How Liberal Peacebuilding May Be Failing Sierra Leone

Abstract

The concept of security is the driver for peacebuilding and development, as well as social and political change in post-conflict countries. A review and analysis of three key government documents indicates that, in Sierra Leone, securitisation discourse is embedded in both the political economy discourse of the state and in the popular imagination. The Security Sector Review equates security and peace while the country's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper sees security as a driver for change. The 2006 Work Plan of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security illustrates the extent to which the work of ministries is security-based. Sierra Leone's political economy of post-conflict peacebuilding favours macro-economic security that is to trickle down into social and political peace. Discourse analysis shows that, framed within security parameters, post-conflict peacebuilding is meant to have an effect of ‘trickle-down peace’ that in effect constrains transformation with the potential for facilitating conditions for a return to conflict.

Main article text

Introduction

The centrality of security in peacebuilding is evident in the path taken by Sierra Leone, a country reeling from the legacy of the 1991–2002 conflict. The effects of the conflict are visible in the government's securitised political economy discourse. Although such overwhelming concern for security appears to be an adequate context-specific approach, the security focus is more a product of the powerful dynamic of liberalism that drives the contemporary development and peacebuilding discourse of international post-conflict assistance. This peacebuilding discourse is problematic. This article will examine the effect that the liberal peacebuilding security agenda has on the political economy of Sierra Leone, and thus on the government's articulation of the intersection of economic, development and security priorities. To that end, the article will analyse three key documents of the Government of Sierra Leone: the Security Sector Review, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper and the 2006 Workplan of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security. The research draws on interviews with, and personal communications from, respondents in civil society and donor organisations, national government and the UN system in 2005 and 2006.

Analysis of the documents shows that government discourse assumes that security at the macro-economic level will bring peace to the community and social level, a process which can be called ‘trickle-down peace’. Trickle-down peace is a discourse which may already be failing Sierra Leone. The liberal peacebuilding strategies that focus on creating an international player out of Sierra Leone continue to feed the unresolved roots of the conflict, hinder security and keep the Sierra Leonean state fragile. Sierra Leone may no longer be a failed state in the midst of conflict, but by waiting for peace to trickle down from the macro-economic to the social realm, the country will remain a fragile state on the brink of failing again. Trickle-down peace will make peacebuilding difficult.

This analysis of the three documents reviewed in this article is performed from a political economy perspective of ‘who gets what in the international economic and political system’ (Jackson and Sorensen 2003, p. 175). As the focus of the analysis is on language and discourse, an assessment of the effectiveness and quality of, or need for, the strategies themselves is beyond the scope of the article, as is a full examination of the concept of the marketisation of security, important though it undoubtedly is.

Trickle-Down Peace: Discourse Analysis and Political Economy

This article will explore, through discourse analysis of narratives of political economy, what the Government of Sierra Leone's strategies for post-conflict peacebuilding say about security and fragility. Discourse analysis helps us to consider how language is used to conceive of, and build security in, Sierra Leone within the global liberal environment. The focus on three selected documents follows the definition of discourse as ‘an interrelated set of texts, and the practices of their production, dissemination, and reception that brings an object into being' and the practice of discourse analysis to explore ‘how texts are made meaningful through these processes and also how they contribute to the constitution of social reality by making meaning’ (Phillips and Hardy 2002, pp. 3–4, emphasis in the original). Language, writes Gee (2005, p. 10), has ‘a magical property’ as it adapts to fit the situation in which it is used while ‘how we speak or write creates that very situation’.

Applying discourse analysis to the political economy of post-conflict Sierra Leone opens a window into how a transformation to peace is being conceived and the kind of political economy that is being created. There is an important synergy between discourse analysis and political economy: political economy is itself a tool to understand change arising from the manner in which political institutions and the political environment interact with policies and behaviours of economic exchanges. Analysis will reveal a discourse that economic security, interpreted as peace, is intended to trickle down as social, political and cultural security.

Trickle-down peace is a variant of trickle-down economics for post-conflict states. Trickle-down economics assumes that economic growth flows from top to bottom, and that economic incentives and advantages at the macro level will have a positive effect at the micro level. That is, that the benefits of growth will eventually ‘trickle down even to the poor’ (Stiglitz 2007, p. 582, emphasis in the original). Although the model is no longer central to contemporary policy debates, the ideas and policies persist in what Stiglitz (2007, p. 583) calls ‘“trickle-down plus” where growth is necessary and almost sufficient for reducing poverty – implying that the best strategy is simply to focus on growth’.

Trickle-down peace is the assumption that a lack of violence (negative peace), an improved macro-economic framework (‘economic peace’), and large-scale goals such as increased food production will flow down to the community and individual level as increased personal physical, economic, and even food, security. Trickle-down peace discourse presents macro-economic security as the means to create a broad peace in the same manner in which structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s identified benefits to supply-side macro-economic indicators as the mechanism to create broad well-being (jobs, wealth and health) for populations. However, just as the benefits of the 1980s structural adjustment programmes did not flow downward, but rather trickled down few benefits – if at all – to the population as a whole, so the liberal peacebuilding strategies of openness to private investment (foreign or not), securitising social, economic and political problems, and self-sufficient food production will not automatically lead to reduced poverty, durable peace and food security for all. Peace is not a linear process nor does it follow economic logic.

In the liberal peace context, increased security and economic growth can, and do, improve the lives of populations that have lived with years of conflict and poverty. Even Aghio and Bolton's economic modelling of trickle-down growth finds that ‘the trickle-down mechanism is not sufficient to reach an efficient distribution of resources, even in the best possible scenario’ (Aghio and Bolton 1997, p. 152). Instead, permanent redistributions must be set up for any benefits to reach the poor (Aghio and Bolton 1997, p. 152). However, the prioritisation of development as a macro-economic improvement dependent on foreign direct investment and increased donor funds minimises efforts for redistribution and for social and political peace.

The situation of Sierra Leone shows that there is no true direct link between the macro-economic improvements (economic peace) and social and political stability (social and political peace), exposing the intended impact as a sham in the same vein as trickle-down economics. Stiglitz (2007, p. 582) argues that it ‘is not true that “a rising tide lifts all boats”. Sometimes, a quickly rising tide, especially when accompanied by a storm, dashes weaker boats against the shore, smashing them to smithereens’. The rising tide of increased GDP does not lift all boats, whether it is in economics or peacebuilding.

This article will show that emphasis on security is being used as a tool to establish an environment where investor and business interests are safe to create a market that may not benefit the people it is meant to assist. Pugh (2006, p. 149) argues that foreign direct investment ‘appears to make little impact on growth varying accordingly to the level of repatriated profits’. Economic growth through direct investment is a questionable direct goal for security sector reform, yet it has become one. As a result, not only has peacebuilding been securitised, but the concept of security has been marketised. Security can be ‘bought’: if the gains of increased macroeconomic growth are to roll into social and political peace that will create security, then economic actions can effectively create, or buy, security. The concept of trickle-down peace brings these two assumptions together.

An Analysis of Security and Peace

This article's approach to security and peace is informed by analyses of the political economy of conflict, and the political economy of post-conflict and peacebuilding. It draws on, and is supported by, three perspectives on the mechanisms of the fluidity between conflict and post-conflict (the securitisation of development; the liberal peace project; and security sector reform as a tool of securitisation), which are useful tools in the study of conflict and post-conflict states.

Analyses of the political economy of conflict put forth by Collier, Reno and Kaldor argue that profit-making from a position of access and control of resources endangers the well-being of the state, particularly when transactions take place outside the state's regulatory framework (Reno 1998, Kaldor 1999, Collier 2000, Collier et al. 2003). Economic gains and resources are identified as incentives for conflict, and as disincentives for peace, while success in current wars is deemed to be founded on establishing a positive political economy of war as the best available option (Richani 2002, pp. 3–4). Economic mismanagement, weak governance and external conditionalities are identified as causes of conflict and the frailty of states (Williams 2004, Pugh 2006).

For their part, analyses of the political economy of post-conflict are largely conceptualised ‘in terms of radical socio-economic change – away from pre-capitalist, statist or command economies and toward free markets open to penetration by the global capitalist system’ (Pugh et al. 2004, p. 2). However, the recipe contained in the current liberal approach to economic growth, and the emphasis on it, ‘may itself contain the seeds of continuing insecurity’ (Duffield 1998, p. 10). The liberal market-led system is said to promote peace; yet, with its message to ‘participate or perish’, it may fall just short of blackmail in ensuring compliance with an international system of global inequity.

This article analyses three core assumptions of the standard peacebuilding approach to post-conflict, especially developing, states. The article considers securitisation as the

discursive process through which an intersubjective understanding is constructed within a political community to treat something as an existential threat to a valued referent object, and to enable a call for urgent and exceptional measures to deal with the threat. (Buzan and Wæver 2003, p. 491)

Applied to development, securitisation is the cooptation of social, economic and political development concerns into security prerogatives in a manner that echoes the ‘developmentalisation’ of social and political problems in lower-income countries (Escobar 1995). This core assumption of peacebuilding discourse, that underdevelopment and a high risk of conflict go hand-in-hand (Duffield 2001, p. 115), has led to tight collaboration between development and security actors in post-conflict developing countries.

Duffield (2001, pp. 10–11) identifies the liberal peace project as a polyarchical, non-territorial networked governance that uses a market democracy and economic self-management approach to seeking peace. With an increasingly expansive approach that includes community security, justice and even hunger (as will be shown later), security sector reform in Sierra Leone bridges development and post-conflict assistance by re-imagining violence, politics and social relationships using the security sector as a departure point.

Security sector reform as a tool of securitisation is distilled from what appears to be a conflict prevention strategy to provide investors and donors with security for their funds. The UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the UK's Security Sector Development Advisory Team (SSDAT) share the view that security sector reform acts as a stimulus for economic growth-based development (DFID 2005); (SSDAT. Personal communication from Evaluator (assessment of security sector), 29 July 2005). Thus, the Sierra Leone Police (SLP) enshrines the goal to ‘deliver economic growth’ in its Policing Charter, and sees its contribution to stability as protecting revenue and creating an investment-friendly (especially for foreign investors) atmosphere (GoSL no date, SLP 2006).

With an emphasis on foreign investment, the idea that security is a pre-requisite for development brings together widely held views on the links between security, development and peace in Sierra Leone. Field research for the analysis contained in this article shows that definitions of security and insecurity link security and peace with economic development to create beliefs that ‘with increased liberal security, economic growth will increase’; or, more succinctly, that ‘conflict prevention attracts foreign investment’, thus creating the first part of the trickle-down peace equation.

Sierra Leone: A Legacy of Conflict

The years of conflict from 1991 to 2002 brought international infamy to Sierra Leone for the brutality of violence against civilians and for the use of natural resources, mostly diamonds, by all parties to fund the conflict (Hanlon 2005, p. 460). Sierra Leone's prior history was no easier for its people. The country had endured 153 years of harsh British colonial administration, 24 post-independence years of brutal one-party rule, and at least eight coups, counter-coups and attempted coups since 1967. Given this history, it is no surprise that the security sector ended up playing a major role in the weak governance that came to plague Sierra Leone and make the country easy prey to the spiral of conflict, violence and insecurity in which it found itself again in the 1990s.

Unquestionably, when Sierra Leone embarked, with substantial British support, on a broad-based transition effort toward peace, it had a long way to go to break free from the legacy of instability and violence that plagued national and individual security. The conflict had left borders breached by armed activity and smuggling, and Sierra Leoneans mutilated, raped and killed, often publicly, to intimidate individuals and communities. At the same time, the population struggled with increased poverty, social disintegration and government impotence, thus associating fear and personal insecurity with social, economic and political instability. Not surprisingly, fear of insecurity, and all that came to be associated with it, was a key element of the 2007 presidential elections.

In 2007, five years of post-conflict peacebuilding later, Sierra Leone could no longer justifiably be called a failed state. However, ‘economic reforms have fallen short’ (Sierra Leone: the election issue 2007). The prosperity promised by liberal peacebuilding is nowhere in sight; Sierra Leone remains largely poor, with low life expectancy, few basic services and widespread corruption. With the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 looking unlikely, and, given its persistent poverty, vulnerability to shocks and weak rule-of-law, Sierra Leone remains a fragile state (UNDP 2007). This fragile stability is certainly a legacy of the conflict; but, as this article will show, it is also a product of the emphasis on trickle-down peace, which is at the centre of the country's post-conflict drive.

The three documents chosen in this article present a rounded sample of the government's discourse on strategies for security, poverty reduction, and food security. For example, with 22 different security threats and accompanying strategies for increasing security, the Security Sector Review concretises the abstract concepts of peacebuilding. With a focus on specific terminology and the assumptions inherent in the language used, this article uses discourse analysis to consider how language, both spoken and written, enacts social and cultural perspectives and identities for a post-conflict Sierra Leone.

The Security Sector Review

In March 2005, the Government of Sierra Leone published the Security Sector Review (hereafter the Review) ‘to assess the security requirements for an envisioned national vision of a safe and enabling environment for the next five to ten years’ (GoSL-SSRS 2005, p. x). The Review examines the state of security in the country, identifies causes of internal and external insecurity, points to necessary actions to create a secure Sierra Leone, and links security to economic growth, poverty reduction and development. This government strategy for the reorganisation of the Sierra Leonean state demonstrates the economic understanding and application of security that the Government of Sierra Leone has adopted (GoSL-SSRS 2005, p. x).

According to the Review, Sierra Leoneans perceive 22 generic threats to national security: corruption, lack of political will, fear of change/culture of silence/political apathy, lack of monitoring and effective implementation of government policies, an over-centralised political and administrative system, existence of a weak and uncoordinated security system, indiscipline and lawlessness, ill-equipped and poorly paid security forces and institutions, porous borders, regional instability, subversion/military coup, uncontrolled immigration, poor economy and lack of vibrant economic policies, environmental degradation, poverty, poor social services, poor conditions of services, social injustice, donor fatigue, smuggling, unemployment and the marginalisation of youth and women (GoSL-SSRS 2005, p. 14). Clustering these into internal and external threats, the Review calls for capacity building of security sector institutions, the institutionalisation of effective partnerships and mechanisms to integrate non-security state actors, as well as for enhanced coordination and oversight of the security sector (GoSL-SSRS 2005, p. xi).

Despite its broadened understanding of security, the Review maintains a focus on what the security sector has been receiving in national budgets – although the opposite perception dominates outside of the sector (GoSL-SSRS 2005, p. 47). The Review proposes that the national security apparatus (the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces, the SLP, the Prisons Department, the National Fire Authority, the Immigration Department, the Central Intelligence and Security Unit, the Office of National Security (ONS), the National Security Council Coordinating Group and the National Security Council, in cooperation with line ministries, departments and agencies, build and maintain security, otherwise ‘the nation's high drive to achieve the vision of a peaceful, prosperous and progressive society will fail’ (GoSL-SSRS 2005, pp. 11–21).

Significantly, the Review is ‘the first ever platform for the consideration of security as a related development matter’ (GoSL-SSRS 2005, p. 68). Each threat is used to develop a corresponding ‘national vision’ advanced by a government department. The Ministry of Development and Economic Planning (MODEP) works ‘to avert the threat of poverty’ (GoSL-SSRS 2005, p. 40). The Ministry of Education Science and Technology is to lead against the ‘threat’ of high illiteracy (GoSL-SSRS 2005, p. 43). The Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children's Affairs has the task to ‘pursue the threat of social injustice’ (GoSL-SSRS 2005, p. 42). The Ministry of Finance is to ‘mitigate the threat of donor fatigue’ (GoSL-SSRS 2005, p. 38). Moreover, the Review expects the government to do a joint assessment of the implementation of the Security Sector Reform and the Poverty Reduction Strategy (GoSL-SSRS 2005, p. 70). Each ministry works thus to minimise a threat rather than for a social or common good.

The goals of poverty reduction, increased literacy, social justice and donor aid sustainability are, without doubt, important for Sierra Leone's peacebuilding. However, when social and political issues are framed in security terms, strategies will be born out of a concern for security rather than for social justice, human rights and equality, leaving aside the moral and governance responsibilities of the state. For example, by categorising poverty as a threat, people living in poverty become a menace to national integrity, further marginalising people leading an already precarious existence.

This conceptualisation of security traps the country in a conflict mindset, and limits its ability to build peace. If the country sees itself as constantly under threat, it lives in a pseudo-siege mentality that may make it difficult to create a peace-time identity or identify creative third-way methods for resolving current and potential conflicts. Furthermore, classifying the social, political and economic problems that the country has battled with since before independence as security problems, removes the distributive responsibilities of the government. Thus, the role of the state is limited to ensuring security, while, by default, letting others, such as the private sector, direct Sierra Leone's recovery and reconstruction in their image and interests. This laissez-faire approach, consistent with the laissez-faire of market-led development, is expected to bring about macro-economic improvement that will trickle down as peace.

The link between security and poverty is now deeply embedded in the popular imagination. Research found that a cross-section of Sierra Leoneans ‘strongly reiterated the aphorism “no sustainable development without security”‘, and thus called for a ‘development’ approach to security directly linked with the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) (GoSL-SSRS 2005, p. 11). For its part, the Review sees the PRSP as ‘an instrument for accessing donor funding and resources to support (a) peace, security and good governance, (b) revival of the economy, and (c) social and private sector development’ (GoSL-SSRS 2005, p. 40). The Review makes four significant links between security and development:

• 1.

  Development is ‘integrally linked’ with security (GoSL-SSRS 2005, p. xi). This means that security is the ground on which peace and development can thrive; meanwhile, development is a process that ‘cannot be achieved without a safe, secure and enabling environment’ (GoSL-SSRS 2005, p. viii–xi);

• 2.

  A solid economic and security base enables development. Such a base provides business confidence, leading to self-generating job creation in line with sustained economic growth (GoSL-SSRS 2005, p. viii);

• 3.

  Increased security decreases poverty. Former President Kabbah saw that the transformation of the security sector is to ‘provide an enabling environment for poverty reduction’ (GoSL-SSRS 2005, p. viii);

• 4.

  Donor support is both an input and a threat. Donor funds which are crucial for increased security can become a threat if donors pull out due to donor fatigue (GoSL-SSRS 2005, pp. 14, 63).

These links reflect two underlying assumptions, which guide Sierra Leone's post-conflict political economy. First, the Review appears to assume that development is a linear progression of economic to human well-being. In the current global capitalist system, where most goods and services can be bought with economic resources, the equation appears to make sense. However, without a purposeful allocation of funds at the national and community levels, there will be no concurrent progress on social, cultural or political issues, all necessary for sustainable development.

Second, the Review assumes that increased security improves the economy at all levels. However, such an assumption can make security improvements of physical and social infrastructure shorthand for improving the economy. Operational and effective security forces and justice systems, as well as an increased personal sense of safety, give a population the confidence to resume activities, including economic ones. At the same time, such a strategy sidelines the nature of development as a means and not as an end: most individuals seek to improve their economic position, not for the sake of idle profit, but to improve their housing, health, schooling; in short, their social well-being.

These two assumptions both tie poverty with economic issues and divorce them from political decisions. From a political economy perspective, where the economy is guided by political choices, this division is disingenuous. Relying mainly on economic solutions to what is the political and economic problem of poverty removes the burden from the power relations of capitalism. When economic reforms focus on short-term needs as technical rather than political solutions, economic reforms can minimise political participation for change (Pugh 2006, p. 14; Zaum 2006, p. 53). The language itself does not allow for alternative paths since ‘the concepts of planning and management embody the belief that social change can be engineered and directed, produced at will’ (Escobar 1995, p. 194).

The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP)

Launched in February 2005, Sierra Leone's three-year Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper aims to reduce the poverty created and exacerbated by the 11-year conflict. Indeed, the proposed strategies for government, non-government and private sector action are framed in a post-conflict context and a peacebuilding discourse. The PRSP has also made a direct link between the security sector and poverty, in saying that ‘almost all sectors and sub-sectors in the budget are poverty-focused including the security sector’ (GoSL 2005, p. 108).

With a rolling three-year medium-term framework for ‘bold and appropriate sectoral policies, measures and institutional reforms that achieve economic growth, increase food security, increase job opportunities and provide better basic social services, as well as effective social safety nets for the poor and vulnerable’ (GoSL 2005, p. 75), the PRSP aimed ‘to reduce poverty to at least the 1990 level by 2007’ by increasing real GDP as a result of a 6 to 9 per cent growth rate from 2005 to 2007 (GoSL 2005, p. 78). Its strategy rests on three pillars.

• •

  Pillar 1: ‘Promoting good governance, security and peace’, makes a security agenda, without specific mention of security sector reform, central to creating an ‘enabling environment for effective and efficient delivery of essential services that the poor rely on for reducing poverty’ (GoSL 2005, p. 75). Security ‘had to be’ explicitly included as it is a central element of the Sierra Leonean, political, social and economic context (GoSL 2005, p. 75).

• •

  Pillar 2: ‘Promoting pro-poor sustainable growth for food security and job creation’, puts forward food security and job creation as the two major challenges for poverty reduction (GoSL 2005, p. 6). The focus on food security is to contribute to ‘other important poverty reduction goals, especially the reduction of child malnutrition and mortality and improvement in maternal health on a sustainable basis’ (GoSL 2005, p. 88).

• •

  Pillar 3: ‘Promoting human development’, promotes improved education, health and water and sanitation infrastructures and a host of other concerns such as gender equality, environmental sustainability, HIV/AIDS, housing and vulnerable groups (GoSL 2005, p. 95). Through this pillar only, the government ‘may pursue policies of redistributing wealth and income’ (GoSL 2005, p. 95).

The PRSP reflects the national preoccupation, following an intense conflict, and an international desire to integrate Sierra Leone into the international political and economic arenas, to keep the country from failing again. On the one hand, although security issues are not part of the PRSP's definition, conflict ‘is the most widespread perceived cause of poverty throughout the country’ (GoSL 2005, p. 27). On the other hand, ‘the protracted civil war and the general insecurity associated with it resulted in loss of confidence, a sustained contraction in output and substantial increase in poverty’ (GoSL 2005, p. 46). In short, poverty equals insecurity and lack of income, while security equals poverty reduction. Four significant conclusions on poverty arise from the PRSP:

• 1.

  The incidence of poverty in a particular area is directly linked to the level of economic activity, principally agriculture. For example, high poverty in Kailahun District is said to be a result of decreased cocoa and coffee production as a result of war-related destruction of plantations (GoSL 2005, p. 26).

• 2.

  Despite being the engine of economic activity and security, agriculture also equals poverty. While the agricultural sector is the ‘highest employer in the country (75 per cent of the population) and the largest contributor to GDP (45 per cent on average) survey results and sector reviews show that farmers, especially subsistence food crop farmers, are among the poorest in the country’ (GoSL 2005, p. 33).

• 3.

  Those living in urban areas are better off than rural dwellers. However, the situation in Freetown, the country's capital and urban hub, is rapidly deteriorating due to the high ratio of dependent household members to income-earning household members and the concentration of poor people in low-paid and low-valued work.

• 4.

  Poverty is differentiated – and is more prevalent in female-headed households. However, poverty is still ‘deeper and more severe’ in male-headed households (GoSL 2005, p. 33).

The PRSP finds that the main causes of poverty are bad governance, conflict, unemployment, inadequate social services, the debt burden and the vulnerability to external risks and shocks affecting national income. It has received national and international acclaim for explicitly acknowledging and incorporating insecurity as a cause of the following: poverty; the -4.5 per cent per annum growth rate between 1990 and 2000; the destruction of social, economic and physical infrastructure; and an ‘almost complete breakdown of civil and political authority’ (GoSL 2005, pp. 1–2).

Making security central to poverty reduction is not new in Sierra Leone. The National Recovery Strategy (NRS) and the interim-PRSP (i-PRSP) that preceded the PRSP both placed restoring national security and good governance as the first of three phases, followed by re-launching the economy and providing basic social services to the most vulnerable groups. The PRSP makes a distinctly economic case for poverty reduction, perhaps due to the assessment that the ‘i-PRSP and the NRS also resulted in sustained recovery of the economy’ (GoSL 2005, p. 4). The equation between poverty reduction and economic growth is easy for the PRSP's main backer, the World Bank (2006), since it considers poverty reduction ‘the same as economic development’.

As a result, the PRSP has infused economic planning and is reconfiguring the articulation of Sierra Leone's public finances. The national budget is a ‘PRSP budget’ – where only PRSP-related items are coded with all other issues considered additions (MoF-SL 2006a). Each Ministry, Department or Agency (collectively known as MDAs) prepares a PRSP-consistent Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF), a financial information system with a three-year rolling strategic plan and budget that sets out the yearly work plan and updates previous plans for the following two years (World Bank 2006, MoF-SL 2006b). The MTEF is designed to ‘enhance transparency and accountability in the use of public funds and the development of participatory monitoring systems’ (GoSL 2002, p. 11). Yet, in practice the MTEF is not a planning tool, but rather a re-packaging tool for local councils and ministries to declare that their activities, even those pre-dating the MTEF, as PRSP-related in order to access central funds (MAFFS-SL, personal communications from Senior Official (food security, securitisation, the PRSP and peacebuilding), 12, 16, 18 January 2006); (MoF-SL 2006b). The work of the government is being re-conceptualised along the security and market-led development lines of the PRSP framework.

To assess how the PRSP's vision is being translated into the work of line ministries, the article focuses on the 2006–2008 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and 2006 Outline Workplan of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security (‘MAFFS Workplan’). The emphasis on food follows the view ‘from all socio-economic groups [that poverty] is the lack of food’ (GoSL 2005, pp. 21–23).

With the food security goal front and centre to address a key concern for the population, this Work Plan presents essential elements of the government's discourse of post-conflict peacebuilding.

The 2006 Work Plan of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry & Food Security (MAFFS)

Anchored in the PRSP maxim that ‘food security is at the heart of Sierra Leone's poverty reduction strategy’, the MAFFS Work Plan links food security directly with the government's strategy for peace (GoSL, 2005:87). In doing so, food and nutrition become tools for economic growth. The Work Plan tightly links its definition of security to the PRSP, and illustrates the implementation strategies flowing from the discourse of the Government of Sierra Leone.

The food security goal is directly traced to then-President Kabbah's 2002 pledge to ‘work even harder, and with greater resolve, to do everything in my power to ensure that within the next five years no Sierra Leonean should go to bed hungry’ (Address, 2002). The MAFFS Work Plan (2006, p. 4) vision is: ‘No Sierra Leonean should go to bed hungry by the year 2007’. Its Mission is:

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry & Food Security (MAFFS) seeks to improve agricultural production and productivity in order to achieve food security by providing the enabling environment for farmers and promoting appropriate research, extension, input delivery and marketing systems, thereby improving rural incomes, reducing poverty and maintaining the natural environment. (GoSL-MAFFS 2006, p. 4)

Although the plan makes overtures to distributive strategies, the focus to increase production lacks a concurrent focus on improved nutrition. Of the six long-term objectives prepared ‘in accordance’ with Pillar II of the PRSP, which promotes pro-poor sustainable growth, only one refers to equitable distribution and balanced growth (GoSL-MAFFS 2006, p. 24).¹ The Workplan defines food security as ‘a function of a stable, healthy, macro-economic society’, while ‘farm production is, therefore, a function of Food Security, but not the entire equation’ (GoSL-MAFFS 2006, p. 7). The Workplan's focus is on ‘economic and social sectors for production, income generation and on creating job opportunities’ as part of establishing the ‘virtuous circle of peace, stability and wealth creation’ that is part of Vision 2025 and the PRSP (GoSL-MAFFS 2006, pp. 5–6).

The MAFFS Workplan itself identifies the achievements of the previous three-year period (2003–2005) as increased farm production, increased rice production and increased private investment. With increased farm production (the 2005–2006 harvest was expected to be a ‘bumper harvest’), food security in a number of crops was expected in 2007. Thus, production could then be geared to cash crops and added-value produce that would earn the country foreign exchange. With increased rice production, even if still representing only two-thirds of national requirements, food sufficiency was considered attainable by 2007 if donor supported programmes delivered as planned and if average farm-size and average yield was increased (GoSL-MAFFS 2006, pp. 7–9).

The MAFFS Workplan sees its role in long-term development of the agricultural sector as ‘supporting private investment and development’ with the support of donors. The government hopes to rely on ‘international investment for commercial tree crop plantations and the processing industry’ rather than on donors. It has been argued that the PRSP is a document that equates economic growth and macro-economic stabilisation with poverty reduction. What appears is a chain where economic growth is the catalyst that is to turn food insecurity into food security, in other words, to turn an internal security threat into a base element for peace (GoSL-MAFFS 2006, p. 15).

The MAFFS Workplan conflates the availability of food with the population's nourishment from food. Although related, production cannot be equated with consumption – availability of food does not mean access to food. Increased consumption necessitates access that may need to be facilitated by political processes and distributive action. Although the Review identified maldistribution and inequity as key causes of insecurity to be addressed by sector Departments, these issues are not part of the MAFFS Workplan. Their absence points to a deep rift between the causes and the solutions, between analysis and action, and between the responsibility to protect the population and Sierra Leone's desire to integrate internationally.

The MAFFS Workplan focus on improving agricultural productivity brings the goal of hunger eradication to its lowest common denominator and equates economic growth with poverty reduction. Rather than distilling its essence, reducing food security to the strictest economic definition cuts the social element attached to food, such as improving access to food, including by the poor, or support for small and subsistence farmers. This faith in the market to bring about, or trickle down, peace is the Achilles heel of Sierra Leone's discourse on peace, security and development.

The MAFFS approach provides an apt example of the securitisation of peacebuilding illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1

The securitisation of food security in the MAFFS 2006 Work Plan.

Moreover, the MAFFS approach has translated the idea of peacebuilding as a step to transform insecurity into security using the agriculture and food security lenses. The hunger and poverty identified as threats to security are to be addressed with increased average farm area and increased average farm yield as a result of (foreign) investment. The resulting agricultural production and productivity will create economic growth – a clever, yet worrisome, logical chain. Assisting communities to meet their basic needs does go a long way towards creating a stable environment. However, not adequately addressing equitable distribution of the ‘peace dividend’ will marginalise populations that do not have the economic means to access that so-called security or development. Yet, these populations are ironically the very ones whose poverty, unemployment and hunger are considered a threat to national security.

That food security, an important element of national security according to the Sierra Leonean government, is measured by production – not consumption – is indicative of the power of the liberal peace agenda. Former President Kabbah (personal communication – food security, the economy and peace – 17 July 2006) proclaimed that distribution was an unnecessary concern since Sierra Leone ‘will have a free market’, where rice produced will be bought by people who, as a result of government intervention, will have an ‘income to buy’. Yet, recent proxy data to judge the possibility of meeting the goal of food security for all by 2007 is not encouraging. As of 2005, 27 per cent of children under the age of five were underweight for their age (UNDP 2007, p. 269). Between 2002 and 2004, over half the population (51 per cent) was undernourished (UNDP 2007, p. 269). At the same time, less than 10 per cent of land for growing rice, the country's staple food, was cultivated as of 2007 (Sierra Leone 2007). In addition, the World Food Programme calculated that in 2008 it would distribute over 16,000 tonnes of food to projects, relief and other operations (WFP Facts 2007).

By attaching an economic growth objective to the goal of increased national and individual security, and specifically to food security, it is easy to conceive other elements of peacebuilding within a market focus, even referring to peace as a ‘commodity’ that is ‘very expensive’ (MMCET, personal communication from a lecturer (peacebuilding in Sierra Leone), 22 June 2005); (MMCET 2005). The drive to increase output has a clear and appealing urgency. The promise of more food easily mobilises people who do not have enough and appears to provide an answer to the problem of poverty. That the answer is economic is not a mistake, as ‘in a poor society, economics is not all of life, but as a practical matter it is most of it’ (Galbraith 1972, p. 398). The problem faced by people living in poverty is essentially an economic problem and ‘higher income is the basic remedy’ (Galbraith 1972, p. 397). The market is expected to provide, and it will, but at a price out of reach of many thus making the market ‘a disguise for injustice’ (Galbraith and Salinger 1978, p. 166).

The Sierra Leone Government's articulation of its post-conflict strategies in the three documents analysed, elevates the goal of increased economic growth to the status of the driver of peacebuilding efforts. Indeed, the specific actions proposed could potentially increase agricultural production and productivity, but at the cost of planting the seeds of further insecurity. These assumptions make the equation of development and peace seem less like a straightforward step and more like what can be called ‘trickle-down peace’.

The face of insecurity and the new security

The views of insecurity explored above are not restricted to government discourse; they have become part of the popular imagination in Sierra Leone. Field research led to the identification of six specific understandings that insecurity has acquired in Sierra Leone:

• 1.

  Insecurity is bad governance. Bad governance does not protect people nor does it provide freedom from fear. A badly run government disempowers: excluded populations are easy prey to a mentality of violence (Action Aid, Program Officer 2006, ENCISS Prog. Adv. 1 2006, ENCISS Prog. Adv. 2 2006).

• 2.

  Insecurity is poverty. In unpredictable conditions, poor people have no power to alter their life conditions (Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, personal communication from a Senior Academic (political economy of post-conflict Sierra Leone), 17 January 2006). Unless basic needs are fulfilled, an insecure environment is guaranteed: ‘a hungry man is an angry man’ (Action Aid, Program Officer 2006).

• 3.

  Insecurity is anti-business. An insecure environment increases the cost of business, if business takes place at all (World Bank 2006).

• 4.

  Insecurity is stalled development. Insecure conditions threaten and stop the progress of nationally and internationally funded development projects.

• 5.

  Insecurity is economic stagnation. A volatile context tends to be conducive to no or low economic growth, which further undermines security (DFID 2006). The Review identified the malfunctioning justice system and lack of political will as inhibiting growth (ONS, personal communication from Senior Officer (security, implementation of the PRSP and the Security Sector Review), 19 January 2006).

• 6.

  Insecurity is vulnerability. Lacking solidity, an insecure society is easy prey to external forces and to economic, political and social shocks. Instability in Liberia and Guinea has, and could again, destabilise Sierra Leone politically and economically (MFAIC-SL 2006).

This spectrum of opinions about the nature of insecurity illustrates the extent to which security has come to dominate the popular imagination of government, non-government and individual actors. Through the six definitions, there is a continuity: the condition of insecurity as a negative economic fate.

Interviews also pointed to six context-specific definitions of security as follows:

• 1.

  Security is poverty reduction. The implementation of the Review helps to create an enabling environment for the implementation of the PRSP (SLP 2006). With the macroeconomic focus of PRSP strategies for poverty reduction, security is an enabling factor for macroeconomic stability and the promise of decreased poverty and development.

• 2.

  Security is protection. As part of increased confidence and trust in the police, the population expects security forces to provide protection from threats and violence (Action Aid, Program Officer 2006, ENCISS 2006).

• 3.

  Security is freedom from fear. A low level of open conflict increases feelings of safety and freedom from fear among the population at large (SLP 2006). Eradicating open violence is both a symbolic and real assurance that peace is possible for a population terrorised by a brutally physical conflict.

• 4.

  Security is democracy and good governance. Procedural democracy and good governance open space for participation, empowerment and stability (ENCISS Prog. Adv. 1 2006).

• 5.

  Security is economic growth. The Review identifies economic, socio-political, good governance and human security as the basis for economic security (ONS 2006). The economic development thrust of the ‘post-conflict PRSP’ shows the government's emphasis on economic growth, and thus economic security, as the key to long-term security and peace for the country.

• 6.

  Security is investment. The security forces protect investment, with the SLP taking on covert maritime policing and mineral policing (SLP 2006). Yet, the premise that increased security will attract foreign investors is appealing but not fully credible in a country with a thin foreign investment history.

If increased security is considered the enabling environment for an improved economy, then the national and individual security agenda has become a tool to create an enabling environment for economic development. For many, the proof that Sierra Leone was becoming more secure was that ‘investors are coming’ (SLP 2006). In effect, ‘security leads to development’ was a mantra-like statement across government and non-government circles and cutting across political lines.

The two sets of six definitions each point to three significant conclusions. First, the concept of security has been democratised to encompass, and hence has securitised, economic, social and political concerns (Former Senior Official – ONS, 2006). Second, making security synonymous with economic activity re-engineers the fear of a return to conflict into a motivating factor for the country to integrate the liberal peace project. Third, the liberal peace discourse makes market-led development prescriptions the mainstay of post-conflict and peacebuilding efforts. In doing so, they enshrine faith in the economy as a source of security and peace; faith, that is, in trickle-down peace.

Conclusion

Security is a requirement for peace, poverty reduction and food security. However, analysis of both the development and implementation of these strategies that the Sierra Leone Government has adopted points to a potential for decreased quick-impact insecurity and increased long-term incremental insecurity. The liberal peace project has allowed the space for peacebuilding operations to contribute to negative peace to halt open violence but is hindering the construction of long-term peace. The resulting approach is one of ‘trickle-down peace’ where peace in the form of economic growth is expected to somehow become peace in the form of improved social and political relationships. The logic that there is a ‘positive correlation between integration into a liberal world economy and the reduction of conflict’ assumes that integration increases economic growth and thus social services, and that integration encourages privatisation and thus strengthens civil society (Williams 2004, p. 107). In effect, security has become shorthand for technical or technical-sounding market-based solutions to address social, political and economic problems.

The problem with liberal peacebuilding is that it does not build peace in the long-term. Rather, peacebuilding is based on a counterproductive ‘commitment to market democracy’ that is necessarily short-term due to the market's cannibalistic nature (Williams 2004, p. 104). However, the current of thought that sees failing and fragile states as a ‘problem for the entire international system’ favours action to resolve the problem these states pose for the international system and not for the populations that live within them (Holm 2002, p. 467). For this reason, a liberal peace approach is the perfect solution for the international system: liberal peace stabilises the state, introduces it to the international market system and encourages mechanisms that entrench the state in the international system. Trickle-down peace favours international actors over those who survived the conflict.

While it is easy to think that economic growth leads to peace or that economic growth leads to development, recent research suggests that the market liberalisation prescription for economic growth may instead deepen divisions (Zaum 2006, p. 52). That is, research suggests that trickle-down peace does not work. Even if only economic development is measured, its emergence is not guaranteed by conflict prevention or stability. Ultimately, in the quest for long-lasting peace, economic growth can only bring short-term gains, not long-term transformation, and it is here that the equation breaks down.

Rather than privileging more security or security-centric policies, Sierra Leone should free itself from myopic securitisation frameworks that prevent it from considering the full range of social, economic and political actions necessary to improve well-being and build long-term peace. To do so, Sierra Leone should remove itself from the security-insecurity debate that straightjackets discussions on peace – the focus on security limits the political imagination and discussions for alternatives. Were there real security, the issue would not be under discussion (Wæver 1995, p. 56). Such a change could move Sierra Leone from minimising insecurity, and waiting for peace to trickle down, to working towards peace. However, Sierra Leone is not in sole control of its own discourse and a significant change in discourse would require a change in international discourse – a much larger task.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the Rotary Foundation whose generous funding made this research possible, as well as the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, and participants at the 2006 International Peace Research Association conference who critiqued earlier iterations of this work.

Notes

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Personal Interviews

Action Aid, Program Officer. Implementation of Security Sector Review – PRSP in post-conflict Sierra Leone. 19 January 2006.

Sierra Leone Government. Decentralisation Secretariat, Senior Official – decentralisation, PRSP and Post-Conflict Sierra Leone. 19 January 2006.

DFID (Department for International Development). Senior Official, personal interview – UK aid to Sierra Leone. 29 June 2005.

DFID. Senior Official, personal interview – UK Aid to Sierra Leone. 20 January 2006.

ENCISS. Program Advisor 1. Personal interview – PRSP implementation and engagement in Sierra Leone. 17 January 2006.

ENCISS. Program Advisor 2. Personal interview – PRSP implementation and engagement in Sierra Leone. 17 January 2006.

MMCET. Coordinator – Peace and Conflict Resolution Programme Presentation (peacebuilding in Sierra Leone). 22 June 2005.

MoF-SL (Ministry of Finance – Sierra Leone), Officer, 2006a. Personal interview – The PRSP and national finance). 12 January.

MoF-SL. Official. 2006b. Personal interview – The PRSP and national finance. 13 January.

MFAIC-SL (Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation – Sierra Leone). Senior Official. Personal interview – regional context of Sierra Leone. 19 January 2006.

SLP (Sierra Leone Police). Senior Official. Personal interview – security sector reform in post-Conflict Sierra Leone. 27 June 2005.

SLP. Senior Officer. Personal interview – role and transformation of the SLP. 16 January 2006.

World Bank. Senior Official. Personal interviews – support to and assessment of the PRSP. 13 and 18 January 2006.

Footnotes

The objectives are: (1) Enhance the capacity of MAFFS through institutional strengthening and policy development to support the agricultural sector; (2) Achieve long-term national and household Food Security by 2007 by increasing domestic agricultural production; (3) Increase rural incomes and employment; (4) Conserve for the environment for future generations; (5) Promote exports to ensure balanced regional agricultural growth and equitable distribution of income, and to maximise foreign exchange earnings from the agricultural sector; and (6) Contribute to establishing a sound macro-economic environment by promoting pro-poor sustainable growth.