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Contributions from
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The importance of Europe
Attention deficit
Neglected war victims
“Pull together”
01/2006
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[ Sierra Leone ]
Neglected war victims
In 2001, the biggest and most expensive blue helmet operation in the history of the United Nations put an end to a decade of civil war in Sierra Leone. The mission was applauded internationally as a resounding success, even though organisations such as Human Rights Watch reported human rights violations by UN troops. At the end of 2005, the UN peacemakers withdrew having done their job. Whether peace will last now largely depends on whether the government and the international community compensate war victims for their sufferings.
[ By Anne Jung ]
To secure the peace, the UN intervention force UNAMSIL teamed up with British troops in 2001 and launched an ex-combatant disarmament programme. 70,000 former militia members – men, women and children – surrendered their weapons. Many former fighters were given reintegration assistance worth around $150 and access to vocational training in order to provide them with new livelihoods. Such attempts to get former combatants back into normal society were extremely important for stabilising the country. But there were many setbacks as well. Numerous ex-combatants went to Liberia and continued to earn their living from war there.
Sierra Leone’s countless war victims, on the other hand, received very little help. During the war, the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) had terrorised the population with brutal amputations. They hacked off hands or legs of more than 20,000 people. There are no reliable data on the number of victims still alive. During the war, at least 50,000 women and girls were raped, abducted and forced into prostitution. Because they received no help after the war, some victims even claimed to be perpetrators – hoping to thus become eligible for training programmes, for example. The unequal treatment of perpetrators and victims poses an ongoing threat to peace in the country.
It is also reminiscent of the situation in Sierra Leone before the outbreak of war. In its final report, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which was implemented with UN support, recalled that deep social inequality initially gave rise to a strong sense of powerlessness in the population. Armed conflict seemed the only way out of hopeless economic plight; warfare became the only reliable livelihood. Thousands of young people, most of them men, joined the rebel RUF as “willing revolutionaries” or forced recruits.
Edward Conteh, whose lower arm was cut off by RUF rebels during an assault on Freetown, the capital city, sees a risk of violence recurring: “I don’t see peace in Sierra Leone because the daughters and sons of the victims are suffering. They are angry, waiting for the moment to take revenge.” Conteh is a member of the Amputees and War Wounded Association, a self-help organisation co-founded in 2002 by Juso Jaka. Instead of hands, Juso Jaka uses two metal pincers. In the civil war, he once refused to surrender a daughter to RUF rebels; to teach him a lesson, they hacked off his hands with a machete.
The association seeks to help survivors to rebuild what they can of their lives. It fights for social justice and demands material compensation for victims. “Reparations are a form of apology by the wrongdoer,” Jaka said back in 2002. In his view, they “serve as medicine, helping to ease the pain”. The self-help organisation does not have much money, but its persistence is leading to results. The camp on the edge of Freetown, where hundreds of survivors were accommodated after the war, has now been closed. Homes have been found for some of the victims. But without arms or legs, it is hard or even impossible to feed a family. No victim receives any official support yet, and many have not choice but to go begging.
The plight of the victims became patently obvious during the TRC hearings. In its final report, published in August last year, the commission demanded that the government set up a war victims’ fund within three months. Among other things, the commission wanted the fund to provide money for medical treatment, psycho-social care, training and financial compensation. “The four volumes of the TRC report make up what is perhaps the most important book ever written in Sierra Leone,” says John Caulker, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Working Group, a coalition of civil society groups monitoring the reconciliation process. “But that book can only have a real impact if its recommendations are implemented.”
No government action
President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLLP), however, let the three months deadline slip by unheeded. According to a member of a women’s network who does not want to be identified, one reason for this neglect could be fear of a state-financed victims’ fund being seen as a governmental admission of guilt. After all, the TRC report contains indirect references “to the problematical role of the government during the Freetown massacre in 1999”.
There is a danger that, after UNAMSIL withdrawal, the SLLP will do nothing for the country’s war victims unless international pressure forces it to. The UN mission in Sierra Leone should not be considered complete until Sierra Leonians have gained a sense of owning the peace process – something that has been sadly lacking so far. A return to violence, many fear, could yet fill the vacuum created by UN withdrawal.
The TRC recommended that the government use diamond revenues to partially finance the war victims’ fund. It also called on foreign donors such as the UK or the EU to contribute. Moreover, it named certain “internal and external actors who profited from the conflict”, a reference to countries like Libya and Liberia. International NGOs are also demanding that the diamond industry contribute to victims’ compensation because the industry’s activities contributed to financing arms during the war.
Even Sierra Leone’s desperately poor population would be willing to help finance the fund. “Money can be raised in church congregations. There is a great desire for peace and people would be prepared to contribute to the compensation fund,” reports Jamesina King, a lawyer. In the face of such an unconditional desire for peace, international diamond companies really should make contributions.
After international media covered a national conference of the Amputees and War Wounded Association in September, President Kabbah agreed to meet representatives of this self-help organisation for the first time. Although the association rejected the government’s first offer of compensation as inadequate, the meeting helped to kick-start an awareness raising campaign, which is supported by agencies such as medico international.
Attention should now focus on the needs of the victims. That task is urgent because the government issued a general amnesty for all perpetrators (except for those charged with war crimes at the UN special tribunal). This amnesty amounts to a high price for peace, which the population was willing to pay. Reparation payments should now send out a signal that the wrongs the victims have suffered are acknowledged. At present, Sierra Leonians feel that war criminals are being rewarded and victims punished yet again. If war were to return, it would have catastrophic implications not just for Sierra Leone but for the whole of West Africa.
Anne Jung
works in the press and PR department
of the Frankfurt-based relief
agency medico international.
Jung@medico.de
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