Sierra Leone

Seeds of Civil War

It was during the 1970s that a sharp divide became noticeable between those who had benefited significantly from independence, and the villagers in the countryside for whom life had changed little in the last 100 years. There, tribal bonds resulted in a quite different society with elders helping mothers coping with newborn children, and villages contributing collectively to support children, often helping sponsor brighter children to go to study in Freetown.

After a military coup in 1992, the relative stability of Sierra Leone society collapsed. Civil war later engulfed Sierra Leone from 1991 to 2002, resulting in horrific human rights abuses, mass rape, mutilation and murder. This caused a collapse in the society in many villages as many fled the fighting, which also led to a breakdown in the medical system with doctors and midwives no longer able to operate in rural areas in safety, and often in the capital as well. The result was an infant mortality rate that rose to 154.43 per 1,000 live births, now the second highest in the world (after Angola), and a maternal mortality rate at about 2 per 100 births, the highest in the world. It is also worth noting that the fertility rate of 6.08 children per woman is the 12th highest in the world. United Nations peacekeepers remained in the country until 2005, and the country [Page 1120]held democratic elections in 2007; however, it is still beset with high levels of corruption and violence.

A Sierra Leone woman holds rice from a harvest in June 2007. Mothers have been particularly hard-hit by recent civil war.

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) prevalence in Sierra Leone in 2007 was 1.7 percent for adults aged 15–49. As of 2007, about 55,000 people in Sierra Leone were living with HIV/AIDS, of which 30,000 were females age 15 and older. Abortion is legal in Sierra Leone only to save the woman's life or to preserve her mental of physical health. In 2000, only 4.3 percent of women reported using contraceptives, and in 2005, only 20.4 percent of women aged 15–24 reported condom use in their last instance of high-risk sex. In 2007, the population included about 350,000 orphans aged 0–17.

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