Neoliberal Ideas

MacKenzie argues in her article that, “rather than representing a radical shift in development approaches towards more inclusive and representative policies, empowerment projects are shaped by neoliberal ideas such as individualism, responsibility and economic order and carry implicit, gendered and disciplining messages about appropriate social behavior” (p. 199).

In explaining her argument, MacKenzie draws on the implementation weaknesses of the Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) program in Sierra Leone. She used the reintegration program for female soldiers in Sierra Leone as a case because the Sierra Leone's DDR process is one of the interventions purported to empower both female and male ex-combatants. My primary interest
in this exegesis is to attempt to analyze the ways in which MacKenzie has used the DDR intervention in Sierra Leone to explain her main argument as espoused in the above quotation? However, before I proceed, it will be relevant to first unpack the main arguments in her article. There are several elements that can be elicited from her argument. First, she argues that these empowerment programs are often as inclusive and representative as they are purported to be. Second, she argues that empowerment programs are usually shaped by neoliberal ideas such as individualism. Third, she further asserts that empowerment programs carry in them implicit, gendered, and disciplining messages about appropriate social behavior.

In seeking to support the above specific arguments, MacKenzie identified some challenges associated with the DDR process in post-conflict Sierra Leone especially relating to women's empowerment.
in reading her article, I identified three main weakness in the Sierra Leone's DDR process concerning women's empowerment: (i) challenges associated with targeting of the beneficiaries, (ii) challenges associated with the interventions themselves – that is, interventions not responsive to the needs of women; not relevant to local context, and short duration of implementation, and (iii) the challenge of stigmatization and secondary trauma women beneficiaries faced. In the ensuing sections of this exegesis, I will attempt to discuss each of the three challenges of the DDR in Sierra Leone as identified by the author and analyse how she uses these challenges to support her main argument that women's empowerment programs are: not inclusive and representative, driven by neoliberal ideas, gendered and carry certain notions of disciplining
behavior.

On the challenges associated with targeting women ex-combatants
Mackenzie analyzed the methodology used in the demobilization of ex-combatants in Sierra Leone and argued that the approached was flawed as it did not provide the opportunity for women ex-combatants to participate fully. In describing the demobilization process, she notes that demobilization centers where ex-combatants were camped in order to collect information regarding each person's role in the conflict were not designed to meet the specific needs of women. Some women were even abused by their men counterparts in the demobilization centers. The abuse women faced in the demobilization centers discouraged many female ex-fighters from participating in the demobilization. Despite this weakness, the participation in demobilization was an explicit requirement to benefit from subsequent reintegration programs. It is clear from these challenges that from the outset, the approaches used in the demobilization potentially excluded many women ex-combatants from benefiting in the empowerment programs. Mackenzie observes that the majority of female ex-combatants did not participate in the DDR and the low numbers of female participants are evident when she compared the "official" figures from NGOs to what female soldiers themselves reported.

The argument on the lack of inclusivity and representation is not only associated with the limited number of female ex-combatants participation in the reintegration programs, but also, expressed in the challenges associated with the empowerment programs themselves since most of them failed to meet the needs of beneficiaries.

The challenges associated with the empowerment programs
There are several elements regarding the quality and responsiveness of the programs to the needs of female ex-combatants.
First, MacKenzie argues that most of the empowerment interventions did not meet the specific needs of women ex-combatants. She observes that most of the empowerment training that were offered to females were chosen by the National Commission for Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (NCDDR) with advice from the World Bank, the UN, and UNICEF, which were the major funders of the DDR programs. This top-down approach to selecting training programs for the women without consultation is indicative of the neoliberal conception of development as suggested by the MacKenzie. She strengthens her arguments further by asserting that the top-down, neoliberal approach to selecting the training program also created the situation in which the programs do not respond to local market and community context. In other words, apart from the fact that most training programs did not respond to the needs of the women, they were not also commensurate with the local context. One troubling pattern MacKenzie observed among the empowerment training programs is that almost all the organizations offered the same type of skills training for the female ex-combatants. She observed on page 209
that: