This article describes how the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and other international child rights instruments are implicated in the postwar reintegration of child excombatants in Sierra Leone. Data are based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork throughout Sierra Leone from 1999 to 2001. Various actors, including children, their families, communities, teachers, nongovernmental organization workers, and the state, use the CRC and the Western construction of childhood as “innocent” and “apolitical” for strategic purposes. Child rights discourse and practice eases the reintegration of child excombatants by buttressing “discourses of abdicated responsibility” in children's narrations of their war experiences, thereby facilitating forgiveness and acceptance. However, this model of innocent child is in conflict with an earlier model of youth as hardworking and humble. In the struggle to reintegrate child soldiers, a new model of youth emerges in Sierra Leone, a model informed by the global human rights regime but created in everyday practice at the intersection of the global and the local.

Future infectious disease epidemics are likely to disproportionately affect countries with weak health systems, exacerbating global vulnerability. To decrease the severity of epidemics in these settings, lessons can be drawn from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. There is a dearth of literature on public perceptions of the public health response system that required citizens to report and treat Ebola cases. Epidemiological reports suggested that there were delays in diagnosis and treatment. The purpose of our study was to explore the barriers preventing Sierra Leoneans from trusting and using the Ebola response system during the height of the outbreak. Using an experienced ethnographer, we conducted 30 semi-structured in-depth interviews in public spaces in Ebola-affected areas. Participants were at least age 18, spoke Krio, and reported no contact in the recent 21 days with an Ebola-infected person. We used inductive coding and noted emergent themes. Most participants feared that calling the national hotline for someone they believed had Ebola would result in that person’s death. Many stated that if they developed a fever they would assume it was not Ebola and self-medicate. Some thought the chlorine sprayed by ambulance workers was toxic. Although most knew there was a laboratory test for Ebola, some erroneously assumed the ubiquitous thermometers were the test and most did not understand the need to re-test in the presence of Ebola symptoms. Fears and misperceptions, related to lack of trust in the response system, may have delayed care-seeking during the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. Protocols for future outbreak responses should incorporate dynamic, qualitative research to understand and address people’s perceptions. Strategies that enhance trust in the response system, such as community mobilization, may be particularly effective. To decrease the severity of epidemics in countries with under-developed health system capacity to control outbreaks, lessons can be drawn from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. This is the first study, to our knowledge, to use qualitative research methods to understand community members’ perceptions of using the Ebola response system during the outbreak in Sierra Leone. We conducted this study in two of the most populous districts during a time when there were still a high number of Ebola-related fatalities, and the Ebola response system had been scaled up. While national household surveys demonstrated high levels of intent to use the response system at the time, epidemiological reports suggested that there were delays in seeking testing and treatment. Our use of semi-structured in-depth interviews, as well as an ethnographer with experience in Sierra Leone, enhanced our ability to elicit people’s fears and misperceptions. Concerns about the response system clustered around three key themes: fears of calling the national hotline, negative perceptions of the chlorine spray, and misperceptions about the Ebola laboratory test and the need to re-test. These fears and misperceptions likely delayed people from seeking care. Our results lend support to the argument that trust in the public health response system was integral to citizens’ use of the system. We make several recommendations for how trust could have been enhanced during the Ebola outbreak. Protocols for future outbreaks should incorporate dynamic and qualitative research both to understand perceptions of the response system and to use these data to inform a more effective response.

The brutal, eleven-year long civil war in Sierra Leone has been understood by many scholarly observers as ‘a crisis of youth’. The national elections of 2007 were notable for an explosion of popular music by young people directly addressing some of the central issues of the election: corruption of the ruling party and lack of opportunities for youth advancement. Though produced by youth and understood locally as youth music, the sounds were inescapable in public transport, markets, and parties. The musical style is a combination of local idioms and West African hip-hop. The lyrics present a young people's moral universe in stark contrast to that of their elders. This paper addresses the themes of these election-focused songs as well as the emerging subaltern youth identity discernible in supposedly less political songs.

Si l’analyse de la guerre au Liberia et en Sierra Leone a souvent mis en exergue la crise de la jeunesse, l’analyse a plus porté sur les hommes comme victimes ou combattants. Il s’agit ici d’étudier des trajectoires de femmes engagées à un titre ou à un autre dans ces conflits et de s’interroger sur le peu d’attention que leur cas a suscité lors de la mise en œuvre des programmes de démobilisation.

Sierra Leonean production of knowledge about Ebola was, in large part, production of knowledge about "who ate the Ebola money." This article traces people's responses to the Ebola crisis through a number of different moments, at each point reflecting on how their concerns about how Ebola money was being spent illuminate their expectations of their state. During the Ebola outbreak, Sierra Leoneans simultaneously mistrusted their politicians and looked to their politicians in a moment of crisis. The article also investigates Sierra Leone's relationship to the international community, concluding that the state's weakness is produced, in part, by its place in the international system. The research is based on three field visits to Sierra Leone and Liberia in April 2014, July 2014, and January 2015 and draws on interviews and focus groups in urban and rural settings.

Various curricular and textbook initiatives exist to aid in the national processes of coming to terms with past violence, often serving the political goals of the victors, sometimes supported by international transitional justice institutions. Sierra Leone and Liberia each experienced a devastating civil war during the 1990s and into the 2000s, and each is struggling to rebuild shattered education systems. In addition, each country has experienced a set of post-conflict transitional justice initiatives: Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in each, and a Special Court for Sierra Leone. Although their respective ministries of education have attempted to address peace education through UNICEF-sponsored curriculum revision processes, those efforts have not yet reached the majority of serving teachers, so a discussion of teachers’ actual practices is vital. This article uses interviews with teachers in rural and urban Sierra Leone and Liberia to discuss whether and how teachers talk about past war in their classrooms; whether they think it is important to discuss past conflicts, and if so, why; and what kind of curricular support would help them better teach about the wars. The article discusses how and why teachers embrace or subvert official efforts through their classroom practices, and compares the Sierra Leone and Liberia contexts and results. This research will help us to understand teachers’ own perspectives on addressing past conflict in their classrooms, and perhaps help policy-makers better implement their peace education initiatives.