Sierra Leone

Following a brutal 11-year civil war, the Parliament of Sierra Leone called for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to create "an impartial, historical record of the conflict", and "address impunity; respond to the needs of victims; promote healing and reconciliation; and prevent a repetition of the violations and abuses suffered." The full text of the TRC report is available at the TRC's website.

HRDAG assisted the TRC to build a systematic data coding system, electronic database, and secure data analysis process to manage the thousands of statements given to them in the course of their work. Dr. Ball visited Freetown twice, and HRDAG field consultant, Richard Conibere worked at the TRC full-time for approximately eighteen months starting in March 2003.

HRDAG worked with TRC researchers to help them incorporate quantitative findings to support the qualitative findings in their writing for the other chapters of the TRC report. In addition, HRDAG produced a Statistical Appendix to present analysis of the broad dimensions of data available from the the TRC's database. The analysis was guided by the overall research questions the Commission was charged to investigate and specific questions posed by TRC researchers.

In Sierra Leone, we also worked with partner, the Central and Eastern European Law Initiative of the American Bar Association ABA CEELI on a project funded by the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor to support data collection and analysis in Sierra Leone (among other objectives). The project included developing two additional datasets to complement the TRC's database and enable a Multiple Systems Estimation (MSE) analysis. These datasets included a household survey of several thousand households throughout Sierra Leone and qualitative testimonies collected by the Campaign for Good Governance, a Freetown-based NGO. Both of these data collection projects are valuable in their own right, but when combined, we will gain a number of scientific insights into the human rights violations that occurred during the armed conflict in Sierra Leone. We are currently in the final data processing phase in preparation for the MSE analysis.

The Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission data the accompanying data dictionary are available on our website.

Sierra Leone Statistical Appendix (25 March 2005) Adobe Acrobat PDF format, 407 Kb

Originally based at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), HRDAG has provided technical assistance in the following countries:

Africa

• Chad
• Ghana
• Liberia
• Sierra Leone
• South Africa

Asia

• Afghanistan
• Bangladesh
• Cambodia
• India
• Timor-Leste
• Sri Lanka

Europe

• Kosovo

Middle East

• Iran

Central America and Caribbean

• El Salvador
• Guatemala
• Haiti
• México

South America

• Colombia
• Perú

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The Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) applies information technology solutions and statistical techniques to help human rights advocates build evidence-based arguments.