War in the Crisis Zone
Civil War plagued Sierra Leone since 1991 — with the official completion of disarmament in January 2002, but rebel gang fighting, ethnic rivalries, illegal diamond trading, corruption, and refugees spill over into neighboring states beset with their own civil disorder, refugees, and violence.  Due to some of the failures of previous UN interventions in places like Rwanda (1994) and Somalia (1993), it is possible that this has caused a delay or disproportion in the amount of peacekeeping and peace enforcement efforts in Sierra Leone.  Another possibility is that it is perceived as “a politically dangerous and insignificant country; therefore, not enough attention is given, but the reality is that human suffering is universal (Adebajo, 2002).  Since 1991, there has been a civil war between the government and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) led by Foday Sankoh.  The war has lasted for 11 years, and many believe that, in practical terms, it is still going on today.  It has been well documented as of 2000 that the RUF is utilizing terror tactics such as mass rape, torture, mutilation of civilians, and abduction of children to become child soldiers or sex slaves (http://ww.afrol.com/news/sil007_civil_war.htm). 

Children and women have suffered the most in this war.  The children have been abducted, raped, mutilated, and forced to fight a war that is not their own.  Women are forced into domestic servitude, sexual exploitation, forced labor, and suffering from the loss of their children from abduction and the casualties of war, thereby leaving women in a most fragile state.  Mothers as lone parents are becoming more prevalent in developing countries with where many young girls not living with either parent are extremely common. This will have major economic impacts upon the lives of women in the future and the future of Sierra Leone.  The war in Sierra Leone left only terror and deep, unrelenting, humanitarian crisis — it was devastated.  This has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the displacement of more than 2 million people (www.cia.gov, 2003).  This happens to be over one-third of the population from which most of these people are now refugees living in neighboring countries.  According to The World’s Women/United Nations, 2000, women make up over 50 percent of refugees out of 11.5 million refugees around the world.   Therefore, we are able to assume that most of the refugees in Sierra Leone are women.  This war is a battle for the tremendous amount of natural resources, especially diamonds.  The war in Sierra Leone is being fought more over economic resources than over ideology and has laid the foundation for economic hardship and despair for women and their generations to come - all for diamonds and power.

Government
Britain was the previous colonial ruler; therefore, you can assume that the various forms of patriarchy are quite prevalent, including the invisible glass ceiling used in preventing women’s growth.  Women did not earn the right to vote until 1968, and, according to (Seager, 2002); women in the colonizing class had the right to vote almost always before the indigenous people.  The government in Sierra Leone is a constitutional democracy and received its independence on April 27, 1961.  Their first constitution was made on October 1, 1991, but has been amended several times since then.  The Chief of State and President is Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, and he was elected on March 29, 1996, and reelected on March 10, 1998.  The President has a Cabinet and a House of Representatives.  The legal system is based on English law and customary laws indigenous to local tribes.  Presidents are allowed tenure of two five year terms and achieve power only through election.  It still seems strange to me how a government can function honestly and properly when the President is both the Chief of State and the Head of Government.  Maybe that’s why the war lasted for eleven years and why there is so much corruption within the government!  There is still dislocation between men and women and the representation of women in government in Sierra Leone.  Only 9 percent of women were part of the elected officials in 2002 in Sierra Leone.  Women’s representation, on average, was highest in Western Europe (21%) and in developed countries outside Europe (18%), (The World’s Women/United Nations, 2000).