Female Soldiers in Sierra Leone

The eleven-year civil war in Sierra Leone from 1991 to 2002 was incomprehensibly brutalit is estimated that half of all female refugees were raped and many thousands were killed. While the publicity surrounding sexual violence helped to create a general picture of women and girls as victims of the conflict, there has been little effort to understand female soldiers' involvement in, and experience of, the conflict.Female Soldiers in Sierra Leonedraws on interviews with 75 former female soldiers and over 20 local experts, providing a rare perspective on both the civil war and post-conflict development efforts in the country. Megan MacKenzie argues that post-conflict reconstruction is a highly gendered process, demonstrating that a clear recognition and understanding of the roles and experiences of female soldiers are central to both understanding the conflict and to crafting effective policy for the future.

Megan H. Mackenzie is a lecturer in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney and a faculty affiliate with the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard University.