Sierra Leone Civil War

The Sierra Leone civil war occurred in two phases, between 1991-1996 and 1997-2001, with a large scale wanton of violence. Based on media reports, Mitton (2016) highlights the description of Sierra Leone as a ‘war torn’ country. Due to the cruelty of violence highlighted during the civil war – involvement of children in atrocities and infliction of amputations upon citizen – intensified the systematic complexity (routine) of the civil war. The Sierra Leone civil war has been described in different dimensions from political polarization, armed conflict to resource-based conflict. According to Mitton (2016) “…the case of Sierra Leone…was devoid of ethnic or religious cleavages, [as armed groups fought] with little concern for ideological and

Can the scenario of the Sierra Leone civil war be characterised as genocide or war crime? In relation to genocide and war crime cases discussed by Cobban, there is no direct definition of genocide provided by Cobban; she does not state whether the case of Mozambique or South Africa is an example of genocide; instead, she emphasizes the concept of atrocity to connect the case studies of her comparative analysis. In the same manner, the vicious nature of the Sierra Leone civil war executed by the genocidaires can be identified as atrocities. Also, this cruel violence highlighted in the Sierra Leone civil war illustrates the concept of ‘life force atrocity’ provided by Elis von Joeden-Forgey . The humiliation, dehumanization, and enforcement of sexual violence on women in front of their families do illuminate the concept of life force atrocity. The Human Rights Watch (2002) report explicates expatiates this atom of life force atrocity, it

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) (2016) highlights the practical definition of war crime as violations and conducts which endangers lives (death, injury, destruction or looting of property) and crevice of significant value (humiliation, violation of human rights, recruitment of underage children in armed forces) (The International Committee of the Red Cross, 2016). The Sierra Leone civil war was most especially noted for use of child soldiers in the perpetration of malicious crimes. Meanwhile, the atrocities identified in the Sierra Leone case study aligns with the systematic pattern of the stages of genocide provided by Gregory Stanton, President Genocide Watch. Stanton (2013) highlights the ten stages of genocide as classification, symbolization, discrimination, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, persecution, extermination and