The Gendered Economy of the Return Migration of Internally Displaced Women in Sierra Leone

Abstract

Focusing on the return home of victims of sexual violence in Sierra Leone, this article shows how the decade-long conflict resulted in transforming women's lives for the worse. Abuses led not only to discontinuities in their marital lives, but, subsequently, also to accusations of pollution. On returning home, therefore, the women were marginalized from their marriage-based rights of access to land. Their efforts to reverse this meant making a fresh start with men, including their husbands. This article, in outlining their culture-bound economic, personal and social challenges, underlines how the women perceive and seek to deal with the entangling webs of their subordination. Juxtaposing their strategies with women's universal human rights, it advocates their inclusion in the records, analysis and policy considerations of transformative development and peace processes.Cet article se penche sur le retour dans leurs communaute´s d'origine de femmes victimes de violences sexuelles pendant le conflit qui a affecte´le Sierra Leone pendant plus d'une de´cennie et sur les effets des violences subies sur leurs vies. Les abus dont elles ont e´te´victimes ont non seulement mene´a`des ruptures dans leurs vies conjugales, mais aussi a`des accusations de pollution sociale. Ces femmes ont donc e´te´marginalise´es, et prive´es de leurs droits lie´s au mariage, tel que l'acce`s a`la terre. Leurs efforts pour inverser cette tendance ont ne´cessite´l'e´tablissement de nouvelles relations avec les hommes, y compris avec leurs maris. Cet article de´crit les de´fis e´conomiques, personnels, et sociauxlie´s au contexte culturel local -auxquels ces femmes ont duˆfaire face, soulignant en particulier la manie`re dont elles perc¸oivent et cherchent a`ge´rer des relations complexes de de´pendance. En juxtaposant ces strate´gies avec les droits humain universels des femmes, cet article pre´conise leur prise en compte dans l'analyse et la de´termination des politiques de de´veloppement transformatiste, ainsi que des processus de re´solution de conflits.

Examining the Factors Associated With Sexual Violence Against Women in Sierra Leone: A Nationwide Cross-Sectional Study

“…This plan needs effective implementation and resources (human, technical, and financial). Also, issues around women’s rights should be addressed because the majority of Sierra Leonean women are marginalized from their marital rights of access to land, subordination, and violation of women’s universal human rights (Berhane-Selassie, 2009), as enshrined in the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), an international treaty adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly.…”