Sierra Leone
Created in the late 18th century by freed slaves from the British colonies in the West Indies, Sierra Leone gained independence in 1961. The West African nation, bordered by Liberia and Guinea, has the potential to generate wealth from the country’s diamond mines, but at this point, two-thirds of the population depends on subsistence farming for income, and the diamond profits have been used to fund armed conflict. The majority of Sierra Leoneans are Muslim, 10 percent are Christian, and a third are affiliated with indigenous, tribal religions.

Sources:
Background Note: Sierra Leone. U.S. Department of State. September, 2006. www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5475.htm“Former Liberian President in the Hague for Trial.” Simons, Marlise. The New York Times. June 21, 2006.

Sierra Leone. BBC Country Profiles.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/country_profiles/1061561.stm

Sierra Leone. CIA World Factbook. Updated February 8, 2007. https://cia.gov/cia//publications/factbook/geos/sl.html

The War
Sierra Leone’s civil war (1991–2002) began as a conflict between the elite ruling class, centered in Freetown, and rebel groups recruited from the nation’s persistently poor rural population. What started as an idealistic insurrection against a corrupt one-party government quickly degenerated into a movement dominated by young, impoverished men seeking opportunities to loot the countryside and enrich themselves.

The Revolutionary United Front (RUF), led by former army officer Foday Sankoh and backed by Liberia’s controversial leader Charles Taylor, stood out from other rebel groups for its policy of deliberately and cruelly targeting civilians. Many of the atrocities were carried out by child soldiers who had been forcibly recruited by the RUF.

In May 1997, the RUF, in conjunction with Johnny Paul Koroma’s Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), successfully overthrew then-President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. A West African intervention force responded by entering Sierra Leone in February 1998, expelling Koroma’s AFRC, arresting Foday Sankoh and reinstating Kabbah. In January of the following year, the RUF and AFRC retaliated with an exceptionally brutal attack.

In July 1999, a peace pact was signed by the reinstated government of President Kabbah and the RUF, but an estimated 15,000 RUF gunmen refused to disarm and retained control of territory that included wealthy diamond areas. The UN sent a peacekeeping force, and in January 2002, the war was officially declared over.

The disarmament and rehabilitation of 70,000 combatants continued over the next two years. With pressure from the civilian population, the UN agreed to set up a war crimes court, and trials began in June 2004. Liberian president Charles Taylor, under international scrutiny for his role in the war in Sierra Leone, fled into exile in Nigeria in 2003, but was arrested in 2006 and brought to Sierra Leone for trial. Shortly thereafter, security concerns necessitated the relocation of Taylor’s trial to the Hague. While his trial was set to begin in April 2007, it has been rescheduled due to a request by the defense for additional time for preparation. Now the trial is scheduled for June 4th, 2007, during which opening statements by the prosecution will occur, followed by an 18-day adjournment. The former Liberian president is indicted on 11 counts of various human rights violations including mass murder, rape and the use of child soldiers.

In the May 2002 national elections, Kabbah’s Sierra Leonean People’s Party won a majority in parliament. The last UN peacekeepers withdrew from Sierra Leone at the end of 2005, although civilian UN officials remain to assist with the transition toward stability. According to an announcement made by President Kabbah in December 2006, 90 percent of the nation’s debt will be forgiven by international creditors as Sierra Leone attempts to rebuild an economy and infrastructure left in ruins by the war.

Kabbah is required by law to step down at the end of his five-year term; elections are scheduled for July 28th, 2007, a decision that was made early on to express the dedication of the Kabbah administration to good governance. Observers expect the elections of 2007 to serve as a test of the nation’s political stability and the success of international intervention.

Sources:

Background Note: Guinea. U.S. Department of State. January, 2007.
www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2824.htm

Background Note: Sierra Leone. U.S. Department of State. September, 2006. www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5475.htm

BBC News: “Sierra Leone Sets 2007 Poll Date”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5244662.stm

“Former Liberian President in the Hague for Trial.” Simons, Marlise. The New York Times. June 21, 2006.

“Liberia’s Uneasy Peace.” PBS’ Newshour with Jim Lehrer.
www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/africa/liberia/index.html

Sierra Leone. BBC Country Profiles.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/country_profiles/1061561.stm

Sierra Leone. CIA World Factbook. Updated February 8, 2007. https://cia.gov/cia//publications/factbook/geos/sl.html

Special Court for Sierra Leone.
www.sc-sl.org/

TRIAL
www.trial-ch.org/en/trial-watch/profile/db/facts/charles_taylor_98.html

Refugees
Sierra Leone’s civil war displaced more than 2 million people, about a third of the population. At least 50,000 people died in the fighting and an estimated 100,000 were mutilated.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians from Sierra Leone found refuge in Guinea, primarily in camps run by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), including Dakagbe, Farmoria, Kalia, Sembakounya and Boreah. With a tentative peace holding in Sierra Leone, and refugees coming to Guinea from conflicts elsewhere in Western Africa, the UNHCR has been actively repatriating Sierra Leoneans from the camps.

By mid-2004 UNHCR reported that fewer than 2,000 Sierra Leonean refugees remained in Guinea. Those who chose to stay will be integrated into Guinean society and will no longer receive UNHCR aid.

In 2000, Sierra Leone’s parliament officially established an independent Truth and Reconciliation Commission. With a mandate to create an impartial record of abuses and violations of human rights, it has conducted public hearings and taken testimony from more than 1,500 victims.

The chair of the commission, Bishop Joseph Christian Humper, described the work of his organization as “highly significant for the healing of a traumatized nation.” He said “the Report is all-inclusive in that it does not only expose perpetrators and identify victims but also serves as a mirror through which all Sierra Leoneans can and, indeed, are encouraged to examine their own roles in the conflict.” See the Resources section of this guide for a link to the full report.

Sources:

Background Note: Guinea. U.S. Department of State. January, 2007.
www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2824.htm

Guinea. BBC Country Profiles.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/country_profiles/1032311.stm

Sierra Leone. CIA World Factbook. Updated February 8, 2007. https://cia.gov/cia//publications/factbook/geos/sl.html

Sierra Leone. UNHCR Country Information. UNHCR.
www.unhcr.org/country/sle.html

 What the Future Holds for Sierra Leone-Directors Statement:

Africa remains a mysterious and misunderstood place to many Americans, as it was for both of us before we visited the continent for the first time in 1993 as part of a study abroad program from Middlebury College where we met. It is a cradle of civilization and home to incredible biodiversity, yet it lives with the ghost of slavery and is suffering from modern-day disease, famine and civil war.

We each had our own trepidations as we approached our trips, which were re-enforced by media coverage that seems to tell only horror stories from that part of the world. But our fears were misplaced and we each came back with only positive experiences. We had made good friends, learned a lot about ourselves and had fallen in love with the music of the countries we visited.

Returning home, however, we were faced only with questions focused on the perceived dangers and poverty that we encountered. There was a general distrust of anything positive we would say. In many ways this was the seed, planted more than a decade ago, that brought us to make “Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars.”

We are both musicians and knew from our earliest discussions that music would be our entry point to tell a story that illuminated a more human understanding of the place and people. Music is a universal language that speaks in emotion; it transcends culture, language and almost any other gulf that we create and define ourselves by. We knew we could not look away from the modern tragedies plaguing the continent, so instead we moved towards the idea of focusing on musicians and giving voice to individuals who had been affected. The refugee emergency in West Africa, fueled by prolonged wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia, was compelling because of the incredible size and cross-section of the population that was affected. 

In the summer of 2002, after spending a month playing music in refugee camps in Guinea we met ‘The Refugee All Stars Band’ as they rehearsed in a mud hut in Sembakounya Refugee Camp set deep in the Guinean countryside. During our travels we had met many talented musicians with compelling stories, but we felt a special connection to the band from our first meeting and jam session. They were diverse in age and character, from a roguish rhythm guitar player in his 50s to an orphaned teenage rapper, but they had a common bond born through a collective history of war, loss and displacement. Their love and support for each other made them a family. 

From our very first interviews we knew their story would not only be a celebration of what is beautiful about Africa, but what is beautiful about the human spirit – the strength to overcome adversity, the ability to forgive – and when you’ve found hope, the desire to share it with others. 
This is our first film and from the beginning, we would joke that Reuben (the band’s leader) knew what we were doing there more than we did. He often said, half seriously, that the band had been writing and practicing music just waiting for us to arrive. They immediately recognized this film as an opportunity for their stories and music to be heard abroad, and this project quickly turned into what could best be described as a creative collaboration between the production team and the band.

We became very good friends with ‘The Refugee All Stars,’ a relationship that continues to this day. We believe that this closeness translates into a film that helps to create an emotional connection between the viewer and these musicians whose circumstance and culture might easily let them be dismissed as “different” from us.

We hope that the experience of “Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars” will resonate for the viewer far beyond the scope of one band, one country, or one war. Around the world, senseless conflicts continue to rip apart the lives of innocent civilians but it can be difficult to feel real compassion when tragedy is seen from a distance. Telling the story of ‘The Refugee All Stars’ is our way of closing that distance and helping us to look past differences and embrace instead our common humanity. The idea that one life is worth less than another is at the root of much of the world’s woes. This film is an attempt in our own way to dispel this dangerous notion.

We are deeply grateful to all the members of the band and to their families for being so open with us and for having the courage to share some of the painful details of their lives with the world. The band has told us that it has been empowering to present themselves in the way that they wish to be seen – not as helpless victims, but as talented, loving, and ambitious people who refuse to accept the injustices around them. We have come to see them as speaking not only for Sierra Leone’s refugees, but for persecuted, underprivileged and forgotten people worldwide.

We feel very lucky to have met ‘The Refugee All Stars’ and cherish all that they have taught us. We are better people for having met them and we look forward to sharing their story with the world.