Why have international disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programmes ignored the role of women as soldiers in war? This article finds that the ideal of the female war victim has limited the ways in which the needs of female combatants are addressed by DDR programmes in Sierra Leone. This error has sacrificed both gender equality and programme effectiveness. Men and masculinity are securitised post-conflict while women – even women soldiers – are desecuritised and, in effect, de-emphasised. Programme design must consider the breadth of female combatants’ active participation in conflict in order to understand their needs, and must avoid entrenching gender inequality by emphasising a return to ‘normal’.
The exclusion and silencing of women in the post-conflict context in Sierra Leone is representative of the systematic and historical omission of women from post-conflict development activities. There is an assumption that women and girls are victims caught up in the fray of a male-dominated conflict. Otherwise it is assumed that they were left behind by programmes that probably would have benefited them in the same way they benefited male soldiers. These explanations ignore how socially constructed ideas about the roles and place of women and men during war impact policies. They also affect the ability to accept and acknowledge violent female soldiers with agency.
The ideal of the female war victim has limited the ways in which female combatants are addressed by DDR programmes in Sierra Leone.
- Interviews with female soliders in Sierra Leone not only demonstrate that they were actively involved in combat, but also shed light on the complex reasons why women did not participate in DDR. Very few women, for instance, indicated that they thought the DDR would be helpful for them.
- Even for the few women and girls who were recognised as playing an active role in Sierra Leone’s conflict, a variety of titles were constructed to avoid calling them soldiers including: ‘camp followers’, ‘sex slaves’, ‘domestic slaves’, or ‘girls and women associated with the fighting forces’.
- Organisations in Sierra Leone largely treated the reintegration of women and girls as a social process, a returning to ‘normal’ – meaning talking to communities and families about the need to take women and girls back.
Real attention to women’s and girls’ experiences would produce a more complicated understanding of women and of conflict. Such complicated notions of both women and the conflicts they participate in would bring new solutions and new questions to policy analysis in post-conflict reconstruction.
- It is crucial to disarm, demobilise, and reintegrate female former combatants on the terms of their needs and their experiences in the conflict
- The needs of former female combatants cannot be determined solely by understanding the ways in which they have been victimised by the conflict. It is also important to consider the ways in which they have participated in the conflict as agents, as supporters, and as soldiers.
- Securitisation in post-conflict reconstruction and development is selective and political. The ultimate success of peace-building efforts relies on appropriate recognition of security threats and peace potential.
- By returning girls to a ‘normal’ environment, DDR processes risk entrenching gender inequality. A truly progressive or developmental post-conflict reconstruction programme would include more radical change in the area of women’s status in society.
