Susan Shepler

The Rites of the Child: Global Discourses of Youth and Reintegrating Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone, a former British colony, is a small country on the West Coast of Africa with great diamond wealth and a post-independence history of political corruption. The civil war in Sierra Leone (1991–2002) is familiar to Western observers with the media portrayals of terror tactics carried out by combatants against a powerless populace. The main fighting factions were the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels and the Sierra Leone Army, portions of which at one point joined the rebels in overthrowing an elected government, the locally organized Civil Defence Force (CDF) militias — often known as Kamajohs — growing out of traditional hunting secret societies, and the international peacekeepers first of the regional West African coalition and then of the United Nations. The course of the war was confusing, with coups and counter-coups and shifting alliances. In addition to murder, rape and looting, amputations by machete were carried out by youth recruited for just such acts. By the end of the conflict, a full 75 per cent of the Sierra Leone population reported being displaced at least once during the war (Abdalla, Hussein and Shepler, 2002). Today, even a decade after the end of the war, Sierra Leone ranks near the bottom of the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Index (2010).

Youth music and politics in post-war Sierra Leone *

A B S T R A C T The brutal, eleven-year long civil war in Sierra Leone has been understood by many scholarly observers as ‘a crisis of youth’. The national elections of 2007 were notable for an explosion of popular music by young people directly addressing some of the central issues of the election: corruption of the ruling party and lack of opportunities for youth advancement. Though produced by youth and understood locally as youth music, the sounds were inescapable in public transport, markets, and parties. The musical style is a combination of local idioms and West African hip-hop. The lyrics present a young people’s moral universe in stark contrast to that of their elders. This paper addresses the themes of these election-focused songs as well as the emerging subaltern youth identity discernible in supposedly less political songs.

Fears and Misperceptions of the Ebola Response System during the 2014-2015 Outbreak in Sierra Leone

Background Future infectious disease epidemics are likely to disproportionately affect countries with weak health systems, exacerbating global vulnerability. To decrease the severity of epidemics in these settings, lessons can be drawn from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. There is a dearth of literature on public perceptions of the public health response system that required citizens to report and treat Ebola cases. Epidemiological reports suggested that there were delays in diagnosis and treatment. The purpose of our study was to explore the barriers preventing Sierra Leoneans from trusting and using the Ebola response system during the height of the outbreak. Methods Using an experienced ethnographer, we conducted 30 semi-structured in-depth interviews in public spaces in Ebola-affected areas. Participants were at least age 18, spoke Krio, and reported no contact in the recent 21 days with an Ebola-infected person. We used inductive coding and noted emergent themes. Findings Most participants feared that calling the national hotline for someone they believed had Ebola would result in that person’s death. Many stated that if they developed a fever they would assume it was not Ebola and self-medicate. Some thought the chlorine sprayed by ambulance workers was toxic. Although most knew there was a laboratory test for Ebola, some erroneously assumed the ubiquitous thermometers were the test and most did not understand the need to re-test in the presence of Ebola symptoms. Conclusion Fears and misperceptions, related to lack of trust in the response system, may have delayed care-seeking during the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. Protocols for future outbreak responses should incorporate dynamic, qualitative research to understand and address people’s perceptions. Strategies that enhance trust in the response system, such as community mobilization, may be particularly effective.

Producing Ebola: Creating Knowledge In and About an Epidemic

Try to remember what it was like during the fall of 2014. Ebola was always in the news, the virus was spreading and people were dying at an increasing rate in West Africa. Although there should have been ways to stop it, more and more people were falling ill. In the United States, there was near panic about the possibility of it coming here. In September 2014, the Centers for Disease Control released a model that estimated that, in the worst-case scenario, the number of Ebola deaths in West Africa could reach 1.4 million. There were more cases than there were beds, and the ill were collapsing outside of Ebola Treatment Centers. Anthropologists who had worked in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia— the three countries most affected by the Ebola outbreak of 2013–2015— felt sadness, fear, anger. We felt sadness at the losses our friends were suffering and at the risks they were taking. We feared that the illness would spread, and that we were helpless against it. Despite a scholarly predisposition for observation and remove, many of us wanted to help, to do something. When it became clear that elements of the response were at best culturally insensitive and at worst wrong-headedly biomedical or even militaristic, we felt angry that the response was not making better use of the knowledge we had labored to create over the years, angry that we were

Understanding Sierra Leonean and Liberian teachers’ views on discussing past wars in their classrooms

ABSTRACT Various curricular and textbook initiatives exist to aid in the national processes of coming to terms with past violence, often serving the political goals of the victors, sometimes supported by international transitional justice institutions. Sierra Leone and Liberia each experienced a devastating civil war during the 1990s and into the 2000s, and each is struggling to rebuild shattered education systems. In addition, each country has experienced a set of post-conflict transitional justice initiatives: Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in each, and a Special Court for Sierra Leone. Although their respective ministries of education have attempted to address peace education through UNICEF-sponsored curriculum revision processes, those efforts have not yet reached the majority of serving teachers, so a discussion of teachers’ actual practices is vital. This article uses interviews with teachers in rural and urban Sierra Leone and Liberia to discuss whether and how teachers talk about past war in their classrooms; whether they think it is important to discuss past conflicts, and if so, why; and what kind of curricular support would help them better teach about the wars. The article discusses how and why teachers embrace or subvert official efforts through their classroom practices, and compares the Sierra Leone and Liberia contexts and results. This research will help us to understand teachers’ own perspectives on addressing past conflict in their classrooms, and perhaps help policy-makers better implement their peace education initiatives.

Effects in Post-Conflict West Africa of Teacher Training for Refugee Women.

This article draws data from an innovative research project tracing former refugee teachers who received teacher training from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) over a 17-year-long education programme in refugee camps in Guinea (1991–2008). The research traced repatriated refugee teachers who had returned to their homes in Sierra Leone and Liberia in an effort to determine the effects of the training they received – particularly whether they were still working as teachers in their post-repatriation lives, or whether they had made use of their training in other ways. Although the research in question focused on all of the former IRC teachers who the research team could trace, the present paper is about the female teachers and their specific situations. Focusing on the womens responses yields the gender-specific conclusions about structural barriers to institutional and societal changes in conflict and post-conflict settings.

Shifting Priorities in Child Protection in Sierra Leone since Lomé

In the field of international struggles for the protection of children affected by war, there are many “firsts” in the Sierra Leone case. The accord signed in Lome was the first African peace accord to specifically mention the reintegration of former child soldiers. The United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) was the first UN peacekeeping force to include a child protection officer. The Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) was the first international tribunal to convict individuals for war crimes for conscripting and enlisting children. Does all of this mean that Sierra Leoneans were particularly concerned about the rights of children? Or does it show that Lome happened at a critical time in the progress of international child protection discourse and practice? What are the implications of the unprecedented focus on child rights for the postwar nation?