(En)gendering post-conflict agency: Women’s experiences of the ‘local’ in Sierra Leone

Date01 December 2021
Published date01 December 2021
AuthorLaura S Martin
DOI10.1177/00108367211000798
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/00108367211000798
Cooperation and Conflict
2021, Vol. 56(4) 454 –471
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00108367211000798
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(En)gendering post-conflict
agency: Women’s experiences
of the ‘local’ in Sierra Leone
Laura S Martin
Abstract
This article explores how female agency and experience manifest in a local Sierra Leonean
peacebuilding program known as Fambul Tok. While post-conflict literature, namely transitional
justice and peacebuilding, has become more critical in recent years, there is still a tendency to
generalize both the ‘local’ and ‘women’. There is, however, much greater scope to delineate how
local programs shape and are shaped by women in these settings. While Fambul Tok was, at least
theoretically, meant to better align with the needs and priorities of Sierra Leoneans, including women,
the empirics suggest that female engagement ultimately results in a wide range of outcomes, which
are not necessarily more ‘empowering’, ‘transformative’ or ‘good’ than international programs.
Drawing on original empirical data from Fambul Tok, this article highlights the complexity of
gendered power relations within these programs and how individual women have multiple, diverse
and contested forms of agency and experiences within local settings.
Keywords
Agency, Fambul Tok, local, peacebuilding, Sierra Leone, women
Introduction
There has, in recent years, been a critical engagement with literature on post-conflict
reconstruction and reconciliation processes, particularly peacebuilding and transitional
justice. Scholars have interrogated some of the foundational assumptions underlying
these disciplines and concepts, while simultaneously employing a range of theoretical
frameworks to better understand particular dynamics within these processes and pro-
grams. Two key strands that have been developed in this critical literature are feminist
theory and engagements with the ‘local’. There is, however, little engagement about
female experience and agency within the ‘local’. Combining these two lines of critique,
along with new empirical data, is where this article’s contribution lies.
There is some discussion about how prioritizing the ‘local’ or local approaches can
reinforce gender imbalances (Branch, 2011; Friedman, 2015) and some acknowledgement
that peacebuilding programs (local or otherwise) are inevitably the subject of pre-existing
Corresponding author:
Laura S Martin, Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield, Upper Hanover St, Broomhall,
Sheffield S3 7QY, UK.
Email: thelauramartin@gmail.com
1000798CAC0010.1177/00108367211000798Cooperation and ConflictMartin
research-article2021
Article
Martin 455
social, political and economic structures (Millar, 2016; Obradovic-Wochnik, 2018). Yet,
there is limited empirical analysis of how these local programs are shaped by, and as a
result of, women. In fact, much of the literature often refers to how these processes and
programs help societies move past violent experiences and tend to generalize the very
people (i.e. ‘locals’ and ‘women’) they are seeking to analyze. These processes do not
always acknowledge the highly individual and often diverse nature of post-conflict experi-
ences and agency. Drawing on empirical analysis of a local peacebuilding organization in
Sierra Leone, and focusing on women in rural communities, whose experiences are often
marginalized, this article engages with critical, particularly feminist, literature, to better
understand the diversity and fluidity of female roles in local programs.
Feminist scholarship, generally speaking, explores the particular effect of processes on
women. When used to engage with transitional justice and peacebuilding, this literature
provides nuanced approaches to post-conflict discourses, namely a ‘textured understanding
of . . . power relations’ (McLeod, 2015: 48), signalling particular elements, such as personal
experiences in the context of societal structures of gender inequality (McLeod and O’Reilly,
2019). As Christine Sylvester points out, women’s experiences and agency within war are
crucial to understanding how war itself plays out (2013: 1). I will argue that this framework
can be extrapolated to the post-conflict setting as well. More specifically, the article will
examine how gendered experiences and forms of agency can act as a lens to ‘zoom in’ on
particular spaces (Björkdahl and Selimovic, 2015) in order to highlight the often individual
and diverse nature of women in local programs.
This article will examine these gendered dynamics through the interactions of a Sierra
Leonean peacebuilding organization called Fambul Tok. It began operating in 2008 by a
Sierra Leonean human rights activist named John Caulker. The program design was largely
developed through a partnership between Caulker and an American, Libby Hoffman,
whose organization, Catalyst for Peace, was Fambul Tok’s primary donor. This small
organization had approximately 20–30 core staff who were all Sierra Leonean and worked
in six of the 14 districts (at that time).1 Following on from broader trends in the early- to
mid-2000s, Fambul Tok sought to mobilize cultural and traditional mechanisms to facilitate
reconciliation ceremonies for rural Sierra Leonean communities. The program attempted
to address the perceived justice and reconciliation gap left by international peacebuilding
and transitional justice processes, namely the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) and
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), who were critiqued for not adequately
incorporating local needs and priorities. One of the key gaps the organization highlighted
was in relation to female victims of the 11-year conflict (1991–2002), who could not or
chose not to participate in other transitional justice and peacebuilding mechanisms. Due to
the fact that Fambul Tok was run by and for Sierra Leoneans, there is an underlying
assumption that cultural considerations were taken into account. This, however, does not
mean that women were also part of such considerations. In fact, women’s experiences and
the ways they employed agency in relation to Fambul Tok were diverse. Using feminist
frameworks to analyze these experiences within a local setting, I will illustrate how various
power dynamics played out within Fambul Tok’s programs. Sometimes women’s roles
reinforced existing patriarchal structures, while other times they demonstrated different
forms of agency – whether in the form of action or inaction, speaking or silence – to shape
the program for individual and communal preferences.

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