Broken Dreams in Pujehun: How Discrimination and Inequality Strip Sierra Leone’s Women of Dignity.

By Brima Sannoh (ATJLF/MRCG Fellow 2025)

In the obscured corners of Sierra Leone’s rural Pujehun District, the promise of equality enshrined in law is a world away from the lives many women endure, where land can be lost overnight, and dignity can be traded for survival, particularly by those who should otherwise serve as moral guarantors.

In Sahn Malen, a lush, green district tucked into the southern belly of Sierra Leone, Baindu Bockarie should have been planting rice. Instead, she watches others till the soil she once called her own. Her ancestral land was taken, not by war or disaster, but by decree of local chiefs, who deemed her unworthy as a woman leading a household. “They said I was being disrespectful for staying on the land without a husband,” she says, her voice tight with hurt.