Political conflict settlement in Sierra Leone. How political reconciliation influences political trust.

Abstract

Countries that end their civil conflict with a negotiated peace are said to have a higher chance of collapsing back to conflict, but third party enforcers, like UN peacekeeping missions, reduce this chance. Sierra Leone is a perfect example of a country that ended its brutal civil war with a negotiated peace, and had a large UN mission to monitor and if necessary enforce its peace. This research aimed to find whether political reconciliation could function as a supplementary internal process to foster the peace in Sierra Leone after the Lomé Accord, by increasing trust at three levels: 1. between the electorate and politicians, 2. between parties, and 3. within parties. The results show that political and civil society leaders in Sierra Leone presume that more contact and transformational leadership in reconciliatory efforts increase mutual trust at all three levels, but the actual effects are modest due to lack of commitment and a deep-rooted ethnic and regional political division in the country.