Global Issues

Sierra Leone

• Between 50,000 and 64,000 women in camps for internally displaced people in Sierra Leone sexually assaulted by combatants between 1991 and 2001.

• Sierra Leone is a source, transit, and destination country for children and women subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking.

• Trafficking victims subjected to forced prostitution or forced labor through customary practices such as forced and arranged marriages.

• Sierra Leoneans voluntarily migrate to places such as Mauritania and Guinea, the Middle East, and Europe and are subjected to forced labor and forced prostitution.

• Sierra Leone may also be a destination country for children trafficked from Nigeria, and possibly Liberia and Guinea, for prostitution.

• Rape common and viewed more as a societal norm than a criminal problem

 

Sources: United Nations Development Fund for Women; U.S. Department of State 2010 Human Rights Report; U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2011