Sierra Leone

New Gabon Oil Production Contract Signed (February 25, 2004)
...he Canadian company is active in mining and mineral and oil exploration in Sierra Leone, Angola, Central African Republic, Zambia, Malawi, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Congo...
Darfur Slides (November 7, 2004)
...ernment rebel groups are growing more violent and numerous. From Bosnia to Sierra Leone, the world has a painful history of putting peacekeepers into situations w...
First 7 US Soldiers Land Amid Uneasy Liberian Peace (August 6, 2003)
... years of conflict here and who has been indicted for war crimes in nearby Sierra Leone, has pledged to cede power Monday, and go into exile in Nigeria at some pu...
Logistics for Hussein Trial Complex (December 14, 2003)
...i legal system, argued today for a judicial hybrid modeled on the court in Sierra Leone, where local judges sit side by side with international colleagues. "W...
Guns For Hire Thrive in Africa (March 15, 2004)
... African mercenary firm Executive Outcomes, which was active in Angola and Sierra Leone in the 1990s. Mr. Mann is also reportedly a cofounder of the British priva...
Liberia Truce Near Collapse as Rebels Advance on Monrovia (June 25, 2003)
...bilise the country as Brit ish and French troops have done in neighbouring Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast. "Morally [the US] should consider the past and come to...
British Troops Must Stay Longer in Kabul (March 25, 2002)
...lear about that. But my judgment is that it is much more likely to be like Sierra Leone than ever it is Vietnam." The Conservatives said it was clear the Gover...
Private Armies (July 17, 2002)
...ate armies for hire proliferated in the 1990s. Executive Outcomes acted in Sierra Leone, Congo and Angola, Sandline International in Sierra Leone and Papua New Gu...
Battle-Weary Liberia Braces for More Killing (July 27, 2003)
...ears of regional strife and wanted by an international war crimes court in Sierra Leone. He now holds less than a third of the country. LURD and another rebel...
Liberia's Taylor Accepts Nigerian Asylum Offer (July 7, 2003)
...y a third of Liberia and is wanted by an international war crimes court in Sierra Leone. The court told Reuters on Sunday it would pursue him even if he went...
Journalist and Commentator Farai Chideya Speaks (March 5, 2002)
... who writes for the Associated Press spent years covering the civil war in Sierra Leone and became increasingly frustrated and distressed by the fact that the sto...
Bombs Kill 60 in Liberia as US Marines Arrive (July 21, 2003)
...eave Liberia first. Taylor, wanted by a U.N.-backed war crimes court in Sierra Leone, has promised to go only when foreign peacekeepers arrive in the coastal c...
US Planning for Intervention in Liberia (July 3, 2003)
... Taylor has refused to leave office. A U.N.-backed court in neighboring Sierra Leone has indicted him for crimes against humanity for his backing of rebels in...
Terror Assets Hidden In Gem-Buying Spree (December 29, 2002)
... their allies in the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in neighboring Sierra Leone. Bah is a Senegalese who had trained in Libya, fought in the early 1980...
US Suspends $47m in Aid Over Int'l Criminal Court Dispute (July 2, 2003)
...nduras, Macedonia, Mauritius, Mongolia, Nigeria, Panama, Romania, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tajikistan and Uganda. Countries not appearing on that list that recei...

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Sierra Leone

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Republic of Sierra Leone is a country in west , on the coast of the . The country is bordered by in the north and in the southwest.

Republic of Sierra Leone


()	(Full size)

National : Unity - Freedom - Justice

Official

- Total
- % water

71,740
0.2%

- Total ()
-

5,426,618
76/km²

.SL

232

Table of contents

History

Main article:

The written history of Sierra Leone begins in , when explorers first landed and named the country "Lion Mountains". used the land as a source for , but in , the now capital Freetown was established as city for former slaves living in London.

In , Sierra Leone became a Crown Colony, which it remained until halfway through the , when the process of de-colonisation was commenced. This culminated in independence on , . Sir (1895-1964) was its first prime minister.

The republic - briefly a one-party state in the early - became involved in a in , with the (RUF) of rebelling against the government. This has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the displacement of more than 2 million people (well over one-third of the population) many of whom are now refugees in neighboring countries. A military on , replaced then President with Major (but Kabbah was later reinstated).

A peace agreement, signed on , in Lome (), offered a slight hope that the country will be able to terminate the -powered conflict, and rebuild its devastated economy and infrastructure. As of late 1999, up to 6,000 , peacekeepers were in the process of deploying to bolster the peace accord.

In , the situation in the country deteriorated to such an extent that British troops were deployed in to evacuate foreign nationals. They stabilised the situation, and were the catalyst for a ceasefire and ending of the civil war.

Politics

Main article:

Head of state and government is the president, who is elected every five years (most recently in May 2002). He appoints and heads a cabinet of ministers. The Sierra Leonean parliament is unicameral, with 124 seats. 112 members also elected concurrently with the presidential elections; the other 12 seats are filled by paramount chiefs.

Provinces

Main article:

Sierra Leone is divided into three provinces and one district:

Geography

Main article:

Much of Sierra Leone's coastline consists of swamps, with the exception of the on which the capital city Freetown is located. The rest of Sierra Leone is mostly plateau (about 300 m above sea level) covered by forests, with mountains in the east of the country (highest point , 1,948 m). The climate is tropical, with a rainy season from May to December.

Major cities are the capital Freetown, , , and .

Economy

Main article:

Sierra Leone is an extremely poor nation with tremendous inequality in income distribution. It does have substantial , agricultural, and fishery resources. However, the economic and is not well developed, and serious social disorders continue to hamper economic development, following a 10-year civil war. About two-thirds of the working-age population engages in subsistence agriculture. Manufacturing consists mainly of the processing of raw materials and of light manufacturing for the domestic market. There are plans to reopen and mines shut down during the conflict. The major source of hard currency consists of the mining of . The fate of the economy depends upon the maintenance of domestic peace and the continued receipt of substantial aid from abroad.

Demographics

Main article:

There are about 20 different tribes living in Sierra Leone, which together make up about 90% of the population. The most important tribes are the (mostly in the north) and (central and south), both forming about one third of the population. There is a sizeable number of , descending from Africans, Asians stranded in and other Londoners who established a colony there in the 1780s.

Although is the official language, it is understood by only a minority, as most people speak their tribe's own language. The , based on English, is however spoken by most of the population. The predominant religion is (about 60%), the remainder practice indigenous beliefs or . Sierra Leone is also the worst country for , having the highest , or risk of , of any country. The MMR of Sierra Leone according to a report from the World Health Organization in the year 2000 is 2,000 maternal deaths per live 100,000 births. The extremely high MMR is principally due to severe obstetric situations such as hemorrhage, obstructed labor, ecoptic gestation, abortion, and puerperal sepsis. Those situations were aggravation by the war of a rebellion and the consequential effects on distribution of reproductive health services such as through the massive displacement of people, destruction of medical infrastructure and hospital equipment, inaccessability to rurals, poor and disadvantageous accessibility to basic medical services, and some other things.