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Sierra Leone

Can the wounds of war be healed? Experimental evidence on reconciliation in Sierra Leone May 2018

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Summary

Wars destroy more than physical capital. When neighbours fight neighbours, this severs social ties, undermining social capital within the community. To recover from wars and rebuild social capital, many countries undertake truth and reconciliation efforts. We examine the consequences of one such programme in post-conflict Sierra Leone, which was designed and implemented by a non-governmental organisation called Fambul Tok.
The programme sets up forums in sections, or groups of 10 villages, where victims detail war atrocities and perpetrators confess to war crimes. We use random assignment to study its impact across 100 sections, surveying 2,200 individuals in these areas. The short-run effects are measured nine months after the forums are held, as part of the intervention. In a subsample of sections, we are also able to gauge longer-run effects, 31 months after the forums take place.
We find that the reconciliation programme had both positive and negative consequences.
On the one hand, the programme led to greater forgiveness of those who perpetrated violence during the civil war. Furthermore, respondents were found to be more trusting of ex-combatants, and social networks became stronger as people sought more help and advice from each other. Individuals residing in treated villages also became more community oriented in their behaviour: they joined more organisations like parent– teacher associations and contributed more to public goods.
On the other hand, the reconciliation process undermined psychological well-being and left lasting psychological damage. In particular, individuals in treated communities scored worse on three psychological measures: anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Moreover, all of these effects, both psychological and societal, persisted for nearly three years after the intervention. These results suggest that confronting past war experiences may prove traumatic by reopening old wounds.
Taken together, our findings show that reconciliation can promote forgiveness and bring community members together, while also reducing psychological well-being. Our findings suggest that reconciliation processes should be redesigned in ways that reduce their psychological costs, while retaining their positive societal benefits.