A village-up view of Sierra Leone’s civil war and reconstruction

Sierra Leone is one of a number of states that underwent a period of civil war and collapse after the end of the Cold War. This article offers a bottom-up review of the post-war reconstruction of the Sierra Leone state. The paper points that the impact of the civil war on human security and governance in the rural areas was devastating, yet rural communities remained intact. In this respect, the pre-war traditional leadership structures continued informally to provide a degree of governance response. As a result, the author believes that the social contracts between society and the state, communities and their chiefs, and chiefs with the center, have been re-established in Sierra Leone, and especially in the rural areas. In addition, the paper concludes the following: • it is clear that governance does not disappear when the state collapses, especially the structures of local and rural governance • yet, the consequence is that a post-conflict state has much more need for decentralisation - as well as possibilities for achieving it Accordingly, the document argues that Sierra Leone government and its development partners will need to address the following issues: • the ability of the chieftaincy to undergo changes that would make it more compatible with the democratic ethos that has grown from the war • the tension between the chiefs and the district councils, which seems a potential source of weakened legitimacy • the unclarity of the institutional boundaries of the newly reconstructed multilayered governance system • the insecurity of the reform of police sector, and the needs to reinforce it.