scholarly journals Kerjasama UNICEF dan IRC dalam Penegakan Hak Anak di Sierra Leone

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-48
Author(s):  
Damar Kusumawardani
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Child Soldiers ◽  
Gender Mainstreaming ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Girl Child ◽  
Sierra Leonean ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Children Rights

Sierra Leone was one of the countries with the largest use of child soldiers during the civil war between 1991-2002. Girl child soldiers made up to 30 percent of the total child soldiers involved in the Sierra Leone civil war. The Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration program (DDR) which was one of the UN mandate as a post-conflict peace consolidation could only reach 506 out of a total of 6,845 child soldiers who have been disarmed. This was because the requirement for the disarmament phase was to hand in their weapon, while many girls were not equipped with weapon by their armed forces commander considering that most of them acted as cooks, house workers, and bush wives. UNICEF and IRC as international organizations then carried out further DDR projects with more gender-responsive and community-based with gender mainstreaming and inclusive citizenship policies to enforce children rights of Sierra Leonean girl soldiers who previously had not included in DDR program. This paper will discuss the enforcement of children rights of Sierra Leonean girl soldiers in the furtjer DDR projects.

Justice for Child Soldiers? The RUF Trial of the Special Court for Sierra Leone

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gus Waschefort
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Child Soldiers ◽  
Active Participation ◽  
Mens Rea ◽  
Child Soldier ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Specific Instance ◽  
Actus Reus ◽  
United Front

AbstractThe Revolutionary United Front (RUF) was the primary agitator during the decade-long civil war that ravaged Sierra Leone. One of the hallmarks of RUF tactics was the abduction and military use of children. The Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) issued an indictment against the high-command of the RUF. Each of the accused was charged with the enlistment, conscription or use of child soldiers. The Prosecutor v. Sesay, Kallon and Gbao case (RUF case) provides a cogent account of the crime of conscripting or using children younger than fifteen in hostilities. This paper tracks the development of the growing child soldier jurisprudence and plots the contribution of the RUF case. Specific emphasis is placed on the Court's application of abstract concepts to concrete situations, e.g. the determination whether a specific instance of child soldier use amounts to the child's 'active participation in hostilities'. The paper follows a progression whereby the chapeau requirements of Article 4 of the Statute of the SCSL are first assessed and thereafter the actus reus and mens rea elements of the substantive crime of enlisting, conscripting or using children in hostilities are examined in light of the RUF case.

“Do not Disturb the Peace!” Identities, Livelihoods and the Politics of Post-War Discontent in Sierra Leone

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 533-553
Author(s):  
Fodei Batty ◽  
Fredline M’Cormack-Hale
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
The State ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Post War

Although the collective memory of war is frequently invoked in post-war societies, who chooses to invoke it and to what effect has been less studied relative to other aspects of such societies. In this article we employ a case study of Sierra Leone to address this deficit in the post-conflict scholarship by illustrating how the collective memory of that country’s civil war is appropriated by diverse actors in the post-war society. Drawing from field interviews, we present evidence showing how, and why, several societal groups constituted as distinct post-war identities such as victims-rights groups, former defenders of the state, or perpetrators of the violence during the Sierra Leone civil war articulate dissatisfactions with their livelihoods and the reactions of state officials to their demands. The article explains why, and how, successive governments have selectively suppressed the discontent of some groups over livelihood insecurities that are construed as threats to public order while ignoring violent protests from other groups over similar issues, in spite of a 1965 public order act restricting protests. Thus, the article argues that state officials in Sierra Leone have not demonstrated superior commitment to peacebuilding than societal groups that make demands on the state.

Child Soldiers and the Contested Imaginary of Community after War

Out of War ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 198-217
Author(s):  
Mariane C. Ferme
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Child Soldiers ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Child Soldier ◽  
Post Traumatic ◽  
International War ◽  
War Crimes Tribunals

This chapter examines the emergence of the figure of the child soldier in African conflicts and of the criminalization of forced conscription of children in combat in international war crimes jurisprudence, particularly at the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL)—one of the first war crimes tribunals to secure convictions on this count. The chapter examines the context of a civil war that often split small-scale communities and of a society that offers individuals multiple communities of belonging, thus complicating choices about the reintegration of demobilized, war-affected youth. Through two cases of war-affected youth, the chapter questions the humanitarian application of “normative post-traumatic” practices of psychological narrativization of trauma, leading to ambiguous and ambivalent returns in communities of origin, where forms of collective forgetting were preferred as strategies for addressing harms and war reparations.

Forced Marriage and the Special Court for Sierra Leone: Legal Advances and Conceptual Difficulties

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Oosterveld
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Forced Marriage ◽  
Sierra Leonean ◽  
Domestic Labour ◽  
United Front ◽  
Conceptual Difficulties

AbstractForced marriage was endemic during the Sierra Leonean conflict. Girls and women forced to serve as 'wives' to rebel soldiers were usually expected to submit to ongoing rape and to provide domestic labour to their 'husbands'. Many of these 'wives' suffer from continuing stigmatization. The Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone brought forced marriage charges as a crime against humanity through the category of inhumane acts against Brima, Kamara and Kanu, affiliated with the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), and Sesay, Kallon and Gbao, affiliated with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). This article considers two benefits stemming from the resulting jurisprudence: the naming of forced marriage as an inhumane act and the acknowledgement of forced marriage as a violation not captured by other legal terms. However, conceptual difficulties remain: how should forced marriage be defined so as to fulfil the principle of nullum crimen sine lege? Is forced marriage more accurately labelled as enslavement? And, is conjugality accurately captured as a defining feature of forced marriage? If forced marriage is to be successfully prosecuted in other contexts – for example, in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia – then more attention must be paid to resolving these questions.

Colombia post-war insecurity to preclude defence cuts

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Security Threat ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
Military Reform ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War

Subject Military reform plans. Significance The declining intensity of Colombia's civil war has encouraged politicians and security officials to re-assess the function and structure of the armed forces. Military leaders have sought to diversify into new activities, such as policing and reconstruction in order to avoid budget cuts. In its latest announcement, the government declared that, for now, troop numbers will not be reduced. However, in the context of declining combat operations and a costly post-conflict reconstruction programme, cuts to the military budget are possible over the medium term. Impacts A permanent end to the civil war may precipitate a reduction in military purchases of helicopters and other counterinsurgency equipment. Nevertheless, armed crime groups will present an ongoing security threat, potentially justifying the maintenance of high military spending. Any future efforts to cut back military powers and budgets will provoke resistance from the institution and its congressional allies. Military supporters may seek to offset its decline by calling for greater army intervention in urban areas during peaks of gang violence.

Child soldiers in the civil war in Sierra Leone

2001 ◽  
Vol 28 (87) ◽  
pp. 73-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. B. Zack‐Williams
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Child Soldiers

scholarly journals Restorative Justice in Transitional Sierra Leone

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lydia Apori Nkansah
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Sierra Leonean ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The People ◽  
Conflict Reconciliation

Intense debate surrounds truth commissions as to their mission, perceived roles and outcomes. This paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of truth commissions in post-conflict settings. It examines the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for Sierra Leone, the first truth commission to be engaged concurrently with a retributive mechanism, the Special Court for Sierra Leone for transitional justice. The study finds that the TRC provided an opening for conversation in Sierra Leonean communities to search for the meanings of truth about the conflict. In this way the communities simultaneously created an understanding of the situation and set reconciliation directions and commitment from the process of creative conversation.  This notwithstanding, the TRC did not have the needed public cooperation because the people were not sure the war was over and feared that their assailants could harm them if they disclosed the truth to the TRC. The presence of the Special Court also created tensions and fears rendering the transitional environment unfriendly to the reconciliation and truth telling endeavors of the TRC. The study has implications for future truth commissions in that the timing for post-conflict reconciliation endeavors should take into consideration the state of the peace equilibrium of the societies involved. It should also be packaged for harmonious existence in a given transitional contexts, particularly where it will coexist with a retributive mechanism.

Coping with the trauma of war: Former child soldiers in post-conflict Sierra Leone

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (6) ◽  
pp. 791-806 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myriam Denov
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
Child Soldiers ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
After Effects ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Former Child Soldiers ◽  
Depth Interviews

Children across the globe have been implicated in armed conflict as both victims and participants. During Sierra Leone’s decade-long civil war, thousands of children, both boys and girls, participated directly in armed conflict or were recruited for labour or sexual exploitation in armed groups. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with 80 children formerly associated with Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front, this paper explores children’s experiences of violence during the armed conflict, traces the realities that children faced in the aftermath of the war, and examines the ways in which participants attempted to cope with the war’s profound after-effects. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for social work.

‘Paper protection’ mechanisms: child soldiers and the international protection of children in Africa's conflict zones

2007 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Francis
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Child Soldiers ◽  
International Community ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Treaties ◽  
Conflict Zones ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Conflict Situations ◽  
International Conventions

The arrest and prosecution in March 2006 of the former Liberian warlord-President Charles Taylor by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, for war crimes including the recruitment and use of child soldiers, and the arrest and prosecution of the Congolese warlord, Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, by the International Criminal Court, accused of enlisting child soldiers in the DRC war, have raised expectations that finally international conventions and customary international laws protecting children in conflict zones will now have enforcement powers. But why has it taken so long to protect children in conflict situations despite the volume of international treaties and conventions? What do we know about the phenomenon of child soldiering, and why are children still routinely recruited and used in Africa's bloody wars? This article argues that against the background of unfolding events relating to prosecution for enlistment of child soldiers, the international community is beginning to wake up to the challenge of enforcing its numerous ‘paper protection’ instruments for the protection of children. However, a range of challenges still pose serious threats to the implementation and enforcement of the international conventions protecting children. Extensive research fieldwork in Liberia and Sierra Leone over three years reveals that the application of the restrictive and Western-centric definition and construction of a ‘child’ and ‘childhood’ raises inherent difficulties in the African context. In addition, most war-torn and post-conflict African societies are faced with the challenge of incorporating international customary laws into their domestic laws. The failure of the international community to enforce its standards on child soldiers also has to do with the politics of ratification of international treaties, in particular the fear by African governments of setting dangerous precedents, since they are also culpable of recruitment and use of child soldiers.

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