Community Building through Peace Education: Sierra Leone

Weston J¹*, Murray M²*

1. Curriculum Corporation, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
2. Plan Sierre Leone, Woking, Surrey, United Kingdom

“We had peace and then we had war and, God Willing we will have peace again” (Participant in the first workshop)

Sierra Leone has suffered a ten-year civil war which only ceased in 2000. Post conflict Sierra Leone is characterized by loss of life, displacement, trauma and severely damaged government infrastructure. Since 1991, more than 20,000 lives have been lost as a direct result of the conflict, and related insecurity has caused the internal displacement of an estimated 1.2 million people, approximately 25% of the population.

In the education sector the conflict created many significant and debilitating issues including the destruction of the school system, the trauma suffered by children and the wider community, the need to re-integrate former combatants, who are themselves children, and the challenge of understanding the past and re-building a secure society.

In this paper, we will describe a World Bank project to develop an integrated (years 1 to 9) peace education curriculum for the Sierra Leone Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MOEST). In particular, the paper will discuss the need to work with notions of active human agency in a country comprising both Christian and Moslem belief systems. The implications for peace education curriculum developers will be explored as is the notion of developing shared partnerships and values with institutions of the state, in restoring civil society.

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