Towards a Durable Peace: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone

This book analyzes both the causes of Sierra Leone's conflict running through the 1990s and the effectiveness of the subsequent peacebuilding process. I place heavy emphasis on the socio-economic origins of the conflict and, correspondingly, analyze how Sierra Leone's peacebuilding process has since worked to address the destabilizing impact of socio-economic problems, specifically the lack of adequate healthcare. I find that socio-economic development has largely been underfunded and marginalized in favor of a top down peacebuilding approach focusing on large government institutions and legal processes (notably the Special Court for Sierra Leone). As a result, Sierra Leone remains vulnerable to regional actors, armed groups, and international drug traffickers looking to cause protracted community instability in order to profit from the resultant climate of impunity. I put forward two community-based public health programs, based on successful programs in Sierra Leone and similar countries in the West African region, to demonstrate that public health efforts are among the most cost-effective peacebuilding interventions Sierra Leoneans and international actors could jointly implement.