Date: 2001
Produced by: WITNESS / Oxygen Media LLC / Lilibet Foster
WITNESS Partner: Binta Mansaray
Duration: 13:23
Countless atrocities were committed during the course of Sierra Leone’s devastating, drawn-out conflict from 1991-2001. With civilians being the primary target of attack, women were particularly vulnerable to violence during the civil war. AFRC and RUF forces regularly kidnapped girls and young women, forcing them into sexual servitude for the forces, or into marriage with commanders. Women young and old were beaten, mutilated, raped, and killed by child soldiers and their adult commanders. For the rebels, sexual violence became a weapon to be used against the civilian populations, as a demonstration of its power and impunity.
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