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U.S. Assistance Needed for Girls and Women Overlooked in the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reinteg

New York, NY

The Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children urges the United States government to increase its funding for programs to help girls and women who did not benefit equitably from the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) program in Sierra Leone. In addition, we encourage the United States to ensure that these gaps inform future demobilization efforts around the world so that girls and women may benefit to the same extent as boys and men from rehabilitation and reconstruction programs.

In some respects, the DDR in Sierra Leone was a success: it accomplished its principal goals of disarming and demobilizing thousands of ex-combatants on all sides of the conflict, including children, and it quickly increased security in Sierra Leone. However, the research of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, as documented in the report Precious Resources: Adolescents in the Reconstruction of Sierra Leone (published October 2002) found serious gaps in the DDR, especially relating to girls and women. These gaps, which have contributed to further child protection problems in post-conflict Sierra Leone, include the following:

• DDR was largely gender-blind and did not take into sufficient consideration the varied roles women and girls played among fighting forces. Thus, it did not adequately provide for their specific DDR-related concerns and rights. The percentage of girls and women who formally demobilized is far lower than the number we know were recruited.
• The DDR program channeled assistance to perceived "combatants" (fighters), ignoring the rest of the "soldiers" (e.g. porters, cooks, messengers, spies) and sex slaves, regardless of the latter’s centrality to the fighting forces’ operations, or the gravity of the abuse they received at the hands of their captors.
• Some young people, particularly girls, remain with their captors, a number of them as slaves, unable to leave without additional support.
• Reintegration programs for children and adolescents were under-funded and incomplete. Many young people complained that the programs they entered were poorly resourced and did not provide them with what was promised. This has created a sense of betrayal among many former child combatants, some of whom have threatened further violence.
• Reintegration programs were not in sync with the overwhelming economic and social recovery needs of Sierra Leone and of individual families. Livelihood skills acquired through DDR were often irrelevant to the recipients’ reality, hindering family reunification and community acceptance processes. Other children victimized during the war resented what they saw as the prioritization of support to former combatants, creating further divisions among young people.
• Numerous girls, women and boys failed by the DDR have become "street kids" and commercial sex workers. Some, including men also failed in the process, are turning to drugs and crime.

The Women’s Commission hopes that the U.S. government will increase its financial support to programs for the reintegration of girls and young women who spontaneously demobilized and did not receive support under Sierra Leone’s DDR program. Support should be given to holistic protection and assistance programs that build girls’ and women’s capacities, including by improving the quality and continuity of educational, skills training and employment opportunities.