Blood Diamonds & Sierra Leone It is common to hear about war, terror, death and poverty, it is common knowledge to know their meanings, but what right does one have to say they know the reality of the words if they have never experienced it themselves, what does it really means to see the death of someone in a war; to know the terror of not knowing if you are to live to see another sunrise? Most do not know and are ignorant of the fact situations like this happens all around us; happening now even in different countries. More and more death, destruction and human rights being violated are happening in Sierra Leone because of its poor economic situation and the civil war which started over control of the blood diamonds; yet, the problem is being helped bit by bit from organizations and others. Death, destruction, and human rights being violated are happening in the country Sierra Leone even before the civil war started. Social structure and life in Sierra Leone is at a crisis state with its youth and women being treated unfairly without immunity by chiefs and leaders. The youth of the country always said ‘chiefs antagonize the youths’ (Archibald and Richards 7). The youth had then disrespected their youth leaders because the leaders would connive with chiefs to humiliate the youth (Archibald and Richards 6). Leaders should be righteous and kind not mocking their people, destroying their confidence and future hopes in order to make life more enjoyable for just themselves. “The elders were not really helping us… Even if you have only [a] minor problem, they exaggerate it… you, as a young man, cannot handle the case anymore and have to run away… as case [was] brought to the chief and I was accused. So I ran away and hid… Then I he... ... middle of paper ... ...ld help them out a lot. Then, like the everyday villagers of Sierra Leone who fight to protect their family and country from dying, one can take a stand to defend the weak and help this world a little at a time. Works Cited Archibald, Steven, and Paul Richards. “Converts to human rights? Popular debate about war and justice in rural Central Sierra Leone.” eLibrary. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2011. Collier, Paul. “The Market for Civil War.” Foreign Policy May-June 2003: 1-7. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 15 Feb. 2011. Gordon, Christine. “Rebel’s Best Friend.” BBC Focus on Africa Oct. 1999: 1-3. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 15 Feb. 2011. “Harvard Study Criticizes Child Labor in Diamond Mines.” Voice of America News 1 May 2009: 1-2. eLibrary. Web. 14 Feb. 2011. Hecht, David. “Sierra Leone Dispatch.” The New Republic 3 Nov. 1997: 1-3. eLibrary. Web. 14 Feb. 2011.
The Sierra Leone Civil War was a savage conflict that would rage for over a decade, claiming the lives of 300,000 and displacing 2.5 million civilians. The Bite of the Mango and A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier are firsthand accounts of children affected by the war. Mariatu Kamara had her hands severed and was left for dead. Ishmael Beah was conscripted by the government army to fight the rebel forces. Ishmael and Mariatu were both victims of the bloody Sierra Leone civil war, however their journeys to safety were vastly different.
McLaughlin, Kathleen. ?U.N. Jobs Easing Plight in Congo? New York Times 22 Jan. 1961: 8.
Being located in the west coast of Africa and between Guinea and Liberia, “Sierra Leone has an abundance of easily extractable diamonds”(BBC News). The diamonds had brought “encouragement” for violence in the country in 1991. Attacks of the Revolutionary “United Front (RUF) ,led by former army corporal Foday Sankoh”(Encyclopedia Britannica), were on government military and civilians. In response to a corrupt government, the RUF performed violent and terrorist acts that scarred many. “The RUF captured civilians and forced them to work”(Analyzing the Causes) in their army to gain control over Sierra Leone. The savages went a...
There was a war in Sierra Leone, Africa, from 1991 to 2002 where a rebel army stormed through African villages amputating and raping citizens left and right (“Sierra Leone Profile”). Adebunmi Savage, a former citizen of Sierra Leone, describes the reality of this civil war: In 1996 the war in Sierra Leone was becoming a horrific catastrophe. Children were recruited to be soldiers, families were murdered, death came easily, and staying alive was a privilege. Torture became the favorite pastime of the Revolutionary United Front rebel movement, which was against the citizens who supported Sierra Leone’s president, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.
Nothing good ever comes out of violence.Two wrongs never make it right, but cause harm. Contemporary society has not responded enough legacies of historical globalization. This essay will cover the following arguments such as residential schools, slavery and the Sierra Leone civil war.
Fiero, Gloria K. "Africa: Gods, Rulers, and the Social Order." The Humanistic Tradition. 6th ed.
The books, The Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara with Susan McClelland and A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, are memoirs about two young Sierra Leoneans lives before, during and after the Sierra Leone Civil War. The Sierra Leone Civil War was a conflict about governmental power in the country and it lasted many years. Both memoirs recount the way that the civil war affected their lives and determined their lives’ paths. Kamara and Beah, had similar experiences of living through the Sierra Leone Civil War yet their experiences were also different.
Raffaele, Paul. "Uganda: The Horror." Smithsonian (Vol. 35, No. 11). Feb. 2005: 90-99. SIRS Issues
Throughout time children have worked myriad hours in hazardous workplaces in order to make a few cents to a few dollars. This is known as child labor, where children are risking their lives daily for money. Today child labor continues to exist all over the world and even in the United States where children pick fruits and vegetables in difficult conditions. According to the article, “What is Child Labor”; it states that roughly 215 million children around the world are working between the ages of 5 and 17 in harmful workplaces. Child labor continues to exist because many families live in poverty and with more working hands there is an increase in income. Other families take their children to work in the fields because they have no access to childcare and extra money is beneficial to buy basic needs. Although there are laws and regulations that protect children from child labor, stronger enforcement is required because child labor not only exploits children but also has detrimental effects on a child’s health, education, and the people of the nation.
During the author’s life in New York and Oberlin College, he understood that people who have not experienced being in a war do not understand what the chaos of a war does to a human being. And once the western media started sensationalizing the violence in Sierra Leone without any human context, people started relating Sierra Leone to civil war, madness and amputations only as that was all that was spoken about. So he wrote this book out o...
Fambul Tok (“Family Talk”) is a face-to-face community or publicly owned program that brings together victims and perpetrators of the violence in Sierra Leone’s civil war through ceremonies that are rooted in the indigenous traditions of the villages that were affected by the war (Rich, 2013). It provides Sierra Leonean inhabitants with the opportunity to come to terms with what occurred during the war, to experience healing, to dialogue, and to chart a new and peaceful path forward – together (Rich, 2013).
The war was worsened by the wealthy minerals in the ground and the influence of the mineral was strengthened by the fear and displacement the war caused. The intertwining of these two destructive forces is seen in the story Salima is told by a man who bought her. In this he tells of a man who stuffed”...the coltan into his mouth to keep the soldiers from stealing his hard work, and they split his belly open with a machete”(31). Not only does this story show the harsh conditions the men are exposed to in war, but also it further demonstrates the hold coltan has on the minds of those who live in the Congo. The want for coltan leads to the destruction of the community and individual identities of those involved as it perpetuates a cycle of war that damages men, induces violence against women, and ultimately creates a cycle of lost identity.
Magno, A., (2001) Human Rights in Times of Conflict: Humanitarian Intervention . Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, 2 (5). [online] Available from: [Accessed 2 March 2011]
Lindemann, Stefan. 2011. “Inclusive Elite Bargains and the Dilemma of Unproductive Peace: A Zambian Case Study.” Third World Quarterly 32 (10): 1843–1869.
...econd African Writers Conference, Stockholm, 1986. Ed. Kirsten Holst Petersen. Upsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1998. 173-202.