pipeline for a while. The bill was developed in response to Article 14 (2) (c) of the Maputo Protocol, which calls upon all parties to take all appropriate measures to “protect the reproductive rights of women by authorizing medical abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest, and where the continued pregnancy endangers the mental and physical health of the mother or the life of the mother or the fetus” and accord women above the age of eighteen the right to decide whether to keep or terminate a pregnancy that was conceived through inexplicable circumstances such as rape, incest, or when the pregnancy poses risk to the health of the fetus or mother. Girls under eighteen can have an abortion only with the consent of a parent or guardian. On December 8, 2015, the Parliament of Sierra Leone passed the Private Members’ Motion titled “The Safe Abortion Bill 2015.” It was tabled by Hon. Isata Kabia, one of the few female parliamentarians at the time who was also a feminist activist. To complete the legislative process, the Bill was sent to President Koroma for his signatory. It was in this interim that religious groups, both Muslims and Christians, mobilized and convinced the president not to sign off on the bill, causing the president to defer on signing the bill. He sent it back to Parliament, urging them to have further consultations on the bill. In February 2016, Parliament met, passed the bill, and sent it again to the president. After that, the president did not respond to Parliament and did not sign the bill before he left office in 2018. This bill struck numerous nerves and brought out attitudes towards sexuality, morality, family, and traditional conceptions of womanhood and women’s roles within Sierra Leonean cultures. Women’s activists on both sides of the divide clashed in a series of encounters in Parliament, calling each other names and refusing to sit and negotiate their positions. From the interviews, I observed that the arguments raised by both groups were predictable, but interestingly, some of the arguments presented by the women of “faith” were sometimes contradictory. Interesting also is the fact that there seems to be no distinction between the arguments raised by Christian and Muslim women about the life of a fetus, even though theologically the Islamic position differs from that of Christianity. Here are some of the responses to the question “why did you oppose the bill?”

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As women we all want to be free from the unnecessary discriminatory and moral laws that go against our existence but definitely not one that will take the life of another person. Abortion is equal to murder. Member, Catholic Women’s Associations, April 21, 2019 How can a country known to be so religious sharply degenerate to a level of legalizing desolate behavior? Whether it is done by a quack or by a professional, there is nothing like safe abortion because somebody’s life is lost. The issues that the pro-abortionists are presenting, we as a church consider them abominable to our culture. Staff, CCSL May 10, 2019 Life is natural a free precious gift from God. It is a sacred property. Nobody has the right to dismiss life at his/her will, but at the will of God. According to our doctrine, life starts at conception. There are several other human right issues that need to be addressed, let us concentrate on them, and not abortion, which as a church we consider morally and culturally wrong. Anglican pastor, May 1, 2019 As women activists we should not have advocated for a bill that makes abortion legal. We should have advocated for a bill that allows for abortion in certain circumstances: a pregnancy that endangers the life of the mother, the pill or other interventions that ensure a woman does not get pregnant after a rape. Women’s right leader May 23, 2020 The current administration is using about 21 percent of the country’s revenue to educate girls and boys. If abortion is legal, teenage girls will not focus on their education as they will become sexually active. So I stand to say that abortion is murder and so a sin therefore it should not be legal in this nation. The bill will encourage promiscuity and rape because people will see abortion as the answer to unwanted pregnancy. Founder, Messianic Ambassadors for Africa, May 3, 2019

Those in support of the bill had this to say: The termination of pregnancy related complications represent on average 50 percent of emergency admissions in referral maternities in Sierra Leone. Of the direct causes of maternal deaths, complications due to unsafe abortions rank fourth. In fact 20 percent of maternal deaths are caused by unsafe abortions. These deaths are according to experts, unnecessary and medically preventable. Health Coordinator, NGO, April 26, 2019 Although there is no agreement in medicine, philosophy or theology as to what stage of fetal development should be associated with the right to life, it is my humble submission that there is a consensus of opinion which agrees that a fetus cannot survive outside the uterus at 12 weeks. The fact is that life is in formation but not life

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itself. It is therefore fair and just to allow a pregnant female to abort after counselling. In my own opinion, aborting a fetus up to the first 12 weeks does not fall within the definition of “life” within section 16 of our Constitution. Medical practitioner, April 15, 2019 Why should a woman who has been raped, involved in an incestuous relation or became pregnant as a result of a felonious intercourse be made to suffer twice? It is very likely that the circumstances will be disastrous for both the mother and the child. The woman was stripped of her choice once when raped, she should not be stripped of her choice a second time by allowing her to give birth to a baby of the rapist. Midwife and Founder of a youth lifeline, May 4, 2019

The opposing arguments show no middle ground for these women, who in many instances do come together to push the agenda for gender equality and women’s autonomy. These women speak the global language of the religious right and oppose abortion in the same ways that it is vehemently opposed in many other countries globally, highlighting the reality that the right to an abortion is opposed transnationally in ways that other women’s political and economic rights are not (Asal et. al., 2008, p. 266). Many of these women who opposed the bill identify themselves as gender activists and supporters of women’s economic and social advancement, yet they fail to recognize that the right to a safe abortion is a central gender issue. This is most likely because “individuals’ religious denominations and the strength of religious beliefs have a strong impact on their stance on abortion” (Asal et. al., 2008, p. 272). From the varied responses, the control of fertility through the use of contraceptives seems not to be contentious, but abortion is not considered in the same light. But as Tamale (2016, p.120) cautions, “it is impossible to discuss fertility control and not talk about abortion” and moreover, “religion plays a crucial part in constructing the patriarchal logic that women were created to bear and rear children. Natural Law—which is based on the Divine and the belief that all written laws must follow universal principles of morality and religion—is extremely influential in shaping our thinking on issues of contraception. By so doing, religion and the law legitimate and institutionalize the control of women’s sexuality and reproductive capacities.” When a respondent asks the question, “How can a country known to be so religious sharply degenerate to a level of legalizing desolate behavior?” she fails, as a gender activist, to acknowledge the inequitable gender norms within Sierra Leonean society that lead to unwanted pregnancies. Many women and girls are socialized to be in positions in which they cannot deny their partners sex or demand safe sex, especially married women. The practice of “call name” and “ansa belleh,” in which a pregnant teen is coerced into publicly naming her sexual partner, is often traumatic, especially if it ends in the denial of paternity and the teen being forced to terminate the pregnancy as a result (which is very common). Many others, being young or unmarried with little or no financial resources and support, facing stigma and shame internalized from cultural representations and expectations of womanhood, are pushed to seek abortion in all the wrong places, often leading to death. The pro-choice campaigners refused to engage in a religious debate that they knew would further alienate the issue, but rather focused mainly on medical facts, which

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they believed would appeal to common sense. As members of these religious establishments themselves, they fully understood the dynamics of the society and how debates can quickly take a personal turn. Only a few were able to move beyond the medical safety rhetoric to emphasize choice and the deconstruction of systemic discrimination, patriarchal control of women’s sexuality, and women’s limited access to social, political, and economic power. In many ways, the interconnectedness of political and religious power was recognized by these women, who tried their utmost not to overtly rock the religious boat, showing their paradoxical relationship with religion. It is interesting that both Muslim and Christian women based their objections to abortion on the current position of the Catholic Church that ensoulment happens at conception and therefore abortion of an embryo or fetus is tantamount to murder. Many scholars have argued that the current position of the Catholic church was determined when “In the 1869 document Apostolicae Sedis, Pope Pius IX declared the penalty of excommunication for abortions at any stage of pregnancy. Up to then Catholic teaching was that no homicide was involved if abortion took place before the foetus was infused with a soul, known as ‘ensoulment’ ” (McGarry, 2013). The original belief is that ensoulment or separate consciousness occurred at “quickening,” or when the mother detects movement of the baby, which is often about 24 weeks. Although there are contradictory positions from different schools of thought, in Islam, ensoulment is believed to take place approximately 120 days after conception. Moreover, as Leila Hessini (2007, p. 76) notes, “individual interpretation is a key Islamic principle; Muslims are encouraged to read and analyse traditional religious sources to find solutions to contemporary problems.” In Muslim countries, abortion is generally forbidden after the fetus achieves ensoulment except to save the woman’s life. Interpretations that allow for abortion are based on fetal development, gestational age, and the circumstances of the pregnant woman; they rarely mention fetal rights or when life begins. It is accepted that maternal life takes precedence, at least until the fetus achieves the status of person (Hessini 2007, p. 77). In reality, however, religious leaders and interpreters of the Quran and Hadiths are mostly men who find ways to exert control over women’s bodies through narrow-minded interpretations of texts. A Muslim cleric and an executive member of the Inter-Religious Council (IRC) had this to say: As religious leaders we are charged with the preservation of life. Religious books stand against it (abortion). Islam totally discourages abortion. There are four sources of information about Islam. The first is the Quran. The second is the tradition of the prophets called the Sunnah. The third source is the Ijma which is the consensus or the opinion of jurists that is, what the jurists would do. Islam is there to solve problems. The fourth source of information is ijtihad [citation]. Abortion is the destruction of life without cogent reasons. Though there are instances that Islam would allow, that is provided the woman is faced with challenges, such as in the case of danger to the life of the woman, when established by renowned specialists. The gynecologists must consult with colleague doctors of the same discipline. That is why Islam encourages family planning though as part of the different approaches to solving the abortion issue. There are several Quranic and Biblical statements against abortion. In the

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interfaith entity, it is in their domain to preserve life, because life is sacred and it is meant to be preserved. As I said, there are several Quranic prophetic and Biblical provisions that came out when religious leaders consulted and interfaced with their scriptures. These issues are addressed by scripture. That was why we stated in our press release against the “Safe Abortion Bill 2015” [IRC January 21, 2016] that there was no safe abortion. Abortion is the greatest sin against Allah. April 19, 2019

Even as he recognizes that Islam allows abortion under certain conditions such as rape, fetal impairment, and risk to the woman’s life and health, he fails to share the fact that in Islam, the life of the mother takes precedence over a fetus that has not reached ensoulment. Moreover, there are other Islamic schools of thought that argue that Islam permits abortion for reasons other than health as long as it is before ensoulment. It is also clear from his statement that he had at some point been influenced by the thinking of the Christian-dominated IRC on the issue of ensoulment. The use of the Christian interpretation of ensoulment in Sierra Leone, which has a Muslim majority, sheds light on the politics of religion in the country. The initiative to oppose the bill did not come from the women but from the IRC, which is dominated by men and the Christian clergy, who are more educated and have greater access to those in political power. Historically, the Church has had more influence in Sierra Leone than the Muslim Umma, because the Church contributes greatly to the education sector and has members in positions of influence. It was even suggested by some of the interviewees that the Church received funding from the US anti-abortion movement led by Christian evangelists or conservative groups, as this was happening at a time when the Christian right was trying to influence legislation against homosexuality and abortion in many African countries and in a place where the vestiges of the Bush global gag rule on the funding of family planning programs were still being felt. One of the church leaders had this to say about her role in the protest: I played that role because of several reasons one of which is for my institutional background and our biblical mandate is one that supports right to life because life is a sacred holy provision that God made for his purposes on earth and he created man in his own image. So, to approve abortion is equal to challenging God’s pattern of establishing life on earth because the bill will further advance the practice that is already happening. In short as an institution abortion is contrary to our spiritual beliefs. National Secretary, Intercessors of Sierra Leone, May 16, 2019

As feminists have argued, the argument on ensoulment should not be the only “essential issue” in the abortion debate because “the way we respond to the problem of personhood will not necessarily settle the dispute over abortion once and for all” (Markowitz 1990, p. 1). It is near impossible to change the views of anti-abortionists, who are steeped in their religious and moral beliefs even as they claim to be working in the interest of women. We see from an excerpt above that even when a respondent recognizes that “As women we all want to be free from the unnecessary discriminatory and moral laws that go against our existence,” she cannot free herself from the religious discourse she has

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internalized about abortion. She fails to recognize that the abortion campaign is also a fight against “discriminatory and moral laws that go against our existence.” The women’s right to bodily integrity and autonomy argument, though essential, is not enough to change minds in practice, as the underlying issue of women’s oppression is often not fully interrogated and deconstructed in this debate. Pro-choice advocates focused mainly on the health implications of unsafe abortions and the need for Sierra Leone to honor its obligations as signatory to a number of instruments, rather than on women’s rights and oppression. This is because they believed that the health argument would garner more sympathy and be more palatable for people in such a highly patriarchal and sexist society. The health argument can be supported by data as well as people’s direct and indirect experiences of fatalities from botched abortions. The women’s oppression argument could be off-putting for many lawmakers and the general public, who are in constant denial of the systemic oppression of women. The focus on health and conventions is manifested in this response: The bill came about in order to improve women’s access to health, reproductive choices and also as part of the fact that Sierra Leone is a signatory to CEDAW [The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women] and part of the general recommendations of CEDAW had noted Sierra Leone to have a very high maternal mortality ratio and the fact that the law on abortion criminalizes the procedure without providing any exception, and also the heightened rate of sexual violence, unwanted pregnancies, etc, which they found accounted for about 13 percent of maternal mortality in Sierra Leone. The delay in adopting the abortion bill which would decriminalize i.e., remove the criminal aspect of the termination of pregnancy was based on various grounds. CEDAW urged Sierra Leone to accelerate the adoption of the abortion bill, so that was the background to the bill being brought forward. Lawyer/Activist, April 16, 2019

Improving women’s reproductive health cannot be overemphasized in a Sierra Leonean context in which research has shown that an unacceptable number of women and girls lose their lives because of maternal health-related issues. As such, pro-choice campaigners had to use a strategy that would face little resistance and open the space for discussing a topic that has long been taboo. However, not highlighting women’s oppression and the gendered dynamics of women’s inability to access needed reproductive health services as core to the debate in many ways contributes to the normalization of power relations and oppressive practices that put women’s lives and well-being at risk. Even with such cautious actions from pro-choice campaigners, the decks were still stacked against the campaign because of a number of interrelated reasons, some of which could have been foreseen and avoided.

What Went Wrong? Even though the religious lobby was seen as the most important factor in the failure to pass the abortion bill, there were also other very important contributing factors,

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including limited national consultations on the process; non-compliance to due parliamentary processes; and the claim that the bill was too long and convoluted because it did not precisely define abortion, had no “definitive timing of when a fetus is considered as a life,” did not provide a constitutionally accepted definition of a “medical practitioner,” and was “dangerously silent as to when an abortion is permissible or impermissible (if at all)”2 The religious group lobby against the abortion bill came as a surprise to some parliamentarians, who questioned their motive. According to a female parliamentarian, What suprised me the most was that this was the first bill during my tenure in parliament that caught the attention of religious leaders and women’s groups. My disappointment in all of this was the fact that when it comes to issues that affect the lives of women and girls, the religious leaders were united to prevent women from once again having their say. This was the first time religious leaders came together to stop a bill of such importance but would not speak on other important matters that affect the lives of Sierra Leoneans. Former female parliamentarian, April 14, 2019

Her observations were also shared by many pro-choice campaigners, who saw the resistance of the religious groups as a continuation of the control of women’s bodies and sexuality, especially as this group had never before mobilized to object to a single controversial law passed by Parliament. It was a very emotional period, it was a hurtful time, lots of hurtful things said about those who were campainging and advocating for the passage of the bill. Calling all sorts of names. It was a very hurtful and emotional time but that didn’t break or change my thoughts or my resolve. Definitely it was interesting for me because I’ve always known Sierra Leoneans were hypocritical any way. And in fact the issue of the Safe Abortion Act really brought that out. When issues like rape and sexual violence were brought up in time past, you didn’t hear pip from the religious leaders. They didn’t get together to go stampeding at parliament to talk about that, I mean the protection of children and women, Nope, but they went there to talk on women making choices about their bodies as to whether or not to carry a pregnancy to full term or not. So that was very interesting. Lawyer/Activist, April 16, 2019

The action taken by religious leaders should not come as a surprise; globally, religious groups have often been gatekeepers to women’s autonomy and remain forefront in the anti-abortion campaign. Religion has been and continues to be used to impede women’s political, social, cultural, and economic advancement. The thunderous silence of religious groups over the alarming rate of sexual and all forms of gender-based violence in Sierra Leone has especially led to the questioning by many women’s rights advocates of their role in society. Somehow, many Sierra Leoneans expect religious leaders to protect the rights and well-being of worshippers and speak against oppression and bad governance, but this has never been the case in Sierra Leone. There is the odd pastor or

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Sheikh who speaks truth to power, but the majority turn a blind eye to the suffering of people while preaching hope and salvation in places of worship. Unfortunately, even as the proliferation of new age or pentecostal churches and the lavish lifestyles of pastors are scrutinized, the churches continue to overflow with people—mostly women— seeking miracles. This constituency of “blessing” seekers would have been an ideal audience for the pro-choice campaigners to capture, but they were unfortunately not targeted for outreach. Many, including the religious groups, intimated that they were not consulted and that “the bill was not brought to the public for debate.” This widespread interest in having a say on the bill can be attributed to the discomfort towards the autonomy granted to women by a bill that provided women with full access to abortion services during the first twelve weeks of gestation, with or without the consent of the father of the fetus. Additionally, information on the contents of the bill was limited and the prochoice campaign was not very robust. As such, many argue that the religious conservatives took advantage of the lack of public mobilization by the pro-choice activists to force their minority position—of total opposition to abortion—on parliamentarians and the general public. The reality is that most Sierra Leoneans, “despite seeming to acquiesce to public pronouncements of their religious leaders, accept the reality of widespread availability of abortion (although illegal) and won’t support the curtailment of termination of pregnancy rights and other women’s rights on religious grounds” (Human rights lawyer, June 1, 2020). Mary Paul et. al.’s (2015) study of nineteen hospitals estimated that 3,379 women and girls were treated for abortion complications; this is only a fraction of the whole picture as it does not count additional hospitals, those without complications, those who lost their lives, or those who sought help from other medical establishments. Given this broader reality, widespread consultations may have won over many Sierra Leoneans to support the bill and oppose the objections raised by the religious groups. As pointed out by the same human rights lawyer, “our country is superficially a socially conservative society and the right to life arguments have up till now not been subject to widespread sustained and robust public interrogation or challenge by women rights activists.” The need for wider mobilization and consultation was highlighted by many, including the Ministry responsible for the welfare of women: As a ministry, we remain neutral on the issue and we think a lot more dialogue is required for consensus building on the bill. We think for the bill to be accepted and fully implemented, it needs to get a buy in from all citizens. Gender Officer, MSWGCA, May 1, 2019

Consultations with different groups of people may have gained more sympathizers to the cause, but it is difficult to say whether that would have changed the outcome in a situation where the majority outwardly present themselves as religious, where the president was desperate to not alienate a very strong constituency, and where parliamentarians were neither committed to the process nor willing to go against the president and allow due process to prevail. According to a pro-choice parliamentarian,

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I was disappointed because some procedures were not observed. When a president refuses to sign a bill that bill should be sent back within 14–21 days. The president should send it back with an explanation or reasons why he is rejecting the bill, but this wasn’t done. If the parliament does not agree with his reasons, we can stick to our decision and send it back to the president. If he refuses to sign we have the right to ask the speaker of parliament to sign the bill into an act. This was not done in the case of this bill. Most of what happened was not procedural and had their own political implications. Former male parliamentarian, April 18, 2019

The political will to see this bill through was clearly lacking, a situation made worse by women who were not tolerant of each other’s views from both sides of the divide. The pro-choice advocates believed that the women on the other side showed no regard for the agency and autonomy of women and failed to appreciate and/or understand the pain and devastation caused by unsafe and illegal abortions in the country. For them, gender equality advocates are entitled to their religious beliefs but the rights of women should always and fiercely be protected above such beliefs. The anti-abortion advocates, on the other hand, used intimidation tactics that were unbecoming of people of faith. There was a lot of name-calling and many of the anti-abortion male protesters threatened to beat up women from the pro-choice side. However, as noted by some respondents, this was an unnecessary division among women’s rights activists because the vast majority of women (and men) were not aware of, properly prepared for, or given sufficient time and information to understand the pro-choice arguments before the bill was brought to Parliament. Future success will thus depend on re-strategizing and presenting the bill with one voice.

What’s in a Name?—Safe Abortion Bill vs Sexual Reproductive Health Bill Taking into consideration the various concerns raised by anti-abortion oppenents, pro-choice advocates have regrouped and formed a coalition, People’s Alliance for Reproductive Health Access (PARHA), to reignite the campaign for a bill that respects the sexual reproductive rights of women. Recognizing that abortion is a very contentious and controversial topic that touches the core of people’s faith, they have decided to revisit the title of the bill to make it more inclusive of sexual reproductive health rights—hence the change from the Safe Abortion Bill to the Sexual and Reproductive Health Bill. They have also taken into consideration the complaints that the Safe Abortion Bill was too vague in ways that hindered its ability to address the problem it was purportedly trying to solve. One respondent noted: The bill did not define abortion but was advocating that women should have the right to abort pregnancies. The bill was not properly defined, and there is no example of precedence. There were no reservations put on the bill and because of this, we were under obligation to implement the abortion bill and failing to do so was a violation

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of International Human Rights law. And additionally, placing the self-induced abortion as part of the bill made it more difficult to be accepted. Academic, May 12, 2019

In retrospect, pro-choice advocates have come to the realization that they should have adopted a more strategic and tactical bottom-up approach through which they could have tried to win the battle of hearts and minds at the community level by strategically engaging key community stakeholders such as Paramount Chiefs, artists, religious leaders, members of the media, women and youth organizations, etc. There is a strong belief that this battle can only be won by a conciliatory approach, an approach that focuses more on the bridges and bonds that bind the opposite sides of this debate together and the need to build solidarity around the advocacy without making it a “us versus them” issue. As such, mobilization has been a central aspect of this regrouping and is enacted through community engagement, education, advocacy, and training both at the community and district level. The aim is to generate national interest and a better understanding of the bill before it is once again presented to Parliament.

Conclusion Though the majority of women who were demonstrating against the passing of the abortion bill were with the group representing the Christian faith they were not a homogenous group and had multiple identities and varied reasons for not supporting the passing of the bill. Some women did not know the content of the Bill, some had not been sensitized enough to thoroughly understand the Bill, and many did not know the proper definition of Abortion. Yet, religious discourses and beliefs about abortion dominated the debate and women’s responses to other women. From all the arguments presented, it would seem that anti-abortion campaigners find it difficult to view abortion outside the “humanization of the foetus as a living being, thus equating abortion with murder; assumptions of women’s misuse of their sexuality in sinful or promiscuous ways; and women being thought to be deviating from the motherhood role which most societies consider an intrinsic part of being a woman” (Macleod et. al., 2018, p. 1101). This itself is paradoxical, as most of these women work and consider themselves as gender activists and advocates for women’s rights and empowerment. Women on both sides of the divide need to move this campaign from a religiously influenced moral and ethical framework to a reproductive justice approach that “locates abortion within the social dynamics surrounding the occurrence of an unwanted pregnancy and focuses on achieving conditions that are necessary for comprehensive reproductive and sexual freedom” (p. 1101). The road to the enactment of a bill that legalizes abortion and other reproductive rights may be long and winding because of pressure from influential anti-abortion entities such as the IRC, but with the resolve of pro-choice activists to fully engage their colleagues on the other side there may be light at the end of the tunnel. Thus, as PARHA moves their campaign forward, they need to implement several key lessons from the earlier abortion bill campaign: they need to acknowledge and recognize the

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voice of the opposition; ensure that they fully engage women’s activists opposing the bill from a religious angle by evoking the common ground between pro-choice and anti-abortion activists, which is that they are all women of faith and women advocating for the full emancipation of women; and ensure that both sides come to a better understanding of what the other means by “for the good of the women/girl” in relation to abortion, because even the Christian anti-abortion activists believe that abortion should be allowed when a woman’s life is in danger or if they were impregnated through sexual violence. There is also a need for both sides to fully grasp both the health and women’s agency arguments in order to understand the repressive social norms around women’s bodies and sexualities which make abortion a contentious issue and which in many ways hinder women’s empowerment. Women on both sides of the divide are polarized and deeply set in their beliefs, but there is a possibility to articulate and find a common ground around women’s need and ability to exercise agency in breaking with constrictive social norms in relation to reproduction and the social organization of female sexuality. A coalition of pro-choice activists and anti-abortion activists who are open to conditional abortion could diffuse the “us versus them” stance if both sides recognize and believe that women need the autonomy that enables them to make different political, economic, social, and other choices without fear of reprisal, especially in a society such as ours where cultural, traditional, and societal expectations dominate and where women do not have access to the material conditions that make such choices possible.

Notes 1 “Subject to the provisions of the Constitution and any other enactment, the common law, the doctrines of equity, and the statutes of general application in force in England on the 1st day of January, 1880, shall be in force in Sierra Leone.”—Section 74 of the Courts Act. 2 Sierra Leone Government Memorandum, February 19, 2016 ( memo from the president to the house of parliament)

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Sierra Leonean Women Mobilizing for Change: Revising the Sexual Offenses [Amendment] Act of 2019 Fredline A.O. M’Cormack-Hale

Introduction In late June 2020, social media galvanized around the rape and murder of a five-yearold girl in Freetown, allegedly by her uncle with whom she lived (Batha, 2020). The little girl’s death resulted in a wave of condemnation: on June 22 hundreds took to the streets, defying COVID-related restrictions on social gatherings to protest against the crimes and call for justice, and several press releases were issued from civil society activists, government, and non-State actors like the United Nations (Sierra Leone: UN Demands Prompt Investigation Into Rape, Murder of Khadija, 2020). Even the president and first lady of Sierra Leone publicly commented on her death (Batha, 2020). For many activists, there was a sense of déjà vu. Just sixteen months earlier, in January 2019, the rape and ensuing paralysis of another five-year-old resulted in similar anger and mobilization of disparate actors (Kardas-Nelson and Inveen, 2019). This was the catalytic event that set in motion the president’s declaration of rape as a national emergency in February 2019, and launched the process of revising and strengthening the laws against Sexual Gender Based Violence (SGBV) (Adebayo, 2019; Karasz and Searcey, 2019; State House Media and Communications Unit, 2019). The passage of the landmark revised Sexual Offences Amendment Act, exactly eight months after the president’s declaration and less than a year after the rape of that little girl, was seen by many in the women’s movement as a victory and a clear example of the power of women’s mobilization and activism (Nyallay, 2019), although the 2020 attack shows that the steps taken clearly weren’t enough. The relatively speedy passage of the law could appear surprising given that Sierra Leone, in many respects, seems to lack the enabling conditions that scholars generally posit as necessary for policy-making to protect women’s rights or address the needs of women and girls (M’Cormack-Hale, 2015). Sierra Leone does not have a 30 percent quota of women in parliament, which is often seen as the “critical mass” that enables women to pass laws and policies favoring women;1 the country is widely seen as both patriarchal and patrimonial, and is perceived as having what some have termed a “rape 211

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culture” (Africanews, 2019). Despite this, the progressive legislation passed, adding to Sierra Leone’s relatively robust body of laws that protect the rights of women, although complaints persist that the political will to implement these laws is absent and enforcement is weak, as Graybill (this volume) has argued. This chapter attempts to explain some of these paradoxes. How did Sierra Leone manage to implement reform of its sexual gender-based violence (SGBV) law despite only a 12 percent representation of female parliamentarians? How and why did the State respond to women’s demands? What role did the women’s movement play? This chapter examines the processes behind the passage of the revised Sexual Offences Amendment Act and explores what lessons it provides for women’s mobilizing and activism in Sierra Leone, particularly in contexts that do not have strong representation of women in the legislature and in politics more broadly. To answer these questions, this paper draws on a power domains approach first developed in Nazneen, Hickey, and Sifaki (2019), which at its base argues that rather than focusing on arguments about the ways in which numbers can facilitate or constrain women’s political effectiveness, we need to ground our analyses in concrete cases to develop an understanding of how change actually happens in practice, to refine theories that often take as their case in point Western political contexts (M’Cormack-Hale, 2015). In their words, “in conceptual terms, most research in this area has placed a greater emphasis on examining the influence of female political inclusion in the Global North, rather than the Global South, and has done so whilst deploying frames of analysis that are arguably less relevant to the ways in which politics actually plays out in developing countries, particularly in terms of the often pervasive influence of informal rather than more formal processes and the extent to which institutional arenas, such as politics, civil society, and bureaucracy, are seldom as differentiated as (Western) political theory tends to assume” (Nazneen, Hickey and Sifaki, 2019, p. 8). In the Global South, formal and informal processes are often intertwined, with implications for which laws get passed and which policies get adopted. While political realities in these contexts have generally been linked to negative policy outcomes, with neopatrimonialism and “big man” politics presenting obstacles to women’s empowerment (Goetz, 2002a; Beck, 2003), this obscures the role of agency and how women can navigate these spaces in ways leading to policies that benefit them. Contexts where the boundaries between the formal and the informal are relatively fluid can provide opportunities for change. To counter the dominance of Euro-centric analyses and theories that do not resonate with African realities, scholars have called for grounding analyses of African politics, including on social movements, women’s activism, civil society, and democracy, among other subjects, in “Africa’s contemporary realities” (Ake, 1993; Adomako Ampofo, 2008; Hendricks, 2011). It is hoped that such evidence-based work can help fill gaps in contemporary frameworks and introduce new concepts to aid in greater understanding of political phenomena across space and time. This chapter contributes to the growing body of literature that takes Africa on its own terms: using process-tracing (Collier, 2011), I was able, through thick description, to develop a detailed understanding of the causal processes behind the adoption of the revised law. This understanding of how politics works “on the ground” forms the basis

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for analysis and discussion, and I explore how this resonates with existing theories or adds to our understanding of how women are able to advocate for policy change in diverse settings. An analysis of the various actors, processes, and conditions through which the amendment law was passed yielded results in line with prior work done by a number of other scholars in this field. The existence of multiple legitimate competing sources of authority suggests that there is no single way for issues to be prioritized or for policy change to be implemented. Instead, in line with Nazneen, Hickey, and Sifaki (2019), the amendment’s rapid passage points to a confluence of inter-related factors, including the importance of inter-personal relationships and networks, a presidential system with a strong executive, international pressures for reform, and a broad coalition of civil society incorporating women activists and political actors (including male and female parliamentarians and ministers) with the ability to draw on new technology to advance their cause. However, for implementation to succeed, we need to go beyond the law; the chapter concludes by considering some recent steps that have been taken by Sierra Leonean activists to ensure that women are able to access justice for SGBV crimes. The paper is divided into four parts. In the first section, after outlining the methodology, I provide a brief review of the literature on political inclusion and change, illustrating its shortcomings and laying the foundation for the power domains approach as articulated in Nazneen, Hickey, and Sifaki (2019). I then describe the women’s movement in Sierra Leone against this backdrop, as well as the issue of SGBV in Sierra Leone. Next, through process tracing, I outline the steps and processes through which women effected change around the passage of the 2019 amendment to identify the causal factors that helped women mobilize to shape the law. I ground the explanation of women’s successful mobilizing within the conceptual framework of the power domains approach and conclude with some reflections on the implications of this study for the wider women’s movement in Sierra Leone as well as for successfully addressing SGBV in Sierra Leone.

Methodology As outlined above, process tracing was a key component of the methodology used for this chapter. Additionally, as a Sierra Leonean-American, I was also an insider-outsider in the process: a member of Sierra Leone civil society, an executive board member within one of the women’s organizations, and simultaneously a US-based academic working at a US university. This research also illustrated the ways in which technology makes possible trans-national activism. I was one of 192 participants in a WhatsApp group of activists interested in women’s issues that was one of the key tools used in soliciting views, organizing meetings, and planning for change in the revisions process. The WhatsApp platform brought together predominantly women across civil society, political parties, government, and national and international NGOs. In so doing, it provided a digital trail for all the events and discussions conducted around the issue of the bill revision, as well as the papers circulated. It was also on this platform that women expressed a desire to record the process of mobilising and connecting activists

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with policy makers to enact the successfully revised Sexual Offences Amendment Act, 2019. To preserve historical memory and serve as a guide for successful strategy in the future. I reviewed at least 100 messages on the platform using key words of “Sexual Offences,” “rape,” and “SGBV” to curate an initial list of messages, which were then further reviewed to ensure that they dealt with the revision of the Act. I reviewed over a year’s worth of messages, from July 2019 to October 2020. The messages provided micro-level detail on all the activities undertaken in the effort to incorporate women’s voices into the policy-making process—the meetings held, the documents reviewed, and the summaries created. I also reviewed newspaper reports produced during this time. In addition to analysis of the WhatsApp chat group, I employed participant observation, attending a strategy meeting at which women discussed various ways to insert themselves into the process. Finally, between October 2019 and September 2020, I conducted twelve key informant interviews with persons who were central actors in the process, representing a mix of state and non-state actors, including parliamentarians, lawyers, and civil society organizations (CSOs). Institutions represented include the Ministry of Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs, the Human Rights Commission, Parliament, and women-led and focused groups like LAWYERS, Purposeful, and the 50/50 Group. In the next section, I review the question that underpins this research— how are countries able to develop and implement policy that positively impacts women’s lives?

Women’s Participation and Policy Change: What is the Relationship? A central question driving this chapter is understanding the conditions under which governments take on board reforms that promote gender equity or address women’s lived needs and concerns. One prevailing argument is that this occurs through “inclusion to influence,” that is, through women being present at the table. This approach privileges representation, often operationalized as the numbers of women in parliament (Bauer, 2019), assuming that more women in politics will translate into greater attention to issues of particular concern to them, such as social issues like health and education, or human rights issues like SGBV, inheritance laws, and domestic violence (Britton and Bauer, 2006; Bolzendahl and Brooks, 2007; Burnet, 2008). However, this theory assumes policy-making processes that are relatively straightforward, which is not always the case. In practice, policy making is messy, even in countries of the Global North, which are often taken as the de facto norm. Similarly, expectations of what parliamentarians should do and how they should work are often borrowed from the Global North, and are at odds with reality on the ground in countries in the Global South (M’Cormack-Hale, 2015; Nazneen, Hickey and Sifaki, 2019). While this informality can serve to reinforce women’s marginalization and exclusion, for example, by building on informal networks grounded in membership in male secret societies or patron-client relations that men can navigate better given their

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greater access to resources and relationships (Beck, 2003; Goetz and Hassim, 2003), it can nevertheless provide opportunities for women’s mobilizing and the uptake of policies of importance to women, as this chapter shows. Relatedly, the nature of the political regime/state matters. In competitive regimes where politics is driven largely by questions of political survival, legislators focus less on policy making for the public good and more on currying political favor (Gouws, 2016; Nazneen, Hickey and Sifaki, 2019), including the practice of identity politics and patronage. In countries such as Sierra Leone, where ethno-regional political divisions remain salient, it can be difficult for women to unite around a common goal; instead, identity politics remains a significant source of division (Fofana Ibrahim, 2015; M’Cormack-Hale, 2015), with women aligning more, for example, with the political party than around gender identity. In spite of these constraints, women nevertheless have been able to overcome these barriers and pass laws that benefit them. Several reasons have been advanced for this. Htun and Weldon (2010) find that the characteristics of the policy in question can influence policy development and uptake, arguing that gender equality policies are not all the same. Their framework identifies seven policy domains influencing support or opposition for policies and the different confluence of factors needed for a policy’s passage. For example, they distinguish between Gender status policies (policies that affect all women simply by virtue of being female, such as SGBV) and doctrinal status based policies, such as the Abortion Bill, finding that the former are less likely to encounter opposition than the latter (Htun and Weldon, 2010; Nazneen, Hickey and Sifaki, 2019). The failure of the passage of the Abortion Bill in Sierra Leone as explained by Fofana Ibrahim (this volume) supports this point. In addition to the type of issue, Htun and Weldon also point to the wider political context, what they call the national polity, finding that the extent to which a country is susceptible to international pressure can also influence policy change. As they write, “In countries that need to please global audiences, international advocacy networks and agreements have more powerful effects. By ceding to the demands of women’s rights and human rights networks, for example, a country can divert focus from its other failings and even seize global leadership on certain aspects of gender equality” (Htun and Weldon, 2010, p. 37). Htun and Weldon among others, have also pointed to the importance of informal institutions and networks, finding that the strength of civil society and feminist movements can play a greater role than one would assume simply by looking at the numbers of women in parliament (Htun and Weldon, 2010; Nazneen, Hickey and Sifaki, 2019). This is notwithstanding women’s more restricted access to these networks than men (Goetz, 2002b; Beck, 2003). Additionally, women’s ability to leverage international norms on violence against women through couching the issue in broader terms as human rights violations, and holding the state accountable to its commitments either as signatories or ratifiers of international regimes and laws, can contribute positively to the uptake of laws domestically (Ulrich, 2000). This includes agreements such as UN Security Resolutions 1325 and 1820, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the Maputo Protocol, among others.

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All these factors played a role in success of the Sierra Leone women’s movement’s input into the revision of the Sexual Offences Act. Before examining the process of the revision, I provide a brief overview of the women’s movement in Sierra Leone to contextualize the study, with a focus on ending the war and women’s political participation, as well as SGBV.

Conceptualizing the Women’s Movement in Sierra Leone The accomplishments of the women’s movement in Sierra Leone have been mixed. The movement was widely recognized for its role during the civil war, when the Sierra Leone Women’s Peace Movement (SLWMP) organized peace marches, mobilized to bring warring factions together, and called for elections before peace in two national conferences, Bintumani I and II (Jusu-Sheriff, 2000; Steady, 2006; Abdullah, Ibrahim and King, 2010; Beoku-Betts and Day, 2015). However, women were largely absent in the formal peacebuilding processes after the war (Jusu-Sheriff, 2000; Macauley, 2012), and the movement has been criticized for lacking an ideological framework or explicit gender agenda post-war, leaving it unable to translate war gains into a transformative agenda for women after the war (Jusu-Sheriff, 2000; Beoku-Betts and Day, 2015). Several explanations have been offered for this. In line with their war-time mobilization agenda, the Sierra Leone women’s movement has been characterized as “socio-centric,” distinct from Western conceptualizations of gender equity. Instead, the movement has focused on broader issues of development designed to improve the lives of women and men more generally, rather than the narrower pursuit of equality between men and women (Steady, 2006; Beoku-Betts and Day, 2015). In the view of Beoku-Betts and Day, while this enabled the movement to successfully achieve its immediate objective of ending the war and promoting democratic change, it contributed to its later failures to do more to advance women’s equality after the war. Additionally, Beoku-Betts and Day point to the absence of leadership and funding, entrenched patriarchy, and the “Ngo-isation of formerly volunteer organizations.” These limitations have made it difficult for the women’s movement in Sierra Leone to have a more transformative impact along the lines envisioned by, for example, Abdullah and Fofana Ibrahim (2010), who argue that empowerment must incorporate women’s political mobilization and participation as well as political and legal changes in order to be socially transformative. Many of the institutions instead promoted a limited conceptualization of empowerment, as espoused by Western development organizations such as UNDP, focusing on a narrower goal of participation in development processes (Abdullah and Fofana Ibrahim, 2010). This is not to say that mobilization to increase women’s political participation or to legally mandate a quota for women in parliament is absent. Local CSOs such as the 50/50 Group, Campaign for Good Governance, and AMNet have long been working in partnership with international NGOs and international organizations (IOs) to do just that. These activities have been more explicitly liberal feminist in orientation, couched in terms of egality and equal representation, given that women make up nearly

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52 percent of the electorate. However, despite the plethora of activities and programming to prepare women candidates to run in advance of elections, the numbers of women elected have declined or remained stagnant, with scholars citing long-recognized and continuing cultural, political, legal, and structural barriers, as well as new issues specific to the 2018 election such as the banning of dual citizens, which disproportionately affected female candidates (European Union Election Observation Mission, 2018).2 For scholars like Day, it is this neoliberal framing of the agenda of recent interventions by the women’s movement that is to blame for the current impasse. She finds that by portraying women’s political participation as zero-sum, the movement has contributed to opposition to its goals by men who feel threatened. Instead, Day (2008) calls for a move back to socio-centric goals, with women’s subordination understood against a wider marginalization of both women and men grounded in exploitative global policies and practices advocated by lending organizations and multinational corporations. Others have attributed the limitations of the movement to a lack of both cohesion and leadership (Fofanah, 2012; Fofana Ibrahim, 2015). For Fofana Ibrahim, women have been unable to transcend their political parties or different organizations to unite effectively behind campaigns such as the 30 percent gender quota (Fofana Ibrahim, 2015) or the Abortion Bill (Fofana Ibrahim, this volume). Others have attributed the lack of traction on many issues to elitist women driving the agenda while disconnected from the needs and concerns of the “ordinary” women. As the literature on intersectionality (Crenshaw, 2006) makes clear, the category of “woman” is not monolithic, and strategies that treat women as such are bound to fail. If women do not see how political power can actually result in tangible improvements in their lived realities, then why would they support it? This suggests the need to couch these activities in language and action that actually resonate with everyday individuals, reminiscent of the socio-centric models that both Day and Steady have discussed. Furthermore, the political context has enabled the State to largely ignore women’s demands, as women are not seen as a politically important force. In a context where political loyalties run largely along ethnoregional lines, women have been unable to successfully mobilize as a block, and women’s organizations have found it difficult to make much headway in the political arena, at least as far as getting more women in parliament is concerned. Despite this, women have still been able to push through policy agendas reflective of central concerns for women. I believe that the women’s movement in Sierra Leone embraces all these different conceptualizations. It is not a monolithic movement, and at any one time it has a plurality of voices, advocating for both socio-centric objectives as well as more explicitly political ones. These seeming contradictions have been both a strength and a weakness of the movement, as women can unite around one issue but become divided on another. Htun and Weldon’s categorization of sex equity policies is particularly helpful here in understanding the factors influencing these dynamics. Women appear to have been more successful in coming together to fight for gender status-based policies like ending the war, and the passage of the three gender acts of 2008 (the Domestic Violence Act, the Devolution of Estates Act, and the Registration of Customary Marriage and Divorce Act) (Zureick, 2008), but less successful in advocating

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for gender doctrinal policies like abortion (Fofana Ibrahim, this volume), for which women have divided along religious and other lines. I turn now to women’s mobilization for SGBV laws generally before focusing on the revision of the Sexual Offences Amendment Act, the subject of this chapter.

Addressing Sexual Gender Based Violence in Sierra Leone For some scholars, the current high levels of SGBV committed against women and girls is a legacy of the 1991–2002 civil conflict, when between 215,000 and 257,000 women and girls experienced some type of sexual and gender-based violence (Physicians for Human Rights, 2002). Others acknowledge that war-time violence built on a pre-existing history of women’s political and socio-economic marginalization as well as established patterns of gender violence, which also facilitated the war-time abuse (Nowrojee, 2005; Ojukutu-Macauley, 2013; Mills et al., 2015). Some have traced women’s marginalization to the effects of colonialism on pre-existing norms, traditions, and values; these include the propagation of European concepts of gender relations that relegated women to the domestic sphere and removed them from formal and customary decision-making spheres (Steegstra, 2009). Since the end of the war, Sierra Leone has enacted and passed various laws that should have led to significant improvements for women and girls with regards to access to justice for SGBV crimes. Specifically, the three 2007 Gender Acts: the Domestic Violence Act, the Devolution of Estates Act, and the Registration of Customary Marriage and Divorce Act 2007 all reflect some CEDAW provisions in domestic law that are integral in combatting sexual and gender-based violence. The Child Rights Act of 2007 also domesticates the provisions of the Child Rights Committee (CRC) and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. Sierra Leone was also one of the first African countries to draft a national action plan to implement United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820, in 2010 (M’Cormack-Hale, 2012), aimed at acknowledging and strengthening women’s roles in conflict prevention, resolution, and peacebuilding, as well as providing early response mechanisms to address SGBV in conflict and post-conflict situations. However, it was the Sexual Offences Act of 2012, a result of successful advocacy by women’s organizations, civil society, and parliamentarians (Conteh, 2013), that most comprehensively addressed SGBV offences. The Act was seen as a landmark legislation when it was passed in 2012, and was designed to consolidate and address gaps in various laws relating to sexual offences. Among other things, the Act established a mandatory minimum and maximum sentence for rape of five years and fifteen years, respectively. Other highlights included raising the age of consent to 18, criminalization of marital rape, establishment of sentencing guidelines for rape crimes, and victim compensation and protection (Conteh, 2013; Campaign for Good Governance, 2014). Despite the advances of the law, limitations remained. Some felt that the new mandatory sentencing still did not go far enough. There was no minimum sentence for sexual offences against children; no institution assigned to provide free services, with victims of SGBV still paying for medical treatment despite the provision for free

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medical treatment; no mechanism to address compromise3; continued concerns about the capacity of both the police and the judiciary to adequately investigate and prosecute SGBV crimes; and limited public awareness of the law (Roseveare, 2012; Campaign for Good Governance, 2014; Martin and Koroma, 2020; Mitchell, 2020). Moreover, since its passage in 2012, rates of SGBV have continued to increase and women have continued to have poor access to justice for these crimes. According to police, rape cases recorded in 2018 nearly doubled to over 8,500, up by 4,000 cases from the previous year (BBC News, 2018); true figures are likely much higher as many cases go unreported. At least 70 percent of those cases involved minors, according to the Rainbo Initiative4 (Kardas-Nelson and Inveen, 2019). In 2019, Rainbo reported “3,701 cases of sexual assault, 3,897 cases of gender-based violence and 196 cases of physical assault in 2019; a majority (3,636) of the sexual assault cases were children under 18” (Mitchell, 2020). Of this number, few cases are actually prosecuted successfully; only 1.2 percent of the more than 3,000 cases Rainbo recorded in 2019 were successfully prosecuted (Lawal, 2019).

The Politics of Change: Revising the Sexual Offences [Amendment] Act, 2019 In this section I use a process-tracing method to identify the causal factors through which women were able to shape the revision and subsequent amendment of the Sexual Offences Act. I construct a timeline that captures the major events influencing the changes, and detail interviews with key actors involved in the negotiation processes, drawing on secondary literature and policy documents as well as content from the WhatsApp group chats from January 2019 to December 2019. The analysis reveals that women’s ability to have a voice in the process stemmed from a confluence of factors. Such factors include women’s ability to navigate both formal and informal political channels, broader political dynamics that created both space and opportunity for policy reform, unprecedented unity of the women’s movement, the ability to mobilize (relatively) new technology, and transnational actors and ideas that helped to frame the policy agenda and put pressure on domestic actors.

Tracing the Passage of the Law: Key Highlights When the Sexual Offences Amendment Act was passed in October 2019, the women’s movement celebrated it not only as a win for women’s rights, but an acclamation of what women can accomplish when they mobilize. Women recalled their past mobilization to end the war had not been sufficiently recorded and there were calls for documenting this amendment process for the future. As Dr. Bernadette Lahai posted on the WhatsApp group: “Now that the Bill is passed . . . can everyone who was involved with the amendment come together to document the process. Who did what, where, when, why, how etc. This will be invaluable for future assignments/task of similar nature. Documentation is part of keeping/archiving institutional memory. We have failed in the past to document processes of important milestones” (WhatsApp message,

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September 19, 2019). Women wanted this story to be written because they believed that the failure to record these stories for posterity and to learn from them was partly responsible for failures of the women’s movement in other areas. Women saw the reform of the law as a win on two fronts: first, the amendments reflected many of the concerns that women had collectively raised about the original proposed revisions to the Act. Second, the content of the law provided strengthened provisions that many saw as potentially transformative for ensuring women’s access to justice for SGBV. The timeline from declaration of rape as a national emergency to the passage of the law was remarkably short. The trigger that led to the issue gaining national attention came from a sequence of not unrelated events. In December 2018, in a response to high rates of teenage pregnancy, the first lady Madam Fatima Bio launched a “hands off our girls” campaign to fight early child marriage, teenage pregnancy, and assault and rape of children (State House Media and Communications Unit, 2018). Just one month later, in January 2019, a story about a five-year-old girl who had been raped by her uncle and paralyzed was publicized by Asmaa James, Station Manager for Radio Democracy, on her morning show “Gud Morni Salone” (“Good Morning, Sierra Leone” in local parlance), one of the most popular shows in Sierra Leone with national and international outreach.5 Outraged, James declared Tuesdays as Black Tuesday and urged girls and women to wear black and take to the streets in mourning until something was done to stem the high rate of rape in Sierra Leone. The rape of the little girl, and James’ actions in response were seen as a main trigger, followed by President Bio declaring rape as a national emergency in February 2019 (BBC News, 2018; Karasz and Searcey, 2019). As James put it: “I organized Black Tuesday and everyone wore black and we marched to the law courts, to the police and around town with our placards. I organized radio discussion programs, and the president listened. We had a conversation with him, and we came and explained to him about her situation, and he said, okay, the first thing we have do to is to declare a state of emergency. . . . Together with LAWYERS, Purposeful and the women’s movement, we played a big role” (Interview, Asmaa James, September 16, 2020). Chernor Bah, feminist activist and Chief Executive Officer of the girls’ rights organization Purposeful said, “There are always moments when things crystallize. We have been drumming about rape for a while and it all came to a head. With the girl, Asmaa had the wisdom of calling an event and a totem to mark it. A symbol—that we are wearing black, bet we are in mourning. We are not going to do it once but every month—in the consciousness of the president, I think this was very powerful.” (Interview, Chernor Bah, October 20, 2019). The declaration was accompanied by a set of directives from the president to punish perpetrators and help victims. This included, among other things, life imprisonment for anyone found guilty of sex with a minor, the provision of free health care for all victims by state hospitals, the creation of a national hotline for victims to report cases, and dedicated police and court divisions to handle rape crimes (State House Media and Communications Unit, 2019). The president also committed to the provision of forensic facilities, a long-time demand for SGBV advocates, as well as access to safe homes and psycho-social counselling for survivors. The directive was widely covered

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in major national and international outlets including Aljazeera, BBC, NPR, and CNN (BBC News, 2018; Adebayo, 2019; Al Jazeera, 2019; Kardas-Nelson and Inveen, 2019). However, the directives were criticized on multiple grounds. Many respondents felt that the declaration was “form over substance,” made by a president who wanted to be seen as “doing something,” (Interview, Yasmin Jusu-Sheriff, October 22, 2019) even if he didn’t quite know what, to address SGBV. As Chernoh Bah put it, “ This president is interesting in terms of where he stands on women’s issues. He gets the need for women’s empowerment and inclusion on an intellectual value basis. But he doesn’t seem to have the team and the right counsel on how to make this happen. In terms of affirmative thinking and action . . . He knows that it’s a problem, but he doesn’t yet have the tools and expertise in his team to systematically address this. So he ends up with a lot of symbolism and outsourcing” (Interview, Chernor Bah, October 20, 2019). Similarly, for Human Rights Commissioner, Simitie Lavaly, “We had a president who wanted to do something, but he did not seem to get good advice” (Interview, Simitie Lavaly, October 16, 2019). Many felt that the directives had not been well thought out. Some were contrary to human rights law, while other components were not covered by existing law nor supported by funding, and so there were calls for changes in the law to ensure implementation (Kardas-Nelson and Inveen, 2019). In the words of Yasmin JusuSheriff, human rights lawyer and advocate, “It has to be a legally incompetent person who would have the president say that from now on rape is lifetime in prison” (Interview, Yasmin Jusu-Sheriff, October 22, 2019). There were also constitutional concerns, given that the declaration and its accompanying directives had not been sanctioned by Parliament (Mitchell, 2020). A researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Louise Schneider, was quoted saying, “[It] was an attempt to create publicity at best . . . at worst, it was a window for potential abuse of power, which could have led to speedy legal changes in other areas and undermined citizens’ fundamental rights” (Mitchell, 2020).

The Political Climate: A Window for Change The “political opportunity structure” (POS) (Waylen, 2007) that enabled the president to make this declaration is also important to note. There had been an electoral turnover in 2018, which brought to power the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP). For the first time in Sierra Leone’s history, this election led to a situation where the ruling party did not have the majority seats in parliament (the SLPP had 49 seats to the All People’s Congress’s [APC] 68); however, the SLPP systematically took steps to prevent the APC from exercising any power and eventually, in May 2019, the Courts disqualified opposition seats in sufficient number to allow the SLPP to regain the majority (59 seats to the APC’s 57) (Enria and Hitchen, 2019; Tunkara, 2019). Although the passage of the State of Emergency (SOE) occurred when APC had the majority of seats, the procedure used was assent by acclamation rather than votes, which meant that opposition voices were silenced. As Chernor Bah put it, “the (president) forced parliament to accept it. It ended up being partisan bickering. The constitution calls for three-quarters. They moved the mike to drown out “no’s”, so it was imperfect, but it passed” (Interview, Chernor Bah, October 20, 2019).

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The president’s actions and the relative weakness of the opposition showed the importance of political will and the nature of the polity in policy adoption processes. Despite concerns about presidential overreach and a lack of clarity on what exactly should be done, the president’s declaration was critical in placing the issue of SGBV high on the national agenda. Human Rights Commissioner Simitie Lavaly asserted, “political will is very important and that’s what we saw with this declaration.” Many credited the declaration for setting the tone for a new conversation, encouraging more women who had suffered an assault to come forward, and placing a national spotlight on the issue (Kardas-Nelson and Inveen, 2019). For Chernor Bah, “I thought the declaration was a massive thing. It opens the door, it changes the conversation, it means you can no longer deny it. While some do believe that it was a political stunt, it is not insignificant to where we are today for him to stand and say as a country we are facing an emergency and it is an issue for women and girls . . . it created the impetus for action . . . it did change the national conversation. The president has said it was a national emergency so the president changed the debate” (Interview, Chernor Bah, October 20, 2019).

Technology and Change: The Role of WhatsApp The declaration was set to expire within several months, and so the president charged the Attorney General and Minister of Justice to develop a bill to translate the key goals of the SOE into law prior to its expiration. This was the initial goal of the amendment. On June 19, 2019, the State of Emergency was revoked, and the bill amending the Sexual Offences Act was scheduled to be tabled on June 20. However, the Minister responsible for presenting the amendment bill, the Attorney General, could not present the bill due to traveling. This proved opportune as a range of actors, including the Ministry, the government, and the women’s movement realized that the first version of the amendment bill in its present form did not adequately take into account concerns that had been expressed about the original Act, providing an opening for women to strategize and put forward their own amendments to the bill. In this section, I describe and analyze these processes, before concluding with the implications of this process for law reform. A central organizing mechanism for women was a WhatsApp group forum that had been set up in October 2018 by Rosa Ruth David, Senior Social Services Officer, Advancement of Women, an employee of the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs. While the forum’s purpose was originally to facilitate planning and information sharing for 16 days of activism in 2018 among partners working on women and children’s issues, the name of the group was later changed to reflect new public advocacy events like International Women’s Day. Renamed the National Women’s Group, the WhatsApp forum has become a central platform for women to discuss issues of concern, strategize, and mobilize for action. It brings together women and male allies from MDAs, CSOs, INGOs, NGOs, and CBOs and is now being run by the Women’s Forum, the umbrella organization for all women organizations (Interview, Rosa Ruth David, October 26, 2020). On June 19, 2019, one member of the group posted an initial message alerting members that the State of Emergency was to be revoked that day. This was followed by

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a message from Fatmata Sorie, the president of LAWYERS, one of the organizations that had been initially consulted about the first version of the bill. She provided key highlights of the bill for members in the group who had not been familiar with the amendment, with other members from LAWYERS chiming in with additional information (National Women’s Group WhatsApp chat, June 19, 2019). Such highlights included the creation of a new offense of aggravated sexual assault with a minimum sentence of 15 years on conviction, as well as an increase in the penalty for rape to a minimum of 15 years and a maximum of life imprisonment, with automatic life imprisonment for sexual penetration of a child. During the discussion two concerns were raised from other members, particularly that such stiff penalties would make it difficult for people to come forward, and compromise of cases could rise (National Women’s Group WhatsApp chat, June 19, 2019). Study respondents also outlined concerns that the amendment was seen as coming from the Attorney General, rather than the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs, which ordinarily had the mandate to develop a bill of this nature (Interview, Yasmin Jusu-Sheriff, October 22, 2019; Interview, Simitie Lavaly, October 16, 2019). The bill was also seen as hurriedly done, and lacked input from civil society activists, including women’s groups (Interview, Charles Vandy, August 10, 2020; Fatmata Sorie, November 2, 2019; Yasmin Jusu Sheriff, October 22, 2019). There had also been little consultation with the institutions that would be responsible for implementing aspects of the proposed amendments (Interview, Chernor Bah, October 20, 2019), such as the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) as well as the Family Support Unit (the police unit charged with investigations of rape and other SGBV crimes). According to Chernor Bah, “[the bill] was reactionary, not meant to address the issues, lacked analysis and . . . would have driven rape cases further underground rather than bring it into the open” (Interview, Chernor Bah, October 20, 2019). Overall, the bill was seen as an attempt to actualize Bio’s declaration of mandatory lifetime sentencing for rape for anyone having sex with someone under 18, rather than a genuine attempt to address rape comprehensively. Below follow a series of messages from the WhatsApp group illustrating women’s concerns and their desire to have input on the amendment bill, specifically on the initial concern about compromise: Education needs to follow. How do we get women and girls to report, especially at the risk of their father, uncle, brother being sent to prison for life? National Women’s Group WhatsApp chat, June 19, 2019 My fear is the issue of compromise going to be on the increase. National Women’s Group WhatsApp chat, June 19, 2019 How do we stop that? There should be stiff penalties for families who agree on compromise. This will deter them from doing that. How about us relaying our fears and concerns to our MPs so that the issue of compromise is addressed before the bill is passed into law? National Women’s Group WhatsApp chat, June 19, 2019

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The following day, the issue was raised again, as the bill had not yet been debated due to the Attorney General’s travels: Good morning to these noble SL women: At one of the Post Bintumani III Meetings, it was suggested that women should be out in solidarity whenever a bill/ act affecting us so directly is being debated or passed in Parliament. Is this too late to galvanize support? National Women’s Group WhatsApp chat, June 20, 2019

These conversations among women wanting to be included in the process coincided with two opportunities for this to happen. The Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs (MSWGCA) had noted that the bill was limited and wanted to organize opportunities for women to offer input on the bill. At the same time, the Head of the Legislative Committee in Parliament, sharing this concern, organized a meeting with a few women who were members of the WhatsApp forum. Sorie shared with the forum, “We have a meeting with the Parliamentary Legislative Committee tomorrow at noon in Parliament; it will be great if we show up and engage the MPs” (National Women’s Group WhatsApp chat, June 20, 2019). These meetings were productive, leading to requests for further meetings with women to discuss the bill. After the initial meeting, Sorie reported back to the forum, “Good evening Ladies! Today we had a fruitful meeting. Thanks to all those who made time to join in the lobbying effort. Our views on the bill were welcomed and it culminated in the Leader calling for the scheduled meeting on Monday at 2. It is an open forum and it will be great for us to turn out in our numbers.” The Director of the MSWGCA posted a similar message in the forum, sharing that the MSWGCA had been asked by the Leader of Government Business to arrange a meeting: “In view of this development the Deputy Minister has instructed that we meet before going for the Monday 2pm meeting next week. Is it possible to meet and put our thoughts together and speak with one voice during the engagement with Parliament on Monday morning preferably 10:00am?” (Director, National Women’s Group WhatsApp chat, June 20, 2019). In addition to calling for meetings, there were requests made on the group chat for all groups that had raised prior concerns with the original Act to share them in the forum, alongside new policy positions that had been drafted to respond specifically to the proposed revisions to the Act. These policy positions were harmonized and a comprehensive document was developed that incorporated the different concerns, ensuring that the women were speaking with one voice. These position papers were then shared with the legislative committee for their consideration and input into the bill. WhatsApp played a central role in enabling women to organize and to present a united front. Through this platform, women called for meetings to take place, and also shared and harmonized documents. Further in-person meetings allowed women to iron out any issues as well as to reflect new thoughts and perspectives. Requests for and information on meetings were quickly organized on the platform, which allowed information to be deployed speedily to all 192 members, and enabled people to indicate attendance or register interest. On the day that the Sexual Offences Amendment Act was debated in parliament and passed, Simitie Lavaly used the platform to provide

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play-by-play updates as the additional amendments were debated before being approved, and so women who were not present in Parliament were able to nevertheless keep abreast of developments.

Alliance-Building: Male Allies, State Bureaucracy, Political Party Leaders and the Women’s Caucus Broad Coalition Membership Another strength of the movement was its broad representation. This included female and male civil society activists representing a range of governmental and nongovernmental organizations, both national and international, as well as the State bureaucracy, and the media. Key persons included Fatmata Sorie, the president of LAWYERS, an organization that has been at the forefront of advocating for legal justice for abused women; legal luminary and former Commissioner of the Human Rights Commission Yasmin Jusu Sheriff; veteran former parliamentarian Honorable Bernadette Lahai, who served multiple terms in parliament and was well versed in parliamentary rules and procedures; current Human Rights Commissioner, Simitie Lavaly; and Charles Vandy, Director of the Ministry of Social Welfare Gender and Children’s Affairs (now Ministry of Gender and Children’s Affairs), among many others.

Support from the Ministry of Social Welfare Gender and Children’s Affairs As outlined above, the MSWGCA organized a series of meetings with stakeholders around the country, funded by donors like UN Women. During these meetings, preexisting concerns with both the 2012 Act and the first version of the amendment bill were shared, and women had new opportunities to voice additional concerns. In the words of Charles Vandy, Cabinet gave the instructions for the Office of the Attorney General and Minister of Justice to draft the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act and seek concurrence from the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs. This was done and the Ministry mindful of its coordinating role, organized consultative meetings in Freetown for key child protection, gender and women’s organizations to solicit their input into the draft legislation. Similar national consultation was organized in Bo, Southern Sierra Leone which brought together key actors including Female Members of Parliament, Human Rights Commission and LAWYERS. The outcome of the consultations was included in the document before Legislative Committee meetings in Parliament . . . These interventions provided the opportunity for the strengthening of the Bill. Interview, Charles Vandy, August 10, 2020

Support from Parliament and Informal Processes of Engagement The presence of lawyers within the women’s movement was useful for navigating the legal components of shaping the bill, while the presence of a former parliamentarian

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like Dr. Lahai was helpful in guiding the group on procedural matters within parliament. Group members were also able to leverage relationships with sympathetic male parliamentarians who were key players in the legislative process, showing the importance of not just formal processes, but informal processes and personal connections as well. On the importance of relationships, respondents said the following: We firstly went to the chairman of the legislative committee. Because he is a lawyer and good friend of the president of Lawyers [Fatmata Sorie]. He was very instrumental; and if this law was passed we must commend him. He listened to us at different times, we held meetings with him. Interview, Asmaa James, September 16, 2020 LAWYERS under Fatmata Sorie did an excellent job in engaging directly with parliament. They met with the parliamentary legislative committee the day after the bill was supposed to have been passed. They also met with the Leader of Government [Honorable Matthew Nyuma]. This meeting with the Leader of Government Business and head of the Parliamentary Legislative Committee [Honorable Gevao] resulted in the call for an open meeting with stakeholders to present their views on the Bill. Interview, Yasmin Jusu Sheriff, October 22, 2020

Honorable Hindolo Mayo Gevao, a Barrister Solicitor of the High Court and Chair of the Legislative Committee, as well as Honorable Mathew Sahr Nyuma, Leader of Government Business, House of Parliament helped to open up the process to women’s input on the amendment bill, including the legislative committee processes. Gevao in particular also lobbied fellow male parliamentarians on components of the bill to which men were resistant. Relationships were also built with female members of parliament, whose support was instrumental. Fatmata Sorie, upon learning that the Women’s Caucus was having a retreat, seized the opportunity to serve as a facilitator for one of the sessions, which provided her with the opportunity to interact in a less formal way with parliamentarians. She credited this meeting with helping her to build good relationships with parliamentarians across the aisle, as well as with the women parliamentarians in the female caucus. I built a fantastic relationship with the leader of Female Caucus. I met Rebecca Yei [a female parliamentarian who was a former strong civil society member], and Paramount Chief Minah [female member of parliament who was a chief], Param, Nyuma [male parliamentarians]. We had a very good evening, light-hearted trying to get to know each other before the next day. So, by the next day I was on friendly terms with them and first name basis. By the time I left Eden’s Park they would call me on legal issues. I became a trusted ally. I realized that there were lots of issues on a legal aspect and they as MPS needed help. So, because of this relationship whenever I approached them on the Bill [they were open]. Interview, Fatmata Sorie, November 2, 2019

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Similarly, Yasmin Jusu-Sheriff was able to leverage her relationship with the Speaker to make last-minute additions to the bill beyond the inputs women had made in the prelegislative process. She wrote these up the day before the final reading in parliament, pushing the law to go beyond the discussion of penalties for perpetrators and offer positive resources for survivors as well. Her inclusions covered provisions for free medical health, for the MSWGCA to maintain a database on sexual offenders, and for the Chief Justice to develop sentencing guidelines within three months of the bill’s passage. She called the Speaker to ask him if it was possible to share these additions, and he allowed her to make copies of the proposed amendments and distribute them to parliamentarians.

The Instrumental Role of Male Allies In addition to relationships facilitating access to the political process, relationships with women made rape an issue of concern for men such as Nyuma and Gevao, particularly given the growing prevalence of SGBV in Sierra Leone. They saw themselves as male allies and champions of issues that concerned women, as they had sisters and wives, and were willing to listen to women’s voices. Nyuma described his motivation and his role as follows: “I was interested in this as a Sierra Leonean, as something that I could do to change society. As someone with sisters I had to put myself in their shoes . . . Given where we came from the war we needed to bring in structures to address . . . [the] vulnerability of women in the post war [context]. I helped facilitate the education of all the players, bringing them under one roof, taking all shades of opinions and discussing them before going to the plenary. We had the pre-legislative briefing [women] put their positions forward to MPs. They engaged the female parliamentary caucus. They told us the different angles and we ended up taking views as a way forward to reflect the points of everyone which reflected the day to day position” (Interview, Honorable Nyuma, Chair Legislative Committee, August 19, 2020). Gevao, Chair of the Legislative Committee, recalled additonal details from the amendment process: “The office of the Attorney General had sent a draft bill to parliament which was laid before us but the bill was highly skeletal and not what the public was expecting to be in the bill . . . so when they [women’s groups] started petitioning and complaining I asked that we hold a pre-legislative session, and asked all members of the public to bring in their concerns in the form of papers.” (Interview, Honorable Gevao, September 17, 2020). Gevao was also instrumental in persuading fellow MPs to accept some measures of the law that were a source of concern for male parliamentarians in particular. This included the increase in penalties for rape, as well as criminalizing compromise/ settlement of rape by relatives and the sexual harassment of religious leaders, university lecturers, employers etc. I was able to convince my colleagues in the well of parliament because there were areas where we had to increase the penalties. It was quite an interesting issue because MPs, the bulk of which are men, felt this could not be a good law protecting

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men. I had to push very hard for them to realize that irrespective of the fact that we are men, our mothers, our friends are young ladies and we had to pass this law to strengthen the laws against rape and violence. Because of my advocacy skills as a lawyer, I was able to convince them so most of the laws, on settlement, life imprisonment, was because I was able to convince them . . . [in the ] fight in the malaise against Sierra Leone. Interview, Honorable Gevao, September 17, 2020

Formal Processes of Engagement Relationships and informal channels of access were supported by formal engagement with parliamentarians as well. The relationships built with parliamentarians helped to facilitate access to parliament to offer input into the process of bill revision and to lobby parliamentarians to support the Bill and the amendments. Through the WhatsApp group women were encouraged to actively lobby MPs, both those who could potentially oppose the law and those likely to be supportive, to encourage them to champion the law during its final reading in Parliament. Lobbying was particularly intensive around ensuring that parliamentarians championed the additional amendments that Yasmin Jusu-Sheriff had shared the night before the reading of the bill in parliament. Women were asked to call parliamentarians they knew to ask them to propose these additional amendments, as only parliamentarians could make additions to the bill on the floor. As Fatmata Sorie said, We reached out to every member of parliament that we knew and tried to pass out our ideas and the provisions that we wanted to be considered. We started with the speaker and then the deputy leader and then to some of the PCs and spoke with some of the MPs that morning so they know that these are some of the provisions that needed to be considered in addition to what the chair of the legislative committee was going to present. So it was speaking to them before they sat [in parliament]. Interview, Fatmata Sorie, November 2, 2019

By this time, her previous engagement with parliamentarians had paid off: By this time we were on friendly terms . . . now most of them knew me on a first name basis and were now referring cases to me on sexual penetration. So by this time we had become trusted friends and allies, and knew that this was not personal to them so they opened their hearts and minds to us. Interview, Fatmata Sorie, November 2, 2019

Selective Messaging on the Bill Women also shared the importance of gauging your audience and choosing an expedient route. While several members of the movement wanted a complete overhaul of the bill, they were told that any changes had to be made within the confines of the

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bill’s title, and so the ask was very circumscribed (Interviews, Fatmata Sorie, Chernor Bah, Yasmin Jusu Sheriff ). Similarly, parts of the bill that might prove too contentious were removed, while women used soft skills and persuasion to promote other parts. Fatmata Sorie described the approach as follows: I learned that you can have hard advocacy and get success and then you can switch and have soft advocacy. The softer approach we used yielded more results than a pushy approach. So the whole time you will note that we didn’t go on TV or radio to say that you didn’t engage us. We only said, “we wish that” . . .: “why don’t you consider this?” . . . Nobody was attacked and nobody came under pressure. Interview, Fatmata Sorie, November 2, 2019

This “soft” approach was used to persuade MPs to accept parts of the bill that concerned them. Additionally, certain sections were removed that women felt might encounter too much push back. Criminalization of compromise was especially problematic, particularly for paramount chief MPs. As Sorie put it: During the debate the only issue that came up were one, the PCs were concerned about criminalizing compromise; they felt it was taking power away from them because some of these cases are reported to them and they find a way to handle these issues. So we said no, we are not taking this power from you. It’s just that we want to make sure that these are reported. This is now saying if it is reported to you, you have to report it. And if you go through settlement or convince someone to not report you are now liable. It will now serve as a deterrent to compromise. Interview, Fatmata Sorie, November 2, 2019

Jusu-Sheriff said she removed all mention of Female Genital Cutting (FGC), which some women had initially wanted to incorporate as an example of an act grooming children for marriage or underage sex, to minimize the possibility of the bill’s rejection. It was hoped that this could be considered under a revision of the Child Rights Act (CRA) at a later date. Concern was also expressed about life imprisonment as the maximum punishment, with paramount chiefs raising concerns about false allegations. In debating these issues, alliances with female parliamentary caucus members were especially helpful. In particular, Rebecca Yei Kamara, a female caucus member and strong civil society activist, was singled out by a number of respondents for pushing women’s viewpoints across in parliament: “You need strong allies within government for any of these bills. You have to be tenacious. Rebecca Yei Kamara [played this role]” (Interview, Simitie Lavaly, October 16, 2019).

The International Factor Another component aiding the women’s movement was the role of the international community. For Bah, international coverage of the issue helped to bring it back to the national agenda after several months of no movement:

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There was an article6 that we helped to get out to NPR [National Public Radio], an influential platform. The article quoted a number of us and many of the women who had been working on it and it came out at the right time, leading up to one or two weeks before the UNGA [United Nations General Assembly]. And I knew that everyone was sharing this article . . . [the President] immediately called the Speaker and said where is this Bill, so that he could be armed to say that we have done something [at UNGA] and the low hanging fruit was the bill. Interview, Chernor Bah, October 2019

Similarly, Yasmin Jusu Sheriff explained that on the day of the bill’s debate, the APC party was a bit obstructive about the bill, “because they knew that this was being done to be passed on that day so the president could go with a law that had been passed to the UN. The Speaker and the deputy leader were pushing it through” (Interview, Yasmin Jusu Sheriff, October 2019).

Limitations of the Women’s Movement Although the amendment process was seen as a successful example of the mobilization of the women’s movement, respondents pointed to limitations of the movement as well, citing concerns about a lack of leadership and fragmentation. One of the things to have at the back of our mind is that institutions should have aims and objectives. The initial formation of these organizations, they have many objectives. But as they go on, secondary factors influence these primary factors. Some people allow politics to dilute the spirit of the organization. Politics is one thing that disturbs these groups and one we should avoid. Interview, Honorable Nyuma, August 19, 2020

On leadership and coordination, several respondents felt that the Women’s Forum needed to take a stronger role in leading the women’s movement, identifying issues of concern, and coordinating action around these issues. The Director of the MGCA had this to say: I think the Umbrella Organization (Women’s Forum) needs to undergo reform. It requires institutional and human capacity that provides leadership and coordination of its constituent membership. It needs a Secretariat with full time staff and a strategic plan to be reviewed every three years. Interview, Charles Vandy, August 10, 2020

Fatmata Sorie also believed that the women’s movement needed reform, noting the need for younger members as well as through documentation of successes for the next generation: [the movement] has been active for quite a while and they have achieved things but we need to revolutionize our approach. What worked before might not work

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now. We need a situation where we encourage more of the younger generation to get actively involved. there has to be a training ground for transitioning. Most of what happened before is not in our history books. Other than they will say we fought for x, y, z. there is nothing to show how they galvanized support. What we should be doing. Because we don’t have this you are left to your own caprice. Interview, Fatmata Sorie, November 2, 2019

Conclusion: SGBV and Women’s Movements in Sierra Leone—Implications for Future Mobilization What does women’s successful advocacy on the revision of the Sexual Offences Act tell us about the women’s movement in Sierra Leone and the implications for the movement’s future? As Nazneen, Hickey, and Sifaki (2019) have written, understanding women’s ability to influence policy benefits from an approach that takes into account formal and informal processes and the nature of the political settlement, as well as ideas and discourses at national and international levels. Similar to the studies in their book, women in Sierra Leone built coalitions and alliances across the three spheres of the formal political arena, civil society, and the state bureaucracy that make up Goetz and Hassim’s political effectiveness framework (Goetz and Hassim, 2003). Moreover, as a donor-dependent state, Sierra Leone was also vulnerable to the approval of the international community. This case study provides evidence that understanding change requires examining a confluence of factors. It underscores the need to go beyond a study of formal processes, as scholars such as Goetz and Hassim (2003) have found, and highlights the importance of taking into account informal networks, alliances, and processes as well. In line with Nazneen, Hickey and Sifaki’s (2019) power domains approach, both national and international factors influenced the political backdrop in Sierra Leonne. In 2018, the SLPP took over from the APC, ushering in a political turnover. While the new president had made commitments to improve gender parity in his Manifesto, the few appointments of women in his cabinet left him open to criticism. His declaration of rape as a national emergency not only tried to address this criticism, but also provided a favorable political opportunity structure (Waylen 2007, p. 541) for women who mobilized strategically, leveraging both formal and informal relationships and approaches to influence the law through meetings, phone calls, and existing friendships. Women were able to build alliances with senior party officials over the bill approval process as well as male allies and women representatives within the political parties and the state bureaucracy. Regarding the latter, the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs in particular played an instrumental role, helping to collate perspectives from women country-wide and providing a platform to organize women’s voices. Within the political party structure, support for change was seen at the top echelons of not just the party, but the State, with the president driving the impetus for reform and key members of his political party offering support in the language of having sisters and mothers as well as concern for their country. They were further helped by the dominance of the president’s party, which despite its minority status in Parliament

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was able to mobilize the machinery of the state in support of the Bill. Not only did parliamentarians have personal incentives to pass the bill, citing their concerns about the high rates of SGBV in Sierra Leone, the publicity and international attention around the case with the five-year-old girl meant that they needed to be seen as addressing this issue. At the international level, the state felt pressure to perform for the international community, particularly as it was expected to provide a statement at the United Nations General Assembly around the same time. Moreover, Htun and Weldon’s (2018) framework provides further insight into why the revised Sexual Offences Act succeeded while the Abortion Bill has not; as a gender status policy, it was less likely to encounter opposition than a doctrinal status policy. Now that the law with the amendments has been passed, how do we ensure that it is implemented? How should women leverage these windows of opportunity into sustained change that actually leads to tangible improvements in women’s lives, given that one of the central critiques of laws in Sierra Leone is the failure to implement them?7 Graybill (this volume) has noted the enduring quality of cultural norms, traditions, and practices, pointing out that simply having a law is no guarantee for women’s security. While she notes that “If anything, the Ebola epidemic revealed how fragile and ephemeral were the gains made toward the promotion of women’s rights and equality since the conclusion of the civil war,” her point about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) report is instructive. The report has at least provided a framework that women can use for legal reform with which they can continue to push to deepen these reforms. Here too, there has been some progress. Women have continued low-level advocacy, and new cases (such as the death of the second five-year-old in June 2020) have provided fresh opportunities to bring attention to the issue, even as they highlight the need for further work. For example, activists and lawyers have pointed out that notwithstanding women’s engagement in the revision of the Sexual Offences Amendment Act, the circumscribed nature of the terms for the original revision has meant that further review is necessary. For example, by reducing the age of criminal responsibility, juvenile boys, including those in consensual relationships have been increasingly affected (Interview, Gloria Bayoh, Human Rights Commission, April 16, 2021). Child sex offenders also face harsher penalties in the new law, raising concerns about children’s rights, among other issues (Interview, Fatmata Sorie, April 18, 2021). Further, Graybill (this volume) has argued that a mindset change is needed to ensure women’s security from sexual violence as cultural norms, practices, and beliefs do not disappear overnight. There have been attempts to engage with the cultural context, focusing on families and communities as sites for change as well as working directly with men. For example, Fambul Initiative Network for Equality Sierra Leone (FINE-SL) has established three “Husband Schools” with classes for men once a month about domestic violence, gender equality, and sexual and reproductive health, among other things (Egbejule, 2017; Al Jazeera, 2019). Rainbo Initiative has also expanded their programming to involve men and boys, holding monthly meetings with men and boys on addressing gender-based violence in their communities since 2017 (Lawal, 2019). The first lady’s campaign against early marriage similarly attempts to target mindsets, while a new organization, Femme Collective, has also started programming

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geared toward engaging men through public events about cultural and social norms and values that allow violence against women (Kardas-Nelson, 2019). In November 2019, just a month after the Sexual Offences Amendment Act was passed, the state government created a new ministry, the Ministry of Gender and Children Affairs, separating it from the Ministry of Social Welfare. The new ministry is headed by Madam Manty Tarawally, formerly a strong civil society activist in the sexual and reproductive health arena. Many believe that her appointment provides the ministry with forward-looking leadership, particularly on issues of sexual and reproductive health. Since then, implementation for the Act has improved. On July 9, 2020, one-stop centers were set up around the country to provide a central location for services related to rape and sexual abuse, from reporting to treatment; a free hotline (116) has also been established to report rape and sexual violence. The Ministry’s “Male involvement strategy” aims to change the mindset of men and boys and to leverage their partnership in addressing SGBV as the main perpetrators of SGBV, while also putting a spotlight on the abuse of men and boys themselves. According to the strategy document, the “socially transformative approach” seeks to “transform the power relations and social norms and systems that sustain gender inequality and violence [and] offers an opportunity for men and boys to confront and transform their male privilege, power and status that perpetuates SGBV into a positive resource for eradicating SGBV” (Ministry of Gender and Children’s Affairs, 2020, p. 9). In addition, a law preventing pregnant girls from attending school was overturned in March 2020, and the Gender and Women’s Empowerment policy has been finalized and launched in December 2020 by the president. At time of writing (July 2021) plans are underway to translate the policy into a bill. While the Ministry’s engagement with men is valuable, it should also engage with patriarchal structures through which the mindsets enabling SGBV gain ground. Despite the fact that the so-called informal or customary structures are really where women engage, it is the formal structures and arenas that are often targeted as sites for contestation and change in the fight for women’s empowerment. Yet, outside of the army, it is non-state actors that primarily remain the most trusted. According to 2020 Afrobarometer data, Sierra Leoneans trust religious leaders the most (81 percent of respondents say they trust religious leaders a lot/somewhat), followed by the army (72 percent) and traditional leaders (63 percent). Conversely, courts of law, parliamentarians, and the police are among the least trusted institutions in society (38 percent, 33 percent and 26 percent respectively) (Afrobarometer, 2020). By criminalizing compromise, the revised Act aims to move SGBV cases more firmly into the formal arena. However, as organizations such as the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) (2020) suggest, given the salience of customary institutions in citizens’ lives, engaging these structures rather than sidelining them could improve women’s access to justice (M’Cormack-Hale, 2018). For example, according to the Executive Director of the Youth and Child Advocacy Network (YACAN), Soweis (women who perform female genital cutting) were unhappy that they were not included in the consultations on the revision of the Act (Interview, Hassan Fouad, October 18, 2018). His organization arranged a workshop to

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familiarize them with the content of the revisions, with Fatmata Sorie as the key speaker. According to Sorie, the women felt side-lined in this process: They said, “nobody comes to talk to us . . . we are just isolated.” . . . They felt that they were not part of the conversation and it is quite true we didn’t have time to make them part of the conversation. Had it been a situation where we had done this from when the president had talked about this, it would have been better. Interview, Fatmata Sorie, November 2, 2019

While the Soweis agreed to send cases to the police, they also pointed out their fears of retaliation, telling Sorie, “with compromise now that we know the law we will send them to the police but now see how we can be protected . . . if I see someone be raped and I come and talk, nobody would protect me.” For Sorie, this concern raised by the Soweis points to a more general need for policies protecting people who come forward. Yet, this conversation also underscores the need to work with customary actors, particularly in light of the barriers to justice that women encounter in the formal sector, including under-resourced police and judiciary, although the creation of dedicated courts for women is a promising intervention under the new law. In addition to the Sexual Offences Amendement Act that takes a tougher stance on SGBV, Sierra Leoneans are taking the movement in their own hands. A Survivor Solidarity Fund spearheaded by Sierra Leonean gender activists is mobilizing fundraising and leveraging support both domestically and internationally, bringing together survivor-leaders and CSO activists at home and abroad. Sierra Leonean celebrities like former CNN journalist Isha Sesay, and actor Idris Elba are championing the fund, alongside Sierra Leone-based media personalities like Asmaa James, the prominent media voice who founded the Sierra Leone Black Tuesday movement (Rahman, 2020). Rather than waiting on international funding, the Fund has mobilized domestic giving, raising over $109,020 in just over a month (Mercury International PR Department, 2020). Funds are distributed to organizations at the forefront of the fight to ensure justice as well as services for women and girls and the immediate needs of survivors such as accessing medical care, counselling, and other support. The first disbursement of funds was in August 2020 for the Rainbo Centre, Smart Women Initiative, the Aberdeen Women’s Centre, and LAWYERS, all organizations that provide a range of services for survivors of SGBV (Mercury International PR Department, 2020). Activists are hopeful that the successful passage of the Sexual Offences Amendment Act and women’s collaboration in the process is sign of a positive shift in the women’s movement and in the fight against sexual gender based violence in Sierra Leone. Only time will tell if these hopes will be realized.

Notes 1 There is an extensive body of literature that discusses critical mass theory, as well as critiques of it. See for example, Bratton (2005), Dahlerup (2006), and Childs and Krook

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(2009). Childs and Krook (2009) for example have argued that rather than focusing on critical mass, it is more important to think about the actions of “critical actors” who can be both male and female, working together to advance women’s interests. Using this lens, one could argue that the president was one such critical actor. A key barrier that often fails to get sufficient attention is the persistence of an electoral system unfriendly to women; focus must also be on candidate recruitment and selection starting from the primaries and the ways in which the parties themselves through these mechanisms have hindered women’s participation. Compromise refers to the practice of victims being encouraged to drop cases through unofficial payments or wealthy perpetrators buying off police or other officials. The Rainbo Initiative is a national NGO, originally established by IRC in 2003. They are currently one of the only organizations offering free medical and psycho-social treatment for survivors of gender-based violence through their centers in just five areas throughout the country: Freetown, Bo, Kono, Kenema, and Makeni (Rainbo Intiative, no date). In 2019, James was named one of BBC’s one hundred/100 influential women, in large part due to the role she played in publicizing and assisting the young girl in getting medical attention in India. The article in question was, Kardas-Nelson, M. 2019. A Nation’s Tense Debate Over How to Fight Rape. Goats and Soda, National Public Radio, accessed from: https:// www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/09/12/753703876/rape-emergencydeclared-in-sierra-leone-then-lifted-did-anything-change See for example, Graybill; Abdullah; Dumbuya, this volume.

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Chapter 4 Abdullah, H.J. (2014). Independent Candidacy: An Alternative Political Pathway for Women in Sierra Leone, in Tadros, M. (ed.), Women in Politics: Gender, Power and Development, London: Zed Books. Abdullah, H.J. (2012) Sierra Leone’s Women are a Political Force that can no longer be ignored. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/povertymatters/2012/sep/26/sierra-leone-women-political-force

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Chapter 5 Abdullah, H.J., Ibrahim, A.F., and King, J. (2010) “Women’s Voices, Work and Bodily Integrity in Pre-Conflict, Conflict and Post-Conflict Reconstruction Processes in Sierra Leone”, IDS Bulletin 41 (2) pp. 37-45. Abdullah, H.J. and Fofana Ibrahim, A. (2010) “The Meaning and Practice of Women’s Empowerment in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone”, Development 53 (2). Akanji, O.O. 2013 “Reconstruction, Peacebuilding and Elections in Post-war Sierra Leone; A Critical Note”, Africa Insight, 24 (4), pp. 16-29. Ake, C. (1993) “The Unique Case of African Democracy”, International Affairs 69 (2). Amadiume, Ifi (1997) Reinventing Africa: Matriarchy, Religion and Culture. London: Zed Books. Author’s telephone interview with P.C. Matilda Minah, August 22, 2019. Author’s telephone interview with Florence Margai (P.C. Minah’s daughter), August 23, 2010. Author’s telephone interview with P.C. Mamie Gamanga, August 23, 2010. Author’s interview with P.C. Matilda Minah, Freetown, July 6, 2007.

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Chapter 6 Abdullah, H.J., and Fofana Ibrahim, A. (2010) “The Meaning and Practice of Women’s Empowerment in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone”, Development 53(2), pp. 259-266.

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Chapter 12 Anyidoho, N., Crawford, G. & Medie, P.A. (2020) The Role of Women’s Movements in the Implementation of Gender-Based Violence Laws. Politics & Gender, 1–27. https://www. cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743923X19000849

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Index Page numbers: Figures are given in italics and tables in bold. Notes are given as [page no.] n. [note no.] 50/50 Group 21–2, 59, 90, 179, 182–3 Abdullah, H.J. 4, 14–15, 81 Abdullah, I. 28 abortion criminalization of 197–8 religious politics 193–209 right to 195–6 Abortion Bill 29, 193–209, 215 Abraham, Arthur 81 Abramowitz, A. 19, 28 absenteeism rule, parliamentarians 70–1 Achebe, Chinua, Anthills of the Savannah 36 action research 116–18 activism Abortion Bill 193–209 Bangura’s 49–62 challenges to 23–31 community-based 25 indigenous roots 6 international consultancy 59–61 political 87–91 for women’s rights 87, 175–91 Adoption Act No. 9, 1989 67 advocacy initiatives 50/50 Group 179 Ebola crisis 181, 184–5, 187–90 Safe Abortion Bill 193, 195 AFRC see Armed Forces Revolutionary Council African countries democratic models in 81 post-conflict benefits 3 process-tracing studies 212 UNHCR reintegration policy 164–5 see also individual African countries

African-centered gender analysis 5, 23–4, 26, 94–5 cultural framework 83 patriarchal culture 30 women’s movement 19 Afsatu, Haja 89 agency political 161–74 refugees/IDPs 163–4 UNHCR approach 165 agency-building 41–4 AHTA (Anti-Human Trafficking Act) 105–6 Ajayi-Soyinka, O. 16 Ake, Claude 81 Akibo-Betts, Alfred 74 All-People’s Congress (APC) 9, 65, 70–2, 76, 221, 230 All Political Party Women’s Association (APPWA) 5 Alvarez, Sonia 168 Amadiume, Ifi 83 Ampofo, Adomako 13 antenatal services 141, 158n.11 Anti-Human Trafficking Act (AHTA) 105–6 Anyidoho, N. 194 APC see All-People’s Congress appropriation, definition 101 APPWA (All Political Party Women’s Association) 5 Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) 55, 102, 146–7 “arranged marriages” 60 ashoebi dress 53 Bah, Chernor 220–3, 229–30 Bah, Minkailu 154 Bailor-Caulker, Honoria 85–7

271

272 Bandaranaike, Sirimavo 101 Bangura, Zainab 24–5, 49–62 Bardall, G. 69 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) 121, 127n.8 Basic Package for Essential Health Services for Sierra Leone (BPEHS) 137–8 bastardy concept 66–7, 69, 75–6 Batliwala, S. 13–14, 34 BECE see Basic Education Certificate Examination Beijing Platform for Action 11, 20, 178 Benka-Coker, Hannah 22 Benya, Mamawa 85–6 Beoku-Betts, J.A. 22–3, 33, 40, 194, 216 Berer, M. 198 Bintumani I conference 52, 102, 178 Bintumani II conference 52–3, 102, 178 Bio, Fatima Maada 109, 114 Bio, Julius Maada 109, 113–14, 154–5, 220, 223 birth attendants 129–43 births, mortality rates 164 Black Tuesday movement 220 Blair, Tony 56 bodily autonomy rights 195 Boie-Kamara, Fatmata 177 Boko Haram abductions 185 Bom Posseh chiefs 92, 96n.12 Bom Rufah chiefs 92 Bom Warra chiefs 92 Bonapha, Alex 77 Bondo society 57, 61, 156 Bosire, T.O. 57 boys’ education challenges to 120–1 enrollment rates 151, 155 leaving school 122 scholarship program 123 school attendance 119–20 BPEHS (Basic Package for Essential Health Services for Sierra Leone) 137–8 Braima, Christopher 154 brain plasticity studies 36, 42 British court system 103 British political system 59 British settlement of Sierra Leone 8–9

Index British Westminster system 17 Bundoo, Alimamy Lahai 92 burial practices 152–3, 170 Burney-Nicol, Miranda Olayinka 49 “bush wives” 60, 103, 147 Campaign for Good Governance (CGG) 54–6 Carr, Summerson E. 35 Cartwright, John 68, 70 Casely-Hayford, Adelaide Smith 49 Casely-Hayford, Gladys 49 Catholic Church 202 Caulker, Honoria 85–7 CEDAW see Convention on All Forms of Discrimination Against Women CEPs see Community Empowerment Projects ceremonial duties, chiefs 92–3 CGG (Campaign for Good Governance) 54–6 chiefdoms Ebola response 180 education projects 116–17 election to 73, 76, 82 founding of 6 lineage systems 8 chiefs community decision-making 166 in contemporary world 79–96 contextualizing 81–5 gender equality 26 political activism 87–91 Chieftaincy Act, 2009 76, 82, 179 child, definition of 149 child abuse 197 child marriage 109, 149 child protection models 127n.3 Child Rights Act (CRA) 106–7, 109, 149, 218, 229 child sex offenders 232 childbirth birth attendants’ role 129–43 mortality rates 164 Children in Crisis (CiC) organization 116 children, paternity acceptance 67 CHPs (Community Health Posts) 131 Christian Marriage Act, 1965 67, 108–9 Christianity 8, 101, 199, 202–3

Index CHWs see community health workers CiC (Children in Crisis) organization 116 civil marriage 8–9 Civil Marriage Act, 1965 67, 108–9 civil society 56, 60 civil society organizations (CSOs) 187, 216 civil wars Liberia 3, 7, 100–1 Sri Lanka 101 see also Sierra Leone’s Civil War coalitions, women’s movement 225 Cohn, C. 102 colonialism bastardy concept 66 “chief ” terminology 81–2 Krio descendants 8 patriarchal nature of 16 women’s status 103, 218 common law 103 commonwealth countries 105 community-based activism 25 Community Empowerment Projects (CEPs) 162–3, 166–8, 170–1 Community Health Posts (CHPs) 131 community health workers (CHWs) 136, 140–1 community organization techniques 51–2 compromise concerns about 223 criminalization of 229 definition 235n.3 Connell, R. 16 consciousness-raising 36 Constitution 1951 9 1978 10 1991 100, 103–4, 150 Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) 25–6, 100, 109–11 constitutional review process 25, 193–209 Conteh, Alexander Bai 92 Conteh, Memunatu 59 contraception 121, 197, 201 Convention on All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) 20, 105, 109–10, 137, 204 Cook, Robin 56 Cornwall, R. 13–14, 43 corruption 124

273

Court Barries 166–7 court system access to 100 British 103 Ebola impact 155–6 COVID-19 pandemic, SGBV rates 30 Cowan, Edmond K. 110 CRA see Child Rights Act Crane, David 146 CRC see Constitutional Review Committee criminal justice system 156 criminal responsibility, age of 232 criminal sanctions, legal reforms 108 critical mass theory 211, 234n.1 Cromwell, Adelaide Hill 49 crowdfunding 182 CSOs see civil society organizations cultural framework feminism 83 gender justice 84 Cummings-John, Constance 9, 22, 49, 73–4, 78n.10 customary actors narrative processes 29 neoliberalism 23–4 customary authority 79, 81–3, 85, 90–1 customary institutions 31 customary law intestate succession 107–8 land rights 14 marriage 14, 108–9, 149 patriarchal foundation 16, 104 pluralistic system 103 reform of 99–100 TRC codification 148 customary marriage 8–9, 14, 108–9, 149 Dakar meeting 176–7 David, Rosa Ruth 222 Day, L. 14–15, 23–4, 26, 28–9, 194, 216–17 DEA see Devolution of Estates Act Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) 78n.7, 185 democratic state 79–80, 81, 94 democratization process 178 Denney, L. 19, 21, 28, 125–6 Denov, M. 126 Denzer, L. 24–5, 28

274 development process 114, 163 development projects 93–4 Devolution of Estates Act (DEA) 105, 107–8, 149–50, 194, 218 Diaspora, Sierra Leone 184–6 division of labor, gendered 153 doctrinal status policies 215 Doidge, Norman 36, 39 domestic violence 12, 167 definition 149 legal reforms 109 TRC recommendations 148 Domestic Violence Act (DVA) 105–7, 149, 194, 218 Dove-Danquah, Mabel 22 DRC see Democratic Republic of Congo dream narratives 38 Du Toit, Bowers 193 Dumbuya, Peter A. 15, 25 DVA see Domestic Violence Act Ebola epidemic 18–19, 23, 152–6, 180–2, 185–90 activism and 27, 175–6, 179–80 advocacy strategy 181, 184–5, 187–90 antenatal services 158n.11 economic effects 11 educational impact 28, 125 healthcare policy 138, 141 maternal mortality impact 152–3 political agency and 169–71 poverty links 7 SGBV rates 30 UN debate 184–90 ECOMOG intervention force 55 economic conditions, Sierra Leone 7 economic empowerment initiatives 93–4 education boys’ 119–23, 151, 155 chiefs’ initiatives 93 conventional wisdom on 115–16 Ebola impact 154–5 gender disparities 9, 11 girls’ 113–28, 151, 154–5, 233 rural areas 113–28 transformative power of 28–9, 50 education reform initiatives 113–14 Elba, Idris 234 electoral campaigns, 2002 56–9

Index electoral systems 67–8, 169 chiefdoms 73, 76, 82 democratization 178 patriarchal culture 30 political influences 58 women’s constraints in 5, 12, 80, 217, 235n.2 electoral violence 63, 67–9, 70–7 components of 68–9 definition 68 formal/informal structures 70 empathy 33–45 empowerment conceptualization of 216 definitions 13–14, 35 economic initiatives 93–4 external motivation 41 girls’ education 126–7 market women 100–1, 104 neurology of 36–7 in novels 33–45 process component 34–5, 37 in redemption 37–40 through defamiliarization 33 see also “women’s empowerment” ensoulment beliefs 202–3 ethnic groups social organization 8 types 7 Eurocentric models 5–6 EVD (Ebola Virus Disease) see Ebola epidemic Fall, I. 63 family planning programs 125, 135 family reciprocity 119–20, 122 Family Support Units (FSUs) 107, 149–50, 155, 223 female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) 57, 61, 149, 156, 229 feminism 30, 79–96 cultural framework 83 hegemonic role 13–15 political empowerment 126–7 women’s associations 99 “Femocracies” 20 Ferme, Mariane 83 FGM/C see female genital mutilation/ cutting

Index FHCI see Free Health Care Initiative First Ladies organizations 20–1, 232–3 Fofana Ibrahim, A. 19, 21, 24, 28–9, 217 Fofana, Lansana 56 Fofana, Umaru 126 food crisis 186 forced marriage 60, 146–7 forcible recruitment 102 Foucauldian view, state power 84 Foyah, Patrick 77 Fraser, Nancy 194 Free Health Care Initiative (FHCI) 11–12, 130, 135–6, 139–41 Free and Quality Educational Program 11 Freetown settlement colonial history 103 educational system 9 ethnic groups 7 founding of 6 war communications 177 FSUs see Family Support Units Fulani peoples 45n.1 fundraising, Ebola epidemic 182–4 Gamanga, Mamie 85, 87, 89–90, 94 GBV see gender-based violence GE Bill see Gender Equality Bill Gendemeh, Sallay 85–7, 90, 94 Gender Acts/Bills, 2007 9, 22, 64–5, 80, 105–9, 149–52, 217–18 gender-based violence (GBV) civil war period 146–7 post-war 80, 145–58 in schools 115–16 types 158n.8 women’s centers and 162, 167–9 see also sexual and gender-based violence gender complementarity 92 gender equality in legal reforms 99–100, 110–11 macro-/micro-level 104–5 in politics 3–31 Gender Equality (GE) Bill 25–6, 65, 77–8 gender inequality index 134 gender justice 81, 84, 85 Gender Justice Laws 11–12 gender relations post-war 99

275

power structures 16–17 wartime 3 “gender-security nexus” 104 gender-sensitive transformation 40, 175 gender status policies 215 gender-transformative approach 5–6 Gender and Women’s Empowerment policy 233 gendered division of labor 153 Gessama, Haja Mariama 86 Gevao, Hindolo Mayo 226–7 “ghost teachers” 113 girls’ education 151, 154–5 barriers to 113–28 conventional wisdom on 115–16 Ebola impact 154–5 legal reforms 233 rural areas 113–28 Goetz, A.M. 231 Gondor, Lucy 170 GoSL see Government of Sierra Leone Gouws, Amanda 194 government scholarship program 123–4 Government of Sierra Leone (GoSL) 64–5, 76–7 Graybill, Lyn 15, 28, 142, 212, 232 Grillo, Laura 84 group therapies 45 Gulama, Ella Koblo 9, 49, 85–6, 93 Hajabomposseh, Chief 90 “harmful practices”, definition 106 Harrell-Bond, B. 66 Hassim, S. 231 health care access disparity 11–12 maternal outcomes 130–43 neglect of 166–7, 170 neoliberal interventions 26 policy/protocol/recommendations 135–41 post-war progress 151–2 UNHCR gender policy 161–74 health rights 196–8, 204 health workers, Ebola impact 153, 180–1 hegemonic discourses 13–15, 26 Hendricks, Cheryl 168 Hessini, Leila 202 Hoglund, K. 68

276

Index

Hollist, Arthur Onipede 29 “house-help” domestic relationship 106 Htun, M. 215, 217, 232 Hudson, H. 24 human rights abortion safety 198 civil war abuses and 163 girls’ education 114 law reform 100 maternal health 136–7 violence in terms of 215 Hunter, Yema Lucilda 49 Redemption Song 37–41 hybridity concept 24 “I shoot U” demonstrations 71 Ibrahim, A.F. 81 identity politics 215 IDPs see internally displaced persons Imam, A.M. 5 “inclusion to influence” approach 214 individualism 14 INEC (Interim National Electoral Commission) 178 informality alliance-building 225–7 policy change 214–15 INGO (International NGO) community 184 inheritance laws 104–5, 107–8, 149–50 Inter-Religious Council (IRC) 202–3 Interim National Electoral Commission (INEC) 178 internally displaced persons (IDPs) 161–2, 163–4, 166–7 international advocacy, Ebola epidemic 184–5 International NGO (INGO) community 184 International Rescue Committee (IRC) 167–9 intestate succession 107–8 IRC see Inter-Religious Council; International Rescue Committee Islam 8, 199, 202–3 James, Asmaa 220, 234, 235n.5 Jarstad, A. 68 Johnson, Isaac Wallace 9 Jones, Amanda 118

Juana, Lansana 85 Juana, Sao Seiya 85, 90–1 justice system, Ebola impact 155–6 Jusu-Sheriff, Yasmin 221, 225, 227–30 Kabbah, Ahmed Tejan 11, 53–5, 59, 72, 102, 149 Kabeer, N. 14 Kabia, Isata 199 Kaikai, Navo 77 Kailahun district CEPs in 163 health care problems 170 IDPs returning to 166 refugees from 164 Kamara, Yabomwarra 92–3 Kambia District, education in 116, 117, 119–24, 127n.11 Kanu, Sama 50 Karefa-Smart, John 71 Keiffer, C. 34–5 Keith-Lucas Commission 63 Kenema District chiefs 86 kinship systems 8 Koblo-Gulama, Ella 73 Kono politics 70 Koroma, Ernest Bai 50, 57, 61, 65, 110, 125, 199 Koroma, Haja Fatmata 89 Koroma, Johnny P. 102 Koya chiefs 92 Krim chiefdoms 82, 93 Krio culture 8 labor, division of 153 Lahai, Bernadette 219, 225–6 land rights 8, 14, 107, 150 Latin America 168 Lavalie, Elizabeth 59, 62n.1, 89, 176–7 Lavaly, Simitie 221–5 LAWYERS see Legal Access through Women Yearning for Equality Rights and Social Justice Le Roux, E. 193 Lebanese Camp for IDPs 164 Lebanese peoples 45n.1 Legal Access through Women Yearning for Equality Rights and Social Justice (LAWYERS) 188, 223, 225

Index legal reforms GBV laws 145 for gender equality 14, 15 patriarchal culture and 4, 15–16, 25 post-war 99–111 SGBV laws 211–35 Lewis, Desiree 84 Liberia civil war 3, 7, 100–1 Ebola epidemic 186–8 “gender-security nexus” 104 lineage systems 8 literacy levels 118, 151 lobbying, women’s movement 228 local discussion groups 175–91 Lomé Peace Agreement, 1999 102, 109 Lucan, Talabi Aisie 49 Mac-Johnson, R. 57 McGough, Fredanna M. 26 Maclure, R. 126 Maddy, Nadia, The Palm Oil Stain 37, 41–4 male allies, women’s movement 225–8 male hegemony 16–19 “male involvement strategy” 233 Mama, A. 13, 16 Maputo Protocol 137, 198–9 Margai, Albert 70–1, 73 Margai, Charles 72 Margai, Milton 9, 70, 73 marital rape 18 market women empowerment 100–1, 104 interviews with 196 women’s movement and 20 marriage British system 8–9 children 109, 149 customary law 14, 108–9, 149 forced 60, 146–7 girls’ education and 151 statutory law 67 masculine identity 17–18 Maternal and Child Health Posts (MCHPs) 131, 132, 139 maternal health 130–43, 135, 170 maternal mortality rates (MMR) 94, 130–1 abortion complications 197 birth attendants’ role 136, 140

277

Ebola impact 152–3 post-war 130, 151–2 poverty connection 133 SDG targets 137 Mbriwa, Chief 70 MCHPs see Maternal and Child Health Posts M’Cormack-Hale, F. 15, 22, 24, 27–8, 33, 40, 83 MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) 136–7 Meintjes, S. 164 Melander, E. 114 Mende peoples 8–9, 20, 78n.8, 82–3 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 136–7 Miller, Joseph C. 95n.2 Minah, Matilda 85–9, 93–4, 96n.9 Ministry of Gender and Children’s Affairs 233 Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs (MSWGCA) 224–5 misery behavioral factors 35 confronting 41–4 healing 37–40 storytelling effect 44 MMR see maternal mortality rates Mohamed, Faiza 198 Momoh, Hannah 49–50 Momoh, Joseph Saidu 9–10, 51, 71, 101 MOP see Movement for Progress Moran, M. 19, 28 motherhood 83, 84, 101 “mothernity” 84, 92–3 Movement for Democracy 10 Movement for Progress (MOP) 56, 58–9 MSWGCA (Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs) 224–5 Muslim Marriage Act 108–9 Muslims see Islam NAG (National Accountability Group) 59–61 narrative processes 29, 33–45 nation-building, post-war 100 National Accountability Group (NAG) 59–61 National Alliance Democratic Party 62n.1

278

Index

National Council of Sierra Leone Women (NCSLW) 20 National Electoral Commission (NEC) 72 National Health Policy (NHP) 137–8 National Health Sector Strategic Plan (NHSSP) 138 national polity 215 National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) 51 Natural Law 201 Nazneen, S. 212–13, 231 NCSLW (National Council of Sierra Leone Women) 20 Ndulo, M. 100 Neale, Hannah 182 NEC (National Electoral Commission) 72 Nelson-Williams, John 73 neoliberal democratic state 79–80, 94 neoliberal economics 17–18 neoliberal models, challenge to 5–6 neoliberal policies 14, 15 neoliberalism customary actors 23–4 education and 29 healthcare and 26 success concept 23 women’s movement and 217 Network of Women Ministers and Parliamentarians (NEWMAP) 89 neurological studies 36–7 NEWMAP (Network of Women Ministers and Parliamentarians) 89 NGOs see non-governmental organizations NHP (National Health Policy) 137–8 NHSSP (National Health Sector Strategic Plan) 138 Nnaemeka, O. 13 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) chiefs’ supporting 90 donor funding 22 education projects 114, 118, 120 international community of 184 refugee reintegration 165 women’s centers and 167–8 novels, empowerment in 33–45 NPRC (National Provisional Ruling Council) 51 Nyuma, Mathew Sahr 226–7

Obama, Barack 185–6 occupational inequality 17 Offences Against the Person Act, 1861 197–8 Ogundipe-Leslie, Molara 34 online fundraising 182–4 Opala, Joseph 54 oral tales 35 Ottenberg, Simon 49 Ouagadougou Declaration 136 Pankhurst, D. 3 PAR (participatory action research) 116–18 paramount chiefs 82–96, 88 PARHA (People’s Alliance for Reproductive Health Access) 207–8 parliamentarians 30 percent quota of women 211 abortion debate 206–7 absenteeism rule 70–1 women as 15, 89, 145, 148 women’s movement alliances 225–9 parliamentary elections 12, 72 participatory action research (PAR) 116–18 Pascual-Leone, Alvaro 39 patriarchal culture constraints of 30 customary law 104 electoral systems 30 girls’ education 126 legal reforms and 4, 15–16, 25 political partisanship 21 patriarchal institutions 16–19 patronage system 5, 15, 21 Pavignani, Enrico 166 “peace”, conception of 80 Peace Accords, 1999 10 Peace March, 1995 177–8 peace process girls’ education 114 women’s mobilization 177, 216 Pendembu women’s center 167, 169–70 People’s Alliance for Reproductive Health Access (PARHA) 207–8 People’s Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC) 72, 75 Pereira, C. 13, 101

Index peripheral health units (PHUs) 139, 141 Piot, Professor 185 PMCs (Project Management Committees) 168–9 PMDC see People’s Movement for Democratic Change POA (Public Order Act) 70 police reform 155 policy change–women’s participation link 214–16 political activism 87–91 political agency 161–74 political empowerment 78n.6, 126–7 “political opportunity structure” (POS) 221 political parties British system 17 electoral violence 72 polarization of 20–1 women’s movement 5, 225–8 political regimes, identity politics 215 political representation post-war 64–6, 145 TRC recommendations 148 “political women”, violence against 63–78 politics British system of 59 of change 219–30 gender equality in 3–31 of religion 193–209 Poro secret society 71 Poro Masquerade 4 POS (“political opportunity structure”) 221 postnatal healthcare 141 poverty maternal health and 133–4 perpetuation of 7, 51 Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) 138 power domains approach 231 Pratt, N.C.E. 21, 22 prayer, Ebola epidemic 182, 188 pregnancy abortion rights 193–209 birth attendants’ role 129–43 Ebola fears 158n.11 education and 28–9, 119–22, 124–6, 127n.12, 151, 154–5, 233

279

rape cases 220 services improvement 94, 151–2 prenatal healthcare 141, 158n.11 presidential campaigns, 2002 56–9 primary education 113, 151, 155 process-tracing methodology 212–13, 219 Project Management Committees (PMCs) 168–9 PRSP see Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers psychological violence 69 Public Order Act (POA) 70 Quick Impact Projects (QIPS) 165 Radio Democracy 55, 62n.2 Rainbo Initiative 235n.4 Randal, Jonathan C. 53 rape male allies’ concerns 227 mandatory sentencing 223 in marriage 18 as national emergency 211, 220 recorded cases in 2018 219 rape prosecutions 146–7, 148, 150–1 Rapp, Stephen 147 RCMDA see Registration of Customary Marriage and Divorce Act refugee camps 164 refugees 161–74 Registration of Customary Marriage and Divorce Act (RCMDA) 105–6, 108–9, 149, 194, 218 reintegration, definition 162 religious coexistence 7 religious duties, chiefs 92 religious politics 193–209 Remoe, Vicky 182–3 reproductive health 125, 196–8, 204, 207–8 returnees, reintegration of 161–74 Revolutionary United Front (RUF) 51, 55, 71–2, 101–3 human rights abuses 163 rape prosecutions 146–7 women’s action against 176–7 Richards, Mabel 73–4 Rivas, A. 13–14 royal privilege system 94–5 RUF see Revolutionary United Front

280 rural areas Ebola interventions 187 marriage registration 149 maternal healthcare 132, 140 women’s movement 21–2 Rwanda gender-based violence 145, 157 “gender-security nexus” 104 legal/rebuilding efforts 34 women parliamentarians 89 Safe Abortion Bill, 2015 193, 195, 197, 199, 207–8 Salaam, Deborah 57 Sankoh, Foday 55, 102 “Saturday courts” 150, 155 Saver, Jeffrey 36–7 Schank, Roger 36 Schneider, Louise 221 scholarship program 123–4 school fees 155 schooling gendered logics 119–20 girls’ 115–16, 122–3, 127n.2 see also education SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) 136–7 SDOH (social determinants of health) framework 134–5 secondary education 113, 115, 122, 125, 151, 154–5 secret societies 8, 20 FGC practices 57, 156 patriarchy 16 political intimidation 66 SLP/APC loyalty 71 security apparatus, establishment of 80 Segbureh, Margaret 86–7 self-empowerment 41–4 Sen, Amartya 44, 162–3 SEND (Social Enterprise and Development Foundation) 90 Sesay, Isha 234 sex equity policies 217 sexual abuse civil war period 102 within domestic violence 149 medical examinations 150 in schools 151

Index sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) Ebola/COVID-19 epidemics 30 hybridity concept 24 legal reforms 99, 107, 211–35 power/inequality link 28 protection initiatives 21 sexual health, rights to 196–8, 204 Sexual Offences Act (SOA), 2012 18–19, 23, 27, 106, 150, 194, 218 Sexual Offences Amendment Act 211–35 Sexual Reproductive Health Bill 207–8 sexual violence 12, 105, 150–1 civil war period 146–7 Ebola epidemic period 153–4 justice system 156 medical evidence 155 post-war 80 TRC recommendations 148 types 158n.8 women’s centers and 167 SGBV see sexual and gender-based violence Sharp, Granville 103 Shepler, Susan 24, 28, 29, 162 Sherbro peoples 8, 20, 78n.8, 82 Sierra Leone, historical background 6–13 Sierra Leone People’s Independence Movement (SLPIM) 70 Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) 57–9, 62n.1, 64–5, 70–7, 221 Sierra Leone Women’s Peace Movement (SLWPM) 194, 216 Sierra Leone’s Civil War 7, 10–11, 18–19 activism during 52, 60 chiefs and 86–8, 92 educational barriers 113 gender-based violence 146–7 law reform and 101–3 narratives 34 refugee policy 161, 163–4, 166 SGBV levels 218 women’s mobilization 176–8 Sillah, Mohamed Yahya 62n.1 Single Member District (SMD) system 17 Skran, Claudena 15, 24–5, 77 SLPIM (Sierra Leone People’s Independence Movement) 70 SLPP see Sierra Leone People’s Party

Index SLWPM see Sierra Leone Women’s Peace Movement SMD (Single Member District) system 17 Smythe, Amy 24, 27 SOA see Sexual Offences Act social change process 81 social determinants of health (SDOH) framework 134–5, 135 Social Enterprise and Development Foundation (SEND) 90 social media campaigns 175–91 social movements 194 social status, women’s 103–4 socio-centric objectives 216–17 SOE (State of Emergency) 221–2 Sogbo-Torto, Elizabeth 21, 76, 91–2 soldiers, reintegration of 162 solidarity 193, 194 Solomon, Christine 60 Sorie, Fatmata 223–6, 228–31, 234 Soros Foundation 60 South Africa 101, 165 South Sudan 78n.7 Soweis 156, 180, 233–4 Special Court for Sierra Leone 146–7 Spencer, Julius 54 Sri Lankan Civil War 101 state identity politics 215 women’s policies and 217 state bureaucracy 225–8 State of Emergency (SOE) 221–2 state power 84 statutory law 66–7, 103 Steady, F.C. 9, 13, 83–4, 93, 217 Steele, Nancy 9 Stevens, Siaka 9, 17, 20, 51, 63, 70, 71, 101 storytelling 35, 36, 37, 44–5 see also narrative processes Strasser, Valentine 10, 93 strategic litigation 100 Survivor Solidarity Fund 234 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 136–7 Switzer, H. 114 Tamale, S. 201 Tameh, Mariama 90 TBAs see traditional birth attendants

281

technological change, law reforms 219, 222–5 teenage pregnancy 28–9, 119–22, 124–6, 127n.12 educational access 154 maternal mortality and 152, 197 rape cases 220 religious views 201 Tejan-Jalloh, Uma Hawa 49 Temne peoples 9, 57, 82 Thomas, YaBundu 156 Thorpe, Christiana Ayoka Mary 49 A Thousand and One Nights (novel) 35 “Three Delays” model 131 Torto, Elizabeth see Sogbo-Torto, Elizabeth Torto, Simbiwa 179 traditional birth attendants (TBAs) 26, 129–43 “transactional sex” 153 transportation for health care 131, 132–3 TRC see Truth and Reconciliation Commission Tripp, Aili 79, 168–9, 194 truth commissions, storytelling tool 44 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) 25, 64, 99, 101–2, 109–10, 146–9 Tucker, Peter L. 110 Tunis, Suafiatu 188 Uganda 3 UN see United Nations UN Integrated Peacebuilding Office (UNIPSIL) 78 UNHCR see United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNIPSIL (UN Integrated Peacebuilding Office) 78 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 25, 161–74 United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 63, 105, 114, 178, 218 United Nations (UN) chieftaincy elections 76 Ebola debate 184–90 education reform initiatives 114 peacekeeping forces 56 universal suffrage 63 urban education 127n.11

282 Vandy, Charles 225 VAWE see violence against women in elections victims approach, women 165 violence civil war period 163 colonialism and 16 DVA’s definition 106 international norms 215 patriarchal institutions 18 against “political women” 63–78 see also gender-based violence; sexual violence violence against women in elections (VAWE) 25, 28, 69, 77 wage labor 16–17 Wah, Daniel 58 war crimes 60 war narratives 43 war victims 148 Weldon, S.L. 215, 217, 232 well-being, UNHCR policy 161–74 West African Ebola debate 185–90 WF see Women’s Forum WhatsApp forum 213–14, 219, 222–5, 228 “widow inheritance” 104, 108 Williams-Sarho, Jeredine 53, 58, 62n.1 Women Organized for a Morally Enlightened Nation (WOMEN) 51–4 Women, Peace and Security (WPS) principles 63 Women of Wajama (WOW) 89 Women’s Caucus 225–8 women’s centers 162, 163, 167–9, 170 “women’s empowerment” in contemporary world 79–96 definitions 23 depoliticization of 4 feminist standpoints 13–15 Women’s Empowerment Fund 14 Women’s Forum (WF) 10, 51–2, 177–8 women’s mobilization for change 211–35 historical perspective 176–8 rights for women 175–91 by women’s movement 9–11, 231–4

Index women’s movement alliance-building 225–8 conceptualizing 216–18 coordination 230 donor funding 22 feminist discourse 99 fragmentation 19–23, 230 future mobilization 231–4 international factors 229–30 intersecting identities 19–23 leadership 23, 230 limitations of 230–1 mobilization of women 9–11, 231–4 politics 5, 65–6 rape/forced marriage rulings 147 rural campaigns 22 selective messaging 228–9 solidarity 193 YWCA meetings 176 Women’s Movement for Peace 177 women’s participation–policy change link 214–16 Women’s Response to Ebola in Sierra Leone (WRESL) 182–4, 186–8 women’s rights gender justice 81 local discussion groups 175–91 mobilizing women for 175–91 political activism 87 social media campaigns 175–91 to abortion 195–8 TRC recommendations 148 Women’s Solidarity Support Group (WSSG) 75–6 women’s status 103–4 WOW (Women of Wajama) 89 WPS (Women, Peace and Security) principles 63 WRESL see Women’s Response to Ebola in Sierra Leone WSSG (Women’s Solidarity Support Group) 75–6 Wundah, Michael 49 Yabomposseh, Haja 86 Young, Kay 36–7 Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) 176, 178 Zimmerman, M. 34