Pujehun and Bonthe, Fieldwork:

On Friday we left for Pujehun. The consultation took take place on Saturday at a small town by the name of Potoru. Originally, the forum was scheduled for a week ago, but the organizers postponed it, because they felt there were not enough representatives from some of the more remote chiefdoms in the district. A lot of human rights initiatives and/or development projects in Sierra Leone begin and end in Freetown, or perhaps they might even extend to some of the district capitals. They tend to measure their success by the numerical turn out, or the number of events and focus group discussions held. They distribute t-shirts, a square meal, perhaps a banner or two and are on their way. This has been a recurring problem, particularly since donor savvy civil society organizations are often able to market their projects when their “results” are easy to quantify. It’s pretty seductive if you are a donor, wouldn’t you say?

What I find incredibly exciting about Fambul Tok is that the organization is committed to serving precisely those communities that are so often underrepresented. The concept is to provide an open forum where dialogue and peace building can take place. In my opinion, Fambul Tok promotes an incredibly powerful idea, that essentially war-affected communities themselves are endowed with the necessary tools to mitigate and resolve local grievances. What is oftentimes missing, are the necessary resources to carry out local practices, or to bring outlying communities together. Placing these communities at the helm of the reconciliation process seems like a given, but this has not been the case in praxis.

In every community we have come across in our consultations the response to the ongoing work of the Special Court and the late Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been similar. In terms of depth and impact, despite the sheer amount of resources allocated, participants complained that these initiatives have failed to bring about reconciliation, particularly at grassroots levels. This is not to undermine the work of the court or the TRC, for a long time I have been a proponent of transitional justice, and ultimately the court’s most important legacy might be to create a buffer against impunity at all levels of society. However, one can make the case that the sheer amount of resources committed to the facilities, logistics, outreach, consultants and countless international staff, and above all DUE PROCESS in a country with a dearth in both physical and social infrastructure, a country with clearly limitless needs and limited means is ethically untenable. As for the TRC, its recommendations have yet to be implemented, but one can only really blame the lack of political will on the part of the previous, and perhaps the current government. Most importantly, rural communities in Sierra Leone, the same communities that bore the brunt of the conflict, have not embraced these initiatives.

(I will conclude my rant here… more to come about the actual consultations tomorrow…)

Tags: Reconciliation, Sierra Leone, Special Court