Sierra Leone Civil War
According to United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and United Nations Development Programme (2007) the civil war in Sierra Leone was
… [A] decade-long …marked by widespread human rights abuses, the collapse of the central government, and destruction of public capacity to provide any services or protection for its people. [The war displaced] more than two million people…widespread of sexual violence [with a record of] more than 1,800 victims of sexual violence…[as] 55 per cent reported being gang raped in a conflict in which abduction, molestation, and sexual slavery became [a] commonplace. More than 100,000 people were killed during the strife. Others suffered from the intentional amputation of arms and legs as well as other forms of mutilation. (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs; United Nations Development Programme, 2007, p. 3).
In spite of these aforementioned atrocities committed against civilians in Sierra Leone, can reconciliation be achieved? How can justice be pursued? How …show more content…
Based on this thought, how can victims accommodate perpetrators in the society? What is the best mechanism for states to adopt to ensure sustainable peace in a transiting state? Raymond Helmick, S.J., and Rodney L. Paterson identify reconciliation as the best procedure to achieving sustainable peace. They explain reconciliation as the “…possibility of transforming war into peace, trauma into survival, and hatred into forgiveness (Sarkin, 2008, p. 13). Although this provided definition simply explains the required need of reconciliation for the transitional process from war to peace, the definition and conceptualization of reconciliation presents a complexity, which is dependent on the contextualization of an event. Therefore, this research paper focuses on atrocity conflict and the transitional process for post-atrocity
… [A] decade-long …marked by widespread human rights abuses, the collapse of the central government, and destruction of public capacity to provide any services or protection for its people. [The war displaced] more than two million people…widespread of sexual violence [with a record of] more than 1,800 victims of sexual violence…[as] 55 per cent reported being gang raped in a conflict in which abduction, molestation, and sexual slavery became [a] commonplace. More than 100,000 people were killed during the strife. Others suffered from the intentional amputation of arms and legs as well as other forms of mutilation. (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs; United Nations Development Programme, 2007, p. 3).
In spite of these aforementioned atrocities committed against civilians in Sierra Leone, can reconciliation be achieved? How can justice be pursued? How …show more content…
Based on this thought, how can victims accommodate perpetrators in the society? What is the best mechanism for states to adopt to ensure sustainable peace in a transiting state? Raymond Helmick, S.J., and Rodney L. Paterson identify reconciliation as the best procedure to achieving sustainable peace. They explain reconciliation as the “…possibility of transforming war into peace, trauma into survival, and hatred into forgiveness (Sarkin, 2008, p. 13). Although this provided definition simply explains the required need of reconciliation for the transitional process from war to peace, the definition and conceptualization of reconciliation presents a complexity, which is dependent on the contextualization of an event. Therefore, this research paper focuses on atrocity conflict and the transitional process for post-atrocity