Creating security for lasting peace in West Africa
Photo credit: Rosalind Hanson-Alp.
Strengthening Citizens' Security
Security is essential for any country’s development yet security matters are often shrouded in secrecy. Much of Conciliation Resources' community peacebuilding work in West Africa over the past decade has involved security issues.
Our pilot Strengthening Citizens' Security project in Sierra Leone in 2007-08 aimed to make the security sector more accessible and accountable to ordinary people.
It focused on Kenema and Kailahun districts - areas with poor security and few opportunities to make positive contributions to peace.
We worked in partnership with the Mano River Women’s Peace Network, Search for Common Ground/Talking Drum Studios, and the Centre for Development and Security Analysis (CEDSA).
The idea was to improve communication and relationships between urban and rural community activists and representatives, and with security sector personnel. We brought people together through dialogue sessions and helped community groups get involved in decisions affecting their security.
In May 2008 we hosted a sub-regional conference in Freetown to share experiences and lessons learned with the other Mano River Union countries of Liberia and Guinea. Participants identified key challenges in sub-regional security policies and called for more cooperation between the security sector and civil society.The event was deemed a great success by those who attended and received wide media coverage. It also gave our partners and ordinary civilians from Kenema and Kailuhun a chance to have their say for the first time in such a forum. Some of the issues discussed were later raised by the Office of National Security representative at the Mano River Union High-level Summit in Monrovia, Liberia in May.
Read the summary report (181kb pdf) or full conference report and recommendations (356kb pdf download).
We produced a series of downloadable newsletters with our partners called the Peace, security and development update to analyse relevant security issues in Sierra Leone and the Mano River sub-region. Updates in 2008 focused on women in the security sector, and youth and security issues. More...
Project background
The project was supported by Britain's Department for International Development and ran mid-2007 until August 2008. Early project activities centred on Sierra Leone's 2007 elections and formed part of our work with partners to reduce election-related conflict. CEDSA organized two roundtable discussions on the elections, attended by the National Electoral Commission, the formal security sector, including the Deputy Minister of Defence, Office of National Security, the UN and the International Military Assistance Training Team (IMATT), academics and trade union representatives.
