Abstract
On 23 March 1991 Sierra Leone entered into one of Africa’s bloodiest civil wars, when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) attacked the country from its bases in neighbouring Liberia.1 There were several factions in this conflict: the RUF, the West Side Boys, the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council military junta, the Armed Forces of the Republic of Sierra Leone, the Special Forces from the Liberian warlord, Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (on loan to the RUF) and the Civil Defence Forces (a collection of ethnic-based anti-RUF local militia groups).2 Most of these factions had substantial number of women, both combatants and captive camp workers, who, like their male counterparts, were responsible for the perpetration of various forms of war crimes and crimes against humanity.3
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Notes
Lansana Gberie, A Dirty War in West Africa: The RUF and the Destruction of Sierra Leone, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2005.
Ibrahim Abdullah, “Bushpath to Destruction: The Origin and Character of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF/SL),” in Ibrahim Abdullah, ed., Between Democracy and Terror: The Sierra Leone Civil War, Dakar: CODESRIA, 2004, pp. 41–65.
See John Idriss Lahai, “Fused in Combat: Unsettling the Gendered Hierarchy and Women’s Roles in the Fighting Forces during the Sierra Leone Civil War,” Australasia Review of African Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1, June 2012, pp. 34–55.
Emmanuel Kwesi Aning, “Gender and Civil War: The Cases of Liberia and Sierra Leone,” Civil Wars, Vol. 1, No. 4, 1998, pp. 1–26.
See Mats Berdel and David M. Malone, eds, Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000.
Paul Richards, Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone, London: Heinemann, 1996.
Yusuf Bangura, “Understanding the Political and Cultural Dynamics of the Sierra Leone War: A Critique of Paul Richard’s Fighting in the Rain Forest,” African Development, Vol. 22, No. 3, 1997, pp. 117–149.
Zubairu Wai, Epistemologies of African Conflicts Violence, Evolutionism, and the War in Sierra Leone, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Mary Caprioli, “Gendered Conflict,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2000, pp. 51–68
John Idriss Lahai, “Sexing the State: The Gendered Origins of the Civil War in Sierra Leone,” Minerva Journal of Women and War, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2010, pp. 62–72.
Joe A. D. Alie, A New History of Sierra Leone, New York: St Mark Press, 1990, p. 280.
David Keen, Conflict and Collusion in Sierra Leone, Oxford: James Currey, 2005, pp. 92–97.
Mariane Ferme, The Underneath of Things: Violence, History and the Everyday Life in Sierra Leone, California: California University Press, 2001.
Cynthia Cockbum, “The Continuum of Violence: A Gender Perspective on War and Peace,” in Wenona Giles and Jennifer Hyndman, eds, Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zones, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004, pp. 24–44.
See Sheila Meintjes, Anu Pillay, and Meredeth Turshen, eds, The Aftermath: Women in Post-Conflict Transformation, London and New York: Zed Books, 2001.
Bridget Byrne, Towards a Gender Understanding of Conflict, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, 1996, p. 30.
Christine Sylvester, Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Postmodern Era, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 50.
See Kathy E. Ferguson, “Interpretation and Genealogy in Feminism,” Signs, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1991, pp. 322–339.
Janet Radcliffe Richards, J. R., Why the Pursuit of Peace in No Part of Feminism, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996, p. 219.
See John Idriss Lahai and Helen Ware, “Educating For Peace: The Sociocultural Dimensions of Grassroots Peace Education as a Tool for National Reconciliation and Social Forgetting in Sierra Leone,” African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review, Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 2013, pp. 69–90.
Erik Melander, “Gender Equality and Intrastate Armed Conflict,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 4, 2005, pp. 695–714.
Chris Coulter, Bush Wives and Girl Soldiers: Women’s Lives through War and Peace in Sierra Leone, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009, p. 106.
See Sandra Lee Bartky Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression, New York: Routledge, 1990.
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Lahai, J.I. (2015). Gendering Conflict and Peace-Building in Sierra Leone. In: Shekhawat, S. (eds) Female Combatants in Conflict and Peace. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137516565_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137516565_9
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