Liberia is a country in West Africa founded by free people of color from the United States. The emigration of African Americans, both free and recently emancipated, was funded and organized by the American Colonization Society (ACS). The mortality rate of these settlers was the highest in accurately recorded human history. Of the 4,571 emigrants who arrived in Liberia between 1820 and 1843, only 1,819 survived.
Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of 71,740 km2 (27,699 sq mi), Sierra Leone has a tropical climate, with diverse environments ranging from savanna to rainforests. The country has a population of 7,092,113 as of the 2015 census. The capital and largest city is Freetown. The country is divided into five administrative regions, which are subdivided into 16 districts.
Sierra Leone first became inhabited by indigenous African peoples at least 2,500 years ago. The Limba were the first tribe known to inhabit Sierra Leone. The dense tropical rainforest partially isolated the region from other West African cultures, and it became a refuge for peoples escaping violence and jihads. Sierra Leone was named by Portuguese explorer Pedro de Sintra, who mapped the region in 1462. The Freetown estuary provided a good natural harbour for ships to shelter and replenish drinking water, and gained more international attention as coastal and trans-Atlantic trade supplanted trans-Saharan trade.
Blood diamonds are diamonds mined in a war zone and sold to finance an insurgency, an invading army's war efforts, terrorism, or a warlord's activity. The term is used to highlight the negative consequences of the diamond trade in certain areas, or to label an individual diamond as having come from such an area. Diamonds mined during the 20th–21st century civil wars in Angola, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau have been given the label. The term conflict resource refers to analogous situations involving other natural resources. Blood diamonds can also be smuggled by organized crime syndicates so that they could be sold on the black market.
Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor is a former Liberian politician and convicted warlord who served as the 22nd president of Liberia from 2 August 1997 until his resignation on 11 August 2003, as a result of the Second Liberian Civil War and growing international pressure.
The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) was a rebel group that fought a failed eleven-year war in Sierra Leone, beginning in 1991 and ending in 2002. It later transformed into a political party, which still exists today. The three most senior surviving leaders, Issa Sesay, Morris Kallon and Augustine Gbao, were convicted in February 2009 of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Sierra Leone maintains formal relations with many Western nations. It also maintains diplomatic relations with the former Soviet Bloc countries as well as with the People's Republic of China.
Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was a Sierra Leonean politician who served twice as the 3rd President of Sierra Leone, from 1996 to 1997 and again from 1998 to 2007. An economist and attorney by profession, Kabbah spent many years working for the United Nations Development Programme. He retired from the United Nations and returned to Sierra Leone in 1992.
Major Johnny Paul Koroma was the head of state of Sierra Leone from May 1997 to February 1998.
Executive Outcomes is a private military company (PMC) founded in South Africa in 1989 by Eeben Barlow, a former lieutenant-colonel of the South African Defence Force. It later became part of the South African-based holding company Strategic Resource Corporation. The company was reestablished in 2020.
The United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) was a United Nations peacekeeping operation in Sierra Leone from 1999 to 2006. It was created by the United Nations Security Council in October 1999 to help with the implementation of the Lomé Peace Accord, an agreement intended to end the Sierra Leonean civil war. UNAMSIL expanded in size several times in 2000 and 2001. It concluded its mandate at the end of 2005, the Security Council having declared that its mission was complete.
The Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) was a group of Sierra Leone soldiers that allied itself with the rebel Revolutionary United Front in the late 1990s. While the AFRC briefly controlled the country in 1998, it was driven from the capital by a coalition of West African troops. It was no longer a coherent and effective organization by the elections of 2002.
The Sierra Leone Civil War (1991–2002), or the Sierra Leonean Civil War, was a civil war in Sierra Leone that began on 23 March 1991 when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), with support from the special forces of Liberian dictator Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), intervened in Sierra Leone in an attempt to overthrow the Joseph Momoh government. The resulting civil war lasted 11 years, enveloped the country, and left over 50,000 dead.
The Lomé Peace Agreement was a peace agreement signed on 7 July 1999 between the warring parties in the civil war that gripped Sierra Leone for almost a decade. President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah signed with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) leader, Foday Sankoh and granted Sankoh a position in the transitional government as well as amnesty for him and all combatants. The accord is named for Lomé, the capital of Togo, where the negotiations took place and the agreement was signed.
A new civil war began in 1999 when a rebel group backed by the government of neighboring Guinea, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), emerged in northern Liberia. By the spring of 2001, they were posing a major threat to the Taylor government. Liberia was now engaged in a complex three-way conflict with Sierra Leone and the Guinea Republic. By the beginning of 2002, both of these countries were supporting the latest addition to the lexicon of Liberian guerrilla outfits – Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), while Taylor was supporting various opposition factions in both countries. By supporting Sierra Leonean rebels, Taylor also drew the enmity of the British and Americans.
The Sierra Leone Anti-corruption Commission (ACC-SL) commonly known as ACC is an independent agency of the Sierra Leone Sierra Leone Government, that investigates and prosecutes corruption cases in Sierra Leone. The ACC is supervised by the Sierra Leone Ministry of Justice. The current Head of the ACC is Francis Ben Kaifala, who has been in office since June 2018.
The Small Boys Unit (SBU) was a group of children who were forcibly recruited by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) as militants during the Sierra Leone Civil War. The war began in 1991, when the RUF desired to overthrow the government and gain control of the diamond mines, a major source of revenue for the country. In 1998, 25% of the soldiers fighting in the war were under 18, and of those, 50% were abducted and 28% were under the age of 12. The war ended with a ceasefire on 18 January 2002.
Sylvester E. Rowe is a former Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative of Sierra Leone to the United Nations. He joined the Mission in 1997 as an adviser after a distinguished career in the United Nations Secretariat spanning three decades during which he served in several capacities including head of the UN Radio and Television Services; a speech writer and Spokesman for the President of the 39th session of the UN General Assembly (1984–85), and a member of the panel of counsel in the UN administration of justice system – the Joint Appeals Board and the Administrative Tribunal. In 1994 he served as a resource person in Ambassador Brahimi's special mission on behalf of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, to Liberia and the ECOWAS Chair in Ghana, aimed at facilitating implementation of the Cotonou Peace Agreement for Liberia.
The United Kingdom began a military intervention in Sierra Leone on 7 May 2000 under the codename Operation Palliser. Although small numbers of British personnel had been deployed previously, Palliser was the first large-scale intervention by British forces in the Sierra Leone Civil War. In early May 2000, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF)—one of the main parties to the civil war—advanced on the country's capital, Freetown, prompting the British government to dispatch an "Operational Reconnaissance and Liaison Team" (ORLT) to prepare to evacuate foreign citizens. On 6 May, the RUF blocked the road connecting Freetown to the country's main airport, Lungi. The next day, British soldiers began to secure the airport and other areas essential to an evacuation. The majority of those who wished to leave were evacuated within the first two days of the operation, but many chose to stay following the arrival of British forces.
The United Nations Observer Mission in Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL) was a United Nations peacekeeping operation in Sierra Leone from 1998 to 1999 that was established with the passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1181. Its mission was to monitor the military and security situation in Sierra Leone. The mission was terminated in October 1999, when the Security Council authorized deployment of a new, and significantly larger peacekeeping operation, the Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL).
