Sierra Leone's peacekeeping experience

In the latest edition of the RUSI Journal Peter Albrecht (DIIS) and Cathy Haenlein (RUSI) explore the role of Sierra Leone as a peacekeeping contributing country. An ever-growing demand for troops to serve in ever-more complex environments has led to enhanced interest in the incentives and constraints facing newcomers to peacekeeping. Increasingly, these include post-war states from the global South such as Sierra Leone. By examining the case of Sierra Leone, the paper stresses the need for a full understanding of the specific experience of conflict and recovery, and the relevance of national identity, financial capacity, international politics and domestic crises. Due to the ongoing ebola crisis, Sierra Leone’s battalion that was deployed in Somalia in early 2013 was not replaced in 2014, and the paper argues that this may have significant and destabilizing political consequences in the domestic sphere.

For the broader context of Sierra Leone’s contribution to peacekeeping, please see Securing Sierra Leone, 1997-2013: Defence, Diplomacy and Development in Action, which can be downloaded here (subscription required) and bought here (Taylor and Francis) or here (Amazon).