M.A. (Politics) / This purpose of this study was to analyse the nature of women’s involvement in peace-building in Sierra Leone. The various dimensions of peace-building as set out in the African Union’s Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development (PRCD) programme, adopted in June 2006 by heads of governments in Banjul, The Gambia, served as the framework for analysis. The PCRD emphasises the incorporation of women in all peace-building efforts (and the mainstreaming of gender in all policies), and sets out a range of areas in terms of which women are required to be included. These are: political transition, government and democratisation; security; human rights, justice, and reconciliation; humanitarian emergency assistance; and socio-economic reconstruction and development. The analysis of the nature of women’s involvement in peace-building in Sierra Leone in these areas is structured in terms of efforts made by the government in complying with the PCRD, the efforts made by women’s groups (local, national, provincial, regional) in the country and the involvement of international organisations in partnership with either the government or women’s groups to provide assistance to female victims of violence. This study found that the government had many policies and laws which provided for women’s inclusion in peace-building efforts in the country (i.e. de jure commitment). However, its de facto commitment is questionable, since very few of these policies have in fact borne fruit. Women, for example, were not included in the 1996 Abidjan and 1999 Lomé Peace Accords – in both these agreements they were portrayed as victims needing protection, rather than as agents of change. Moreover, female representation in parliament over the past 12 years has not exceeded 14.5 per cent; the DDR programmes was largely gender-blind; the transformation of the security sector (such as the police and military) did not result in women’s inclusion in decision-making positions within these institutions; and, finally, despite the fact that the government specifically emphasised the importance of resuscitating economic activities among women in the 2005 Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, there was no concrete strategy to achieve these goals. This has affected women’s involvement in the economy, since obstacles in the form of male attitudes towards their role in the economy continue to persist. However, women’s groups, on the other hand, were actively involved in facilitating women’s inclusion in peace-building efforts in the country. Groups such as the 50/50 Group have been active in mobilising for the implementation of the 30 per cent quota for women’s representation in parliament. It also conducted capacity-building workshops and training programmes to empower potential female candidates for both local and general elections. The Sierra Leonean chapter of the Forum of African Women Educationalists (FAWE-SL) played a pivotal role in addressing the trauma caused by sexual and gender-based violence. Further efforts by women’s groups include: providing capacity-building programmes to empower women (including female ex-combatants) excluded from the DDRR programme; addressing the psycho-social needs of female survivors of war (in collaboration with international organisations); providing financial and medical assistance as well as trauma counselling and healing programmes to female and child victims of domestic violence and rape; running skills training centres and other educational activities in order to increase literacy and education among women, and building emergency schools for girls whose schools were destroyed during the conflict as well as providing educational information at entry points to female returnees on their rights; and, finally, providing micro-credit loans (by the Sierra Leone Market Women’s Association (SLMWA). This has been an important aspect of the efforts of women’s groups to resuscitate economic activities among women.

This thesis critiques liberal peacebuilding in Africa, with a particular focus on Sierra Leone. In particular, it examines the interface between the liberal peace and the “local”, the forms of agency that various local actors are expressing in response to the liberal peace and the hybrid forms of peace that are emerging in Sierra Leone. The thesis is built from an emerging critical literature that has argued for the need to shift from merely criticising liberal peacebuilding to examining local and contextual responses to it. Such contextualisation is crucial mainly because it helps us to develop a better understanding of the complex dynamics on the ground. The aim of this thesis is not to provide a new theory but to attempt to use the emerging insights from the critical scholarship through adopting the concept of hybridity in order to gain an understanding of the forms of peace that are emerging in post-conflict zones in Africa. This has not been comprehensively addressed in the context of post-conflict societies in Africa. Yet, much contemporary peace support operations are taking place in these societies that are characterised by multiple sources of legitimacy, authority and sovereignty. The thesis shows that in Sierra Leone local actors – from state elites to chiefs to civil society to ordinary people on the “margins of the state” – are not passive recipients of the liberal peace. It sheds new light on how hybridity can be created “from below” as citizens do not engage in outright resistance, but express various forms of agency including partial acceptance and internalisation of some elements of the liberal peace that they find useful to them; and use them to make demands for reforms against state elites who they do not trust and often criticise for their pre-occupation with political survival and consolidation of power. Further, it notes that in Sierra Leone a “post-liberal peace” that is locally-oriented might emerge on the “margins of the state” where culture, custom and tradition are predominant, and where neo-traditional civil society organisations act as vehicles for both the liberal peace and customary peacebuilding while allowing locals to lead the peacebuilding process. In Sierra Leone, there are also peace processes that are based on custom that are operating in parallel to the liberal peace, particularly in remote parts of the country.