“When the ground opened”: Responsibility for harms and rights violations in disasters – Insights from Sierra Leone

Abstract

So-called “natural” disasters are often characterized by major human rights abuses, yet responsibility and accountability for such violations have attracted relatively limited attention in research and practice. Instead, these events and survivors’ suffering are often dismissed as “acts of God” or tragic misfortunes. Through analysis of an under-examined disaster—the 2017 mudslide in Freetown, Sierra Leone—this article probes survivors’ perspectives on responsibility for disasters, and suffering and violations accompanying them. While survivors in this case often attribute responsibility to God or other supernatural forces, they also understand the state and other earthly actors as sharing different forms and degrees of responsibility for the disaster and its harmful consequences. Indeed, seeing the mudslide as an “act of God” does not absolve the state from its obligation to protect citizens from harms associated with disasters and subsequent response efforts. Survivors’ perspectives provide significant insight into the challenge of advancing accountability in disaster contexts.

Introduction

The push for accountability for human rights violations has been a defining feature of post-World War II politics.¹ At the same time, disasters have become increasingly frequent and severe, resulting in an average of almost 70,000 deaths, millions displaced, and over US$137 billion in damages each year (Centre for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters [CRED], 2016: 1-2). The term “natural disaster” is a misnomer, in that disasters and the harms accompanying them are not natural or inevitable consequences of phenomena such as earthquakes or hurricanes. Rather, disasters unfold when such hazards intersect with human societies; the harms and losses they entail are decisively influenced by the socio-economic, historical and cultural characteristics of the communities they strike. Unsurprisingly, the negative consequences of disasters tend to be heaped on individuals and communities that are already marginalized. This understanding of disasters as social events conditioned by structured vulnerabilities is the cardinal insight of social scientists in the growing field of disaster studies (Wisner et al., 2004).

Disasters are definitively shaped by structural injustices and are often the site of serious human rights abuses. While there is an emerging body of literature on responsibility for human rights violations in disasters, debates on responsibility and accountability for rights violations rarely grapple with disasters linked to natural hazards, and the issue merits greater attention.² This article challenges this marginalization of disaster victims by exploring the perspectives of survivors of a major but little-known disaster: the 2017 mudslide that killed over 1,140 people in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Calls to listen to survivors’ views abound in scholarship and practice on humanitarian crises and human rights protection. However, few studies ground reflections on responsibility in how affected community members themselves conceptualize responsibility for disasters; there is a particular need for more careful examination of the perspectives and experiences of disaster-affected communities in the Global South.³ This is where we situate our contribution, which sheds light on this issue through in-depth interviews with survivors of an under-examined disaster.

This article analyzes survivors’ views on different aspects of responsibility—causal, moral and remedial—for this disaster and attendant losses. Drawing on findings from our interviews, we argue that while survivors often attribute responsibility for the calamity to God and other supernatural forces, they also understand the state and other earthly actors as sharing different forms and degrees of responsibility for the disaster and its consequences. The idea that disasters are “acts of God”—even according to survivors themselves—is sometimes used to deflect calls for individuals and institutions to be held responsible for protection failures and rights violations in disasters. In contrast, this case underscores that seeing a disaster as an “act of God” or other supernatural forces is not necessarily incongruous with demands for the state to protect citizens from harms associated with disasters and subsequent response efforts. Survivors who explain calamity in part by invoking God or other supernatural forces also consider state officials—and even themselves to some extent—as responsible for creating and/or ignoring the social conditions which led to catastrophic consequences. Alongside accounts of supernatural responsibility for the disaster, many survivors believe that human action or inaction exacerbated their losses, and blame state officials who were complicit in activities such as land grabbing and unregulated urban construction which placed people in harm’s way. From this perspective, state agents actively contributed to the conditions that caused the disaster, and reneged on their responsibility to protect citizens by failing to ameliorate social problems which prompt people to reside in high-risk areas. Government negligence and incapacity is also seen to have compromised the recovery process, exacerbating survivors’ anguish, but survivors have little recourse to hold state officials responsible for these failings. As a matter of principle many survivors expect the state to play a leading role in disaster risk reduction, response, and recovery efforts—that is, in upholding remedial responsibility for disaster—but they mistrust the state and do not wait for or depend exclusively on institutions which they know to be weak and fickle. Instead, they turn to informal social support structures, and offer prayers for assistance, even to the spiritual forces understood to be, in part, responsible for their predicament. These complex perspectives demonstrate that responsibility for disaster is not a simple “blame game”; it is best understood as multifaceted, and in relation to the structured vulnerabilities that transform hazards into calamities.

First, we briefly summarize the mudslide and our methods. Second, we discuss the relationship between the recognition of disasters as social constructs and the attribution of responsibility for losses and rights violations in disasters, focusing on three forms of responsibility: causal, moral and remedial. Third, we analyze mudslide survivors’ perspectives on the responsibility of spiritual and earthly actors for the disaster and its consequences. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of this study for efforts to understand and advance responsibility for suffering and rights violations in disasters.

Overview of 2017 mudslide and methods

Mount Sugar Loaf overlooks parts of Freetown, the sprawling capital of Sierra Leone. In the early morning of 14 August 2017, a six-kilometer-long mudslide on the lower slopes of Mount Sugar Loaf and related flooding devastated neighbourhoods including Motormeh, Regent, Kamayama, and Kaningo. Although sparked by heavy rain, the disaster had deeper roots in impoverishment, rapid urbanization, deforestation and construction on hillsides designated as environmental reserves, with government officials turning a blind eye or profiting from these illegal developments. While mudslides and floods have become regular events in the Freetown area in recent decades, the events of 14 August were the second-most lethal disaster of 2017, and the worst in Sierra Leone’s history; they left hundreds severely injured, thousands homeless, and caused over 1,140 direct fatalities (CRED, 2018: 2; World Health Organization, 2017: 32). The disaster affected both affluent and poor families living in close proximity in some of the devastated neighbourhoods, destroying large residences, the homes of caretakers working for wealthy landowners, and other informally constructed shelters. Yet the impacts were especially severe for impoverished families without the resources to buffer their losses. Disasters often undermine rights to life, physical integrity and security, shelter, housing and property, as well as rights related to health and livelihoods, and the 2017 mudslide was no exception (Inter-Agency Standing Committee [IASC], 2011). Sierra Leone has yet to fully recover from its civil war (1991-2002) and the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak; the harms and rights violations endured by mudslide survivors compounded these losses and everyday struggles with poverty and the legacies of violence.⁴

Why explore responsibility for disasters through the prism of this little-known case? The mudslide barely registered in the international media and the humanitarian response was modest. The Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery estimated that the disaster resulted in US$31 million in losses (a major hit for a country ranked 184^th on the UN Human Development Index), and that a “resilient” recovery process would require support in excess of US$82 million (World Bank, 2018). However, donor support for the relief and recovery process came nowhere near these figures; the United States’ contribution to address massive emergency shelter, water and hygiene needs, for example, was a paltry US$100,000 (UNDP, 2017). Perhaps the disaster seemed insignificant compared to the devastations of the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, and Sierra Leone’s own history of “spectacular” suffering in its civil war and the Ebola epidemic.⁵ This neglectful international response, coupled with Sierra Leoneans’ extensive and complex experiences with massive injustices and catastrophic loss, makes the case a particularly compelling one through which to explore questions of responsibility for disasters and rights violations associated with them. The 2017 mudslide hit communities all too familiar with devastating losses, rights violations, deep-rooted inequalities, and limited state capacity to address these concerns. Yet even in these circumstances, survivors advance complex ideas about responsibility and accountability, signalling the need for more concerted attention to these marginalized claims.

Methods

Disasters are in some senses exceptional but they are also products of the “normal order”; thus, efforts to make sense of them must take into account pre-existing socio-economic conditions, belief systems, and societal expectations about appropriate behaviour and accountability (Simpson, 2011: 422; Kumagai et al., 2006). Building on this premise, from January-April 2018, the first author conducted 58 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with community members affected by the 2017 disaster, including those who had lost family, homes and property; Sierra Leone government officials; and staff of intergovernmental organizations and national and international NGOs.⁶ This article focuses on the views of affected community members, who were selected to ensure diversity in socioeconomic backgrounds, religious affiliations, gender, and experiences in the disaster and in the recovery processes. Interviews focused on Motormeh, where the mudslide began, and the downstream communities of Kaningo, Kamayama and Regent. Depending on the participant’s preference, interviews were conducted in English or Krio. The first author is Sierra Leonean and versed in the cultural protocols of conducting research in Freetown’s urban and peri-urban communities. This facilitated the translation of interviews, and situating survivors’ narratives in the local cultural and historical context. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed in conjunction with observations from fieldnotes, situation reports, and media coverage.

Our aim is not to develop a generalizable theory about responsibility in disasters, or to discount the diversity in survivors’ ideas about responsibility for the disaster. Rather, in listening to those who shared their views, we endeavour to draw out common themes that may deepen reflections on responsibility for disasters, and inform efforts to hold actors to account.

Responsibility for disasters: Evolving views

The view that disasters are “acts of God” or natural, inevitable, unintended misfortunes has helped to shield even egregious rights violations and systematic harms in disaster situations from sustained critique. Yet reflections on responsibility for disasters have a long pedigree, ranging from debates on what disasters might reveal about the nature of God, to broader questions opened up by the “social turn” in disaster studies, including legal responsibility for disasters, and the emerging concept of “disaster justice.”⁷

The 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which killed some 70,000 people, was a touchstone in early debates on responsibility and disasters, with Voltaire famously arguing that if God was responsible for or allowed such suffering, this made a mockery of the idea of divine justice. Writing to Voltaire about the Lisbon catastrophe, Rousseau (1992 [1756]: 110) offered some of the first sustained reflections on disasters as social creations, stressing that “nature did not construct twenty thousand houses of six to seven stories there… if the inhabitants of this great city had been more equally spread out and more lightly lodged, the damage would have been much less and perhaps of no account.” Conceptualizing disasters as social phenomena invites examination of the roles of individuals, communities, institutions, norms and socio-economic dynamics in creating the conditions for disaster, and different possibilities for understanding and advancing responsibility for catastrophes.

Perspectives from international law, including disaster law

The vulnerability approach and the “social turn” in disaster studies have been taken up in the legal field, particularly in disaster law, with significant implications for understandings of responsibility for disasters and the harms associated with them. For instance, the International Law Commission Draft Articles on the Protection of Persons in the Event of Disaster reflect this approach, stressing that states have a responsibility to respect and protect the human rights of persons affected by disasters (Article 5), and respond in accordance with humanitarian principles (Article 6). Further, states are obliged to “reduce the risks of disasters by taking appropriate measures, including through legislation and regulations, to prevent, mitigate and prepare for disasters” (Article 9). The UN Special Rapporteur on the Protection of Persons in the Event of Disaster (2013) has similarly stressed that states have a responsibility to prevent and mitigate disaster risks, and may be liable for failures in this respect. Influential international frameworks on disaster risk reduction, such as the 2015 Sendai Framework, are also premised on the view that states bear primary responsibility for reducing and preventing disaster risk—the upshot of states’ obligation to protect their citizens’ human rights, including rights to life, security and housing (UNISDR, 2015). In many jurisdictions, laws and policies delineate the responsibilities of different actors, from national to local levels, in terms of disaster risk reduction, relief and recovery.

In cases such as Hurricane Katrina and the 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy, failures to deliver on these responsibilities have prompted a “judicialization” of disasters through the application of legal conceptions of responsibility and justice (Lauta, 2014; Zack, 2005). International institutions such as the European Court of Human Rights have also helped to hold national authorities in countries such as Turkey and Russia to account for violations of obligations to disaster survivors (UN Special Rapporteur on the Protection of Persons in the Event of Disaster, 2013: 12-13). In a related vein, Bradley (2017) argues that massive rights violations in disasters may fall within the scope of transitional justice, a field that has to date focused on post-conflict and post-authoritarian contexts. Scholars have also explored the potential relevance of “soft law” norms on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in disaster situations (Barber, 2009).

Causal, moral and remedial responsibility for disasters

As this brief discussion suggests, the “social turn” in disaster studies and related developments in disaster law have sparked important conversations on responsibility for disasters, but in some senses these conversations remain quite nascent. Explanations of disasters as complex, social phenomena continue to sit alongside portrayals (in the media, political discourse and sometimes in affected communities) of disasters as divine punishment—a characterization that can sideline or derail efforts to understand and uphold responsibility for disasters as stemming from human decisions and social structures (Grandjean et al., 2008).

Debates on responsibility for disasters reveal an interplay between different senses of responsibility, including causal, moral and remedial responsibility. Miller provides a helpful (if contested) discussion of these interconnected aspects of responsibility. Our intention is not to offer a full theoretical defense of Miller’s views, but to draw from his account some useful conceptual footings for our analysis of mudslide survivors’ views. As Miller stresses, in complex phenomena such as disasters, different aspects of responsibility intersect. Causal responsibility pertains to the part an agent plays in bringing about a particular situation, based on a “common sense” interpretation of causation. In contrast, moral responsibility entails the evaluation of behaviour in terms of moral praise or blame. An actor who is morally responsible for a particular state of affairs may have acted wrongly, or failed to act in accordance with their duties; this may or may not be connected to causal responsibility. Actors with causal or moral responsibility for a particular situation may or may not also bear remedial responsibility. According to Miller (2001: 454), “to be remedially responsible for a bad situation means to have a special obligation to put the bad situation right, in other words to be picked out, either individually or along with others, as having a responsibility towards the deprived or suffering party that is not shared equally among all agents.” Remedial responsibility may be determined by balancing a range of factors, including causal and moral responsibility; different actors’ capacity to assist; whether they benefitted from the harmful situation; the relative burden associated with attempting to remedy the situation; and “special responsibilities” towards those experiencing harm, such as on the basis of nationality or family ties (Miller, 2001: 460-462; Miller, 2007: 99-104). In this sense, Miller’s “connection theory” accommodates the popular view that generally, actors “should be held responsible for the harm that they do,” at the same time as it advocates a pluralistic balancing of causal and moral responsibility alongside factors such as capacity to help and communal connections (Miller, 2001: 466). In disaster situations, in which many individual and institutional actors have dramatically limited capacities (temporarily or long-term), the allocation of remedial responsibility depends in part on pragmatic assessments of which actors are in a position to redress harms.

How do disaster survivors themselves interpret and attribute causal, moral and remedial responsibility for their predicament? This issue remains under-explored, particularly in relation to disasters in the Global South. Political theorists and lawyers have explored questions of responsibility for disasters in the abstract, but considering survivors’ own perspectives is critical because disasters can overturn or fundamentally shake foundational ideas about responsibility and justice. Catastrophes can be moments of “normative disorientation” in which “the ground is ploughed under our feet,” testing spiritual beliefs and trust in the social order, and opening up “radically new possibilities for us to experience humility, self-interrogation, or transformative potential” (Meyer, 2007: 30). As Shklar (1990) insists, victims’ perceptions and preferences are central for understanding injustice, necessitating careful exploration of survivors’ perspectives. Accordingly, in the following section we analyze the views of survivors of the Freetown mudslide, examining their ideas about responsibility for the suffering unleashed “when the ground opened” under them in the early hours of 14 August 2017.⁸

Responsibility “when the ground opened”: Survivors’ perspectives

Coming out of civil war and the Ebola epidemic, Sierra Leone has a reputation for resilience in tragedy. Yet even for citizens who weathered earlier, massive losses, the mudslide and floods of 14 August 2017 stand out, with survivors highlighting the rapidity and enormity of the destruction. One survivor made this comparison:

This is the deadliest devastation. We had a war that killed over 100,000 people or whatever estimates. But I don’t remember even in the war when in a single day 1,100 people died in two minutes. (Al-Jazeera, 2018)

In recent years, the transformation of Sugar Loaf symbolized Sierra Leone’s post-war economic boom, and active investment in a growing real estate market. The belt demarcating the area that was to be protected as a “forest reserve” had been shifted several times by the Ministry of Lands and Country Planning to allocate plots of land to “government functionaries, businesspeople, and other Sierra Leoneans who wanted to build their own homes.”⁹ What remained of the area five months after the mudslide, when the fieldwork for this study commenced, was a massive gash on the hillside and an expanse of rubble, boulders, and mud stretching several kilometers. Survivors used cataclysmic images and expressions to capture the scale of the destruction, recalling that “the ground opened” to the sound of “roaring” or “a large bomb” as “a heavy blast which shook the whole earth.”¹⁰ Those still living close to the disaster site lamented that “underneath the rocks and rubble are human beings, entire families, and an orphanage.”¹¹ Almost in tears, one tribal head recalled that Motormeh was “the fastest growing community in the western area, a forest reserve area which was first to get basic amenities like electricity, water supply, and accessible roads.”¹² The disaster set back these hard-fought gains. For those such as this carpenter who lost 20 family members, the loss was overwhelming:

It was unbelievable until I came to the site and saw my entire compound cleared. I almost committed suicide. I wanted to drown myself in the water because at that time I saw no reason for me to live. But friends and good neighbours came to my rescue…¹³

The survivors who participated in this study do not consider their losses mere misfortune. Rather, they search for meaning and explanations, reflecting deeply on their own responsibilities, and those of supernatural forces and authorities such as the state. Almost unanimously, in survivors’ accounts of the disaster and the fraught response and recovery process, causal, moral and remedial responsibility was shared by spiritual elements and earthly agents. The disaster undercut victims’ human rights in manifold ways, including in terms of rights to life, physical security, health, shelter and livelihoods. Some survivors, particularly those involved with advocacy groups, explicitly expressed their losses as rights claims, while others communicated their losses moreso in terms of suffering, tragedy, and thwarted life plans.

The “wrath of God and the devil”: Spiritual perspectives on responsibility for disaster

Both Christian and Muslim participants in this study broadly believed that the mudslide was the “handwork of God who had marked that it would happen,” as only “God has the power to cause such a destruction.”¹⁴ For some, the disaster manifested the “will of God,” who alone would have the power to “open the ground” and “level the hill to cover all the houses within a couple of minutes.”¹⁵ One survivor suggested “it was the appointed time of God to select Mount Sugar Loaf” even though “other mountainous areas like Mountain Cut are more dangerous.”¹⁶ Such reflections demonstrate awareness of the varying levels of risk facing different communities; that devastation fell on seemingly lower-risk neighbourhoods amplifies the resonance of spiritual factors in attributing causal responsibility for the mudslide.

Many participants saw God’s power reflected in the totality of the destruction. A single mother whose entire family was killed asserted that “only God can cause such an emergency without consulting anyone.”¹⁷ Just moments before her two children were swept away by the flash floods, she shared sublime pre-catastrophic reflections with her neighbour:

I started talking with a lady, who later died together with all her children, that if God actually wants to destroy the world he would do so with a blink of an eye and with just a small droplet of rain take the whole community. She then responded that what I said was true, that there is nothing greater than God and if God wants to destroy the world there will be no delay. So, the discussion continued with the lady saying a prayer, ‘God please let the rain cease, we want to sleep,’ though we had no home to go into and sleep. I fell asleep deeply until I was suddenly woken up by the sound of the hill that was cut.¹⁸

Some reactions reflected the continued influences of African indigenous belief systems that are now, for some, interwoven with Christianity and Islam. Among the beliefs associated with the mudslide in Motormeh is the view that “a big devil living at the bottom of the hill was angry because human beings had been cutting down the trees.”¹⁹ Another is that “a very colourful snake which was killed in the community and burnt in front of the former minister’s house was the child of a devil, which appeared as a woman in the dream of community members.”²⁰ One survivor confirmed that “more than four people testified of that dream as warning that the devil was not happy and would retaliate by causing trouble if a sacrifice was not done.”²¹ (In engaging with these reflections, it is important to recognize that the notion of the “devil” here is distinct from that of the Christian tradition. Unlike the “Christian devil,” which is based on a “morally dualized cosmology” and seen as a demon to be resisted or exorcised, what many Sierra Leoneans refer to as the “devil” is a supernatural force that can be both malevolent and benign. This “devil” is believed to be capable of rendering righteous judgements, whereas the “Christian devil” engages only in demonic acts. See Merz, 2008; Anderson, 2019.) In retrospect, according to some, such dreams should have forewarned residents about the disaster, but were not heeded, making it all the more difficult to interpret responsibility for the catastrophe, both causally and morally. As one survivor reflected,

Even one of the pastors that died down there said he had a dream. He went to the junction one day and asked everyone in the community to pray. He stated that he had a dream of a terrible thing happening to the community, that the damage was very deep and asked us to pray against it. The incident happened a week later after the pastor’s pronouncement. The thing was, no one took all these sayings seriously.²²

For another survivor who lost her husband, what befell Motormeh was the “wrath of God teaching us a lesson that those who are not God-fearing should try to do so.”²³ When the United Nations Office for Project Services approached the community to commence landslide remedial work, residents insisted that a ritual (including the sacrifice of a cow and public feast) be observed before the engineers accessed the site.²⁴ This may be understood as an effort by survivors to uphold their own remedial responsibilities—that is, to make a bad situation right as best they could—within the context of their own worldviews.

Interwoven with such spiritually rooted explanations of the disaster are accounts of how human activities, particularly irresponsible use of the environment by state authorities and community residents, contributed to catastrophe. Many who invoked spiritual conceptions of responsibility for the disaster also acknowledged their own reckless use of the forest, which defiled its sacredness as the abode of spiritual forces, according to some traditional beliefs. For example, a tribal head in Kamayama acknowledged that community members had been undertaking activities such as “logging and charcoal production, stone mining for construction, and unregulated human settlement” in previously isolated areas of the forest.²⁵ As a “traditional man,” he lamented the departure from historical practices of preserving sacred forest areas, which would have spared the Sugar Loaf habitat (which is also a water catchment area) and perhaps averted the mudslide.²⁶ For this victim, the message one should discern from the disaster was clear:

We need a better and safer place to stay. When I was removed from the rubble, I knew God does not want us to live here. This is not a good place for us to live. We should be relocated.²⁷

The willingness to move away from a disaster-prone area emanates not only from the physical experience of destruction, but also the belief shared by many interview participants that such calamity sends a supernatural warning. Convinced that supernatural forces disapprove of human settlement in the area, some survivors pressured the government as best they could to relocate them, with one pleading that “if building houses is too much for the government, they should give us empty lands.”²⁸ Previous governmental relocation efforts were strongly resisted, for example by burning down forestry guard posts and through the lynch-mobbing of a Ministry of Lands official supervising the demolition of illegally constructed buildings close to Sugar Loaf.²⁹ In contrast, many participants were now eager for government relocation, not only because of their physical losses, but also because of the meaning they attributed to the disaster itself, as a divine warning or expression of disapproval that they had an obligation to heed. However, attribution of a degree of causal or moral responsibility for the disaster to God or other supernatural forces does not exonerate the state or its officials in survivors’ eyes.

Responsibilities of earthly authorities: Inviting disaster through negligence, inadequate policies, incapacity and corruption

Notwithstanding widespread beliefs that spiritual forces were at least partially responsible for the disaster, survivors also identified numerous government policies and practices that helped set the stage for the disaster and exacerbated the losses and rights violations it entailed, and for which they believe the government should, in varying ways, be held responsible. For instance, both before and after the war, rural-urban migration increased pressure on limited housing stock and fueled the expansion of the city into ecologically fragile areas, with ethnic relations also influencing where families settled (Kandeh, 1996). In this connection, several older survivors reflected on state-sponsored or state-sanctioned practices that compounded social problems which drove people into the forest. Linking forest depletion to housing problems, an elder recalled that while Freetown was originally home to indigenous people, British colonial policies favoured the Krios who were descendants of freed slaves brought to the West African coast following the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.³⁰ Privileged by their close relationship with the British, the Krios emerged as a distinct cultural group with important real estate holdings. This elder was among the many who migrated from the interior of Sierra Leone to Freetown in search of employment, only to find the socioeconomic costs of more “Westernized” living and decent housing in the city to be unbearable.³¹ Alienated by the modernized values promoted by the more affluent Krio (many of whom are themselves now also pressured by rising housing costs), such migrants started moving into the mountains near Freetown. These dynamics have continued, as more people were forced to migrate and resettle in Freetown during the civil war, making it difficult for some to obtain housing, and driving them into restricted areas.³²

Participants of low socioeconomic status also lamented that the housing situation was worsened by economic liberalization policies and the post-war inflow of foreigners such as peacekeepers, donors, and investors. As the housing market became increasingly privatized, foreigners generally paid rent in US dollars, outbidding locals. When foreigners left, many homeowners continued to rent their apartments in dollars and the government was uninclined to intervene in the market to protect people who could not afford exorbitant rent.³³ Blaming the state for the housing crisis, one poor woman said, “If there were modalities in place for housing in the country, we should not have gone into the forest areas to find permanent settlement,” implying that the forest would have been preserved, reducing disaster risks.³⁴ One survivor, who lost her husband and daughter and was left squatting in an unfinished building, wanted to go back to her village in the rural north.³⁵ Yet living conditions in the rural north are generally even more difficult than in the capital, as public services and job opportunities are still very limited, despite some governmental and private efforts to address these concerns over the past decade. Such dynamics left poor residents of the affected neighbourhoods in a catch-22 situation in which they had little choice but to expose themselves to hazardous conditions, and inadvertently aggravate disaster risk by contributing to deforestation and informal developments in ecologically fragile areas.

Moreover, the risk of disaster was exacerbated by the country’s conflicting legal and institutional frameworks and environmental protection practices. State agencies like the Forestry Department, the Environment Protection Agency, and the National Protected Area Authority are mandated to preserve the hills overlooking Freetown as national park while the Ministry of Lands is sometimes interested in allocating such lands for estate development.³⁶ One official at the Ministry of Lands admitted that they authorized the construction of houses at Babadorie Phase 3 (the epicenter of the mudslide) even after the Forestry Department demarcated the area as a forest reserve.³⁷ He disclosed that allocation of state land and building permits is riddled with nepotism, benefitting the wealthy and influential. The Country Planning Act mandates the Ministry to demolish make-shift pan bodies (owned by poor people) while a lengthy court order is required to clear permanent structures put up by the well-to-do in the same vicinity. Infamously, one of the multi-storey buildings submerged by the mudslide was owned by a former minister, who was able to build while the ministry remained congested with outstanding applications from ordinary people looking for land to build more modest homes. Corruption at the Ministry of Lands is so pervasive that a ministry official acknowledged how it might have exacerbated disaster vulnerability:

The majority of people affected are low income people who cannot pay huge cost of rent and who cannot buy land in the open private market. And again because of the corrupt practices in the ministry in allocating land, you must really be somebody who has money for you to be allocated land. So those are some of the reasons why you see people going into those areas that are unplanned, that are buffer areas, that should not be inhabited, particularly in those risk zone areas… I will say so because I see what is happening every day and this is a research and so we have to say the truth.³⁸

This meshes with scientists’ observation that catastrophic consequences in disasters are more strongly correlated with poor policy decisions and corrupt practices than the severity of particular hazards (Ambraseys and Biliham, 2011). In Sierra Leone, this kind of behaviour amplifies mistrust in the various state institutions (and the international organizations and NGOS that collaborate with them) involved in disaster prevention and mitigation, increasing the likelihood of residents discounting warnings issued by these actors about risk-prone areas and practices. One tribal head at Motormeh said, “If I tell you that there were no warnings about upcoming disasters in the area, [I] am lying to you,” conceding that “the Environment Protection Agency, the National Protected Area Authority, and the Forestry Department came and told us to stop destroying the forest and erecting houses under the mountain.”³⁹ Given the socioeconomic pressures they face, residents’ ability to heed these warnings may be limited. However, the official and “expert” narratives which these agencies convey are also perceived as untrustworthy, not because they do not make scientific sense to local people, but because of inherent contradictions in state practices. After admitting that they were warned, the tribal head quickly drew attention to the corrupt practices of government officials:

The Lands Ministry is responsible for all these problems as they were the ones that gave legal documents to the land grabbers and even building permits for them to construct their houses. They sold lands to people, even though the place is prone to disaster, without informing the Forestry Department. I thought the Lands Ministry should be driving out land grabbers from disaster prone areas but they were busy selling those lands. They were giving support to the land grabber[s] to stay in those lands and they are the cause of this problem.⁴⁰

When one ministry’s policy says that an area must be protected, and then another agency converts the same land for private development by state functionaries themselves, it undermines the credibility of environmental protection policies and their role in risk reduction. As an executive member of the Sierra Leone Mudslide and Flood Survivors’ Association reflected, this contradiction fuels locals’ doubts:

Some time ago, government had been saying that people should refrain from living around the water catchment area and that people must not build houses in those areas. It was then the Ministry of Lands came and put the ‘X’ signs to demolish those houses, saying those houses may cause the dam to dry up and the environment is not even good for people to be dwelling there. However, thinking of it, it is these same staff from the Ministry of Lands that are selling lands to these people. If you go and meet these people that were staying down there, you will be told that they do have their documents from the Lands Ministry. And so you can’t eat your cake while thinking of having it too.⁴¹

When survivors find the official state narrative untrustworthy or incoherent, spiritual beliefs may become even more important in the context of efforts to make sense of the calamity. Survivors invoke spiritual beliefs in their search for meaning in part because the supposedly objective, “evidence-based” narrative supported by the state is fundamentally questionable in light of state officials’ own actions. In the aftermath of disasters, there is “a strong human tendency to search for and identify causes in such a way as to make the world more predictable and give at least a subjective impression of control over events” (Grandjean et al., 2008: 193). Attributing causal responsibility for a disaster to God may not, at first, seem to give victims any control. However, by reflecting on their own shortcomings and trying to live in line with religious precepts, survivors may feel that they can take their portion of moral responsibility for the disaster, and help deter future calamities. The engagement of spiritual beliefs does not necessarily reconstruct disasters as random, mysterious acts. Rather, for some, these explanations may be more persuasive than accounts of responsibility in which the state is central (particularly when the state is erratic and sometimes impotent). The importance of spiritual or religious explanations for disaster may be amplified in weak institutional settings like Sierra Leone where, after the 2017 disaster, no state official has publicly acknowledged responsibility, resigned, or offered an apology for putting people in harm’s way. Spiritual beliefs are central to many if not most survivors’ accounts of responsibility for the mudslide, but such convictions often sit alongside the view that government officials share responsibility, and should also be held to account. In this sense, many survivors’ views on responsibility for this disaster resonate with some accounts of responsibility for grievous injustices in the war, in which the supernatural and customary authorities also figure centrally (Sesay, 2019; Alie, 2008; Graybill, 2017). Many survivors use prayers and rituals as means to remedy the losses and rights violations the disaster wrought, but in spite of persistent scepticism about the trustworthiness and capacity of the state and its officials, they have also mobilized to demand that the government accept and exercise remedial responsibility for the disaster and protect victims’ rights, as we discuss below.

Taking responsibility for catastrophe in weak institutional contexts

Study participants, including civil society leaders, expressed a deep sense of injustice not only in relation to the social conditions and corrupt practices which led to the catastrophe of 14 August 2017, but also in connection with how the response, recovery and future risk-reduction efforts have been carried out—elements that may, in Miller’s terms, be understood as aspects of remedial responsibility. Both the immediate disaster and recovery efforts were characterized by serious failures to protect citizens’ basic human rights, with every survivor who participated in this study stressing that they received insufficient attention and help from both the national government and the international community (loosely, the diverse range of international organizations, NGOs and donor agencies present in Sierra Leone). Distributions of basic supplies and cash payments by governmental agencies and humanitarian organizations (UN agencies and NGOs) were often chaotic as survivors expressed their frustration over missing names on registration lists, insufficient supplies, and late disbursement of badly needed funds. This comment reflects the dissatisfaction felt by many:

First, when this disaster happened, we had a very slow response. Some people lost their lives during the disaster because there was no immediate response when the mudslide occurred. If there had been machines like excavators so many lives would have been saved because people who were trapped were calling for help. Someone was saying my wife is gone, I am alone here with my son. Moments later you will hear my son is gone and I have run out of [mobile phone] credit. Unfortunately, we could not rescue or save him. We were standing there, and the community youths who were the rescuers went to help but could not do anything with their bare hands. If we had a department that was responsible for disaster preparedness, maybe immediately [after] the incident occurred that morning they would have come to our aid and people would not have died the way they did. Later government and NGOs came but the whole registration was done in a very chaotic way.⁴²

Asked who they consider responsible for response and recovery efforts, every survivor who participated in the study stated that this is the primary responsibility of the central government, followed by the international community, including international organizations and NGOs, Sierra Leoneans in the diaspora, and wealthy nations. In this section, given limited space and in line with survivors’ perspectives, we focus in particular on the role of the state. As Miller (2001, 2007) stresses, remedial responsibility to repair harms is not necessarily connected to blame, or causal or moral responsibility for a bad situation. The determination of remedial responsibility also depends on factors such as capacity to assist, although in many cases there is a strong sense that whenever possible, actors who have been implicated causally and/or morally in bringing about rights violations or other harms should be involved in remedying the situation. As we have discussed, many survivors see the government as sharing causal and moral responsibility for the disaster with other actors, from supernatural forces to fellow citizens, and they are all too familiar with the government’s limited capacity to protect their rights and support their recovery. The government’s limited capacities stem from challenges ranging from inadequate resources and training to corruption and precarious authority, all linked to the ongoing legacies of war, colonialism, and other structural injustices. Displaying what Jackson (1993) and Jackson and Rosberg (1982) call juridical without empirical statehood, Sierra Leone hardly has the capacity to protect its citizens’ right to life, which is stipulated in Chapter III of the 1991 national constitution, much less socioeconomic rights which have no constitutional guarantees. It is therefore striking that many survivors were nonetheless steadfast in insisting that their state should be at the forefront of efforts to exercise remedial responsibility for the disaster—a reflection, perhaps, of expectations that the state can and should improve, and wariness (borne of long, troubled experiences) of the potential contributions and accountability of the “international community.” This expectation meshes with Sierra Leone’s obligations under international human rights law (including as a signatory to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) to ensure essential access to rights to housing, water and food, even in complex disaster contexts. How then do survivors advance their conviction that the government should exercise remedial responsibility for the disaster, and how do they balance this with their awareness that they cannot simply wait for the government to fulfil this role?

Survivors’ responses to state failures to exercise remedial responsibility

In the absence of prompt, effective and sufficient recovery assistance, survivors devised ways to band together, shape public opinion in their favour, and push government officials to recognize and uphold their post-disaster responsibilities. Initially, the collective experience of tragedy prompted social mobilization efforts to address social issues linked to the losses and rights violations wrought by the disaster—in some instances building on strategies and forms of organizing that were used by groups such as women, amputees and displaced persons in the context of the peacebuilding process. For instance, the Sierra Leone Mudslide and Flood Survivors’ Association was established to raise awareness about survivors’ plight and to pressure the government to meet its commitment to provide them with low-cost housing.⁴³ The Association was inspired by the “need to remember loved ones who did not die a natural or normal death” and to stay united in the struggle for attention and continued help following the closure of temporary camps.⁴⁴ As Freetown approached another rainy season, one of the members’ collective concerns was their speedy relocation to safer areas to avoid another disaster. Drawing on their limited humanitarian cash transfers, survivors raised the funds needed to register the Association with the Freetown City Council and Ministry of Social Welfare, in a bid to gain formal recognition as the mouthpiece of the disaster survivors.

Beyond framing their demands in terms of legal entitlements, some survivors have attempted to invoke a sense of moral obligation on the part of state agents, likening the state’s duties to “parents who have the primary responsibility to take their sick child to the hospital.”⁴⁵ Another described the government as “guarding parents of the people and therefore the first agent expected to come and give aid if any issues arise, particularly this kind of disaster which goes beyond community work.”⁴⁶ Invoking this analogy, particularly in the context of Sierra Leone where traditional family roles are still highly respected, was a way to appeal to officials’ sense of responsibility to remedy the disaster, whether or not they had a direct role in bringing it about. Often, survivors would send representatives to government agencies to discuss their needs and the state’s obligations, and were in some instances able to convince officials to act, even if only modestly, on their remedial responsibilities, such as by processing cash transfers for those struggling to recover.

When government officials refused to act as “guarding parents,” some survivors resorted to public forums and the local media to tell their stories and increase pressure on the state to respond to survivors’ needs and rights. For example, an executive member of the Sierra Leone Mudslide and Flood Survivors’ Association attested that, following a local talk show in which she threatened that the survivors would speak at the ballot box in the March 2018 elections, further humanitarian cash transfers were paid.⁴⁷ Survivors also appealed to the media when the police violently cracked down on demonstrations, including a protest against the closure of displaced camps without any relocation arrangements for residents. Emphasizing the media’s central role in holding the government responsible, one survivor reflected:

The only channel we have to ask questions is the media. We may go to government offices and talk with officials and they may just abandon what we discuss with them. But we come on air, everybody hears us. It will also be a big shame or scandal for the government if the world gets to know that it has not fulfill[ed] the promises made to us the survivors. It will prove that they are liars and dishonest people.⁴⁸

In addition to survivor-led organizations’ attempts to hold the government remedially responsible, survivors stressed the significance of communal support practices, which helped to compensate for governmental failures and inadequate humanitarian relief. In Motormeh, many survivors were left out of bureaucratic verification and registration processes, meaning they could not benefit from cash transfers and other assistance channeled through state agencies. In light of such institutional failings, “unverified” survivors stressed the importance of “big people in the community” who “have been good to us, providing food…which gives us courage.”⁴⁹ Respondents also highlighted experiences of coming together to share information and address common challenges, arguing that “We, the survivors have all now become like one family. We encourage each other, laugh together, share experiences and do things in common as a family.”⁵⁰ Religious groups and private companies also played significant roles. Religious groups (particularly local churches and mosques) were at the forefront of relief efforts, offering prayers for affected communities, food and non-food items, shelter, and psychosocial support to victims. Due in part to survivors’ voices, three major Sierra Leonean companies invested in a pilot housing project, providing 52 homes for those displaced by the mudslide—a modest contribution, but one that, in the absence of larger-scale government support, was perceived by some to be significant.

In many senses, these strategies mirror those adopted by disaster victims in other contexts where governments shirk their responsibilities to protect and assist their citizens, leaving survivors and other actors to take on remedial responsibility as best they can, pooling different sources of support, from the supernatural to the earthly. While such determined efforts to recover and rebuild are lauded as a demonstration of survivors’ resilience, it is important to recognize that when governments are unwilling or unable to shoulder remedial responsibilities in disaster situations, this ratchets up the pressure on survivors to meet their own needs. After the 2017 mudslide, the inadequacy of the formal relief effort generated intense competition between survivors for access to scarce resources, creating in one survivor’s words a “battlefield where only the strong can survive,” and undercutting the community-based strategies discussed above.⁵¹ This points to the need to recognize but avoid romanticizing survivors’ resilience, and to increase the capacity of disaster-affected governments to hear and respond effectively to survivors’ calls for states to exercise their remedial responsibilities.

Conclusions: Implications for understanding and upholding responsibility for disasters

What does the 2017 mudslide suggest about the complex work of interpreting and upholding responsibility for disasters, and the human rights concerns that underpin and emerge from them? Disasters often attract significant attention because of their “spectacular” nature, but this case underscores that this is not always so: although the mudslide unleashed immense suffering and compromised the rights and wellbeing of thousands, the international media and humanitarian response was muted, and the official domestic response was inadequate. Rather than taking systematic action to redress survivors’ losses and remedy the conditions that led to the disaster, the government provided at most temporary relief to some victims, while arbitrarily excluding others. As in many other countries grappling with major disasters, there was little or no formal accountability for failings that led to and flowed from the disaster.

As we have discussed, many survivors attribute responsibility for the calamity to God or other supernatural powers—a view that may, at first glance, suggest acquiescence to this evasion of responsibility on the part of earthly actors, including state authorities. However, this analysis shows the complexity of survivors’ ideas about different but intertwined forms of responsibility—including causal, moral and remedial responsibility—for disasters, and demonstrates that such beliefs do not necessarily preclude equally strong views on and calls for responsibility from other actors, individual and especially institutional. Many survivors’ views reflect tensions: they do not generally trust the state or rely exclusively on government assistance that they know from experience is likely to be inadequate, and yet they still insist that the state bears a blend of causal, moral and remedial responsibility for their predicament, and expect the state to shoulder its responsibilities and develop the ability to do so where capacities are currently insufficient. Many also see international actors—including UN agencies, NGOs and diaspora communities—as having significant roles to play, particularly in terms of remedial responsibility for the disaster. This points to the need for more concerted attention from human rights advocates and scholars to questions of responsibility for disasters, including those that escape widespread attention, and more systematic accountability efforts. Conceptions of disasters as, in part, the responsibility of supernatural forces, should not be used as a pretext for evading such efforts to promote responsibility and accountability for disasters. Although there may at times be tensions between them, rights-based approaches to disaster risk reduction, response and recovery may sit alongside and can even resonate with spiritual accounts of catastrophes such as the 2017 mudslide. This study also underscores the value of a holistic, multifaceted approach to conceptualizing responsibility for disasters, one that takes survivors’ perspectives seriously; resists the dismissal of disasters as inevitable misfortunes; acknowledges shared responsibilities for calamity; and probes how disaster-related harms and rights violations are connected to broader structural inequalities, systematic injustices, and processes of development and state capacity-building.

In some ways this analysis raises more questions than it answers, including in relation to the responsibilities of the amorphous “international community,” and how to strengthen the capacity of states to shoulder their responsibilities before, during and after disasters. It is also important to ask, what does the capacity to articulate responsibility and demand accountability for losses and rights abuses in disasters do for survivors, and in what circumstances does it matter? Does it improve their post-disaster conditions, or translate into political power that may be wielded to achieve change? While these questions are outside the scope of this article, they deserve more concerted attention, alongside examinations of how ideas about responsibility span different types of disaster. For example, in the case of Sierra Leone it would be fruitful to examine connections between perceptions of responsibility and struggles for accountability as they cut across experiences of war, disasters such as floods and mudslides, and public health emergencies, from Ebola to COVID-19.

We can draw only limited general conclusions from experiences in communities affected by the 2017 mudslide. However, the reflections of survivors in these neighbourhoods serve as a reminder not to over-simplify survivors’ ideas about responsibility for disaster. The fact that responsibility cannot be neatly pinned on any one agent, spiritual, individual or institutional, does not mean that survivors are uninterested in accountability for the violations and harms they have endured. Dismissing a disaster as a tragic misfortune for which no one is responsible is itself an injustice, and one with a political function—to enable impunity and avoid accountability, which only sets the stage for future disasters. It is our hope that this research may, however modestly, help inform efforts to hold official actors to account for human rights violations associated with disasters, enabling more nuanced reflections on responsibility for these complex events, and resisting the deflection of calls for justice.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mohamed Sesay

Mohamed Sesay is an Assistant Professor in Social Science at York University and a UKRI GCRF Visiting Fellow at the LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security, where he is a member of the UKRI Gender Justice and Security Hub. He is the author of Domination through Law: The Internationalization of Legal Norms in Postcolonial Africa (Roman and Littlefield, 2021). His works have also been published in International Studies Perspectives, Cooperation & Conflict, African Affairs, European Journal of International Security, and Third World Quarterly.

Megan Bradley

Megan Bradley is Associate Professor and William Dawson Scholar in Political Science and International Development Studies at McGill University. She is the author of Refugee Repatriation: Justice, Responsibility and Redress (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and The International Organization for Migration: Commitments, Challenges, Complexities (Routledge, 2020), editor of Forced Migration, Reconciliation and Justice (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), and co-editor of Refugees' Roles in Resolving Displacement and Building Peace: Beyond Beneficiaries (Georgetown University Press, 2019). Professor Bradley has worked with a range of organizations concerned with humanitarianism, human rights and development incuding the Brookings Project on Internal Displacement, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the International Development Research Centre, and served as the Cadieux-Léger Fellow in the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

Notes

1 This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Société et Culture (FRQSC). For helpful comments on previous versions of this work, we would like to thank our colleagues including Oheneba Boateng, Catherine Lu, Zinaida Miller, Lou Pingeot, participants at the pre-ISA workshop on “The Margins of Accountability” (Toronto, March 2019) and the workshop on “New Directions in Global Justice” (Berlin, December 2018), convened by KFG “Justitia Amplificata” and the Research Group on Global Justice of the Yan P. Lin Centre (McGill University), and the reviewers and editors of the Journal of Human Rights. Our deepest thanks go to all those who participated in interviews for this study.

2 On human rights protection in disaster situations, see e.g. IASC (2011); International Law Commission (2016); Cubie and Hesselman (2015); and Lauta (2018).

3 For important exceptions, see e.g. Simpson (2011) and Simpson and Corbridge (2006).

4 On the contested origins and unfolding of the Sierra Leone civil war, see e.g. Abdullah (1998), Bangura (1997), Richards (1996) and Kandeh (2012). On experiences in the Ebola epidemic, including in relation to state and traditional authorities, see e.g. Lahai (2017); Richards et al. (2019); and Wilkinson and Fairhead (2016). We explore perceptions of responsibility for the Ebola epidemic elsewhere, but focus here on the views of survivors of a lesser-known disaster. To contextualize these events in Sierra Leone’s longer history, including experiences of colonialism, see e.g. Alie (1990).

5 On rights violations in Sierra Leone’s civil war, and efforts to advance justice in its aftermath, see e.g. Jalloh (2020) and Graybill (2017).

6 This includes 23 interviews with survivors of the 2017 disaster; 4 interviews with survivors of an earlier, related disaster in Freetown; 10 interviews with government officials; and 21 interviews with officials from donor agencies, NGOs and intergovernmental organizations. To enable open discussion of sensitive matters, interviewees participated anonymously. Each participant is referred to by a general description in lieu of identifying details. The study was approved by the McGill University Research Ethics Board, Certificate #316-1217.

7 On disaster law and legal perspectives on responsibility for disasters, see e.g. Lauta (2016, 2018) and ten Have (2018). On disaster justice, see e.g. Verchick (2012) and Lukasiewicz and Baldwin (2020). While disaster justice represents an important framework for future examinations of this case, we focus here on the prior question of how survivors interpret responsibility for the catastrophe.

8 Interview with executive member, Sierra Leone Mudslide and Flood Victims’ Association, 30 March 2018, Freetown.

9 Interview with senior government official, Ministry of Lands, Country Planning, and Environment, 15 March 2018, Motormeh.

10 Interviews with survivors, 17 and 24 February, and 30 March 2018, Motormeh.

11 Interview with community chairman, 17 February 2018, Motormeh.

12 Interview with tribal head, 22 February 2018, Motormeh.

13 Interview with survivor, 24 February 2018, Kaningo.

14 Interviews with survivors, 8 and 17 February 2018, Motormeh.

15 Interviews with survivors, 24 February 2018, Kamayama; 15 and 30 March 2018, Motormeh.

16 Interview with survivor, 6 February 2018, Motormeh.

17 Inteview with survivor, 15 February 2018, Kamayama.

18 Interview with survivor, 15 February 2018, Kamayama.

19 Interview with survivor, 17 February 2018, Motormeh.

20 Interview with survivor, 8 February 2018, Motormeh.

21 Interview with survivor, 16 February 2018, Motormeh.

22 Interview with executive member, Sierra Leone Mudslide and Flood Victims’ Association, see note 8.

23 Interview with survivor, 8 February 2018, Motormeh.

24 Interview with executive member, Sierra Leone Mudslide and Flood Victims’ Association, see note 8.

25 Interview with tribal head, 27 February 2018, Kamayama.

26 Although Sugar Loaf is in the Freetown area, understanding of its sacredness is linked to beliefs in the role of forest in interior areas as an abode of ancestral spirits, secret societies, and indigenous deities.

27 Interview with survivor, 8 February 2018, Motormeh.

28 Interview with survivor, 8 February 2018, Motormeh.

29 Interview with senior government official, see note 9.

30 Interview with tribal head, 27 February 2018, Kamayama.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

33 Interview with survivor, 22 February 2018, Motormeh.

34 Interview with survivor, 8 February 2018, Motormeh.

35 Interview with survivor, 10 February 2018, Motormeh.

36 Interview with government official, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, 14 March 2018, Freetown.

37 Interview with senior government official, see note 9.

38 Ibid.

39 Interview, tribal head, 22 February 2018, Motormeh.

40 Ibid.

41 Interview, executive member, Sierra Leone Mudslide and Flood Victims’ Association, see note 8.

42 Interview with survivor, 17 February 2018, Motormeh.

43 Interview with executive member, Sierra Leone Mudslide and Flood Victims’ Association, see note 8.

44 Interview with member of Sierra Leone Mudslide and Flood Victims’ Association, 22 February 2018, Motormeh.

45 Interview with survivor, 22 February 2018, Motormeh.

46 Interview, executive member, Sierra Leone Mudslide and Flood Victims’ Association, see note 8.

47 Ibid.

48 Interview with community chairman, see note 11.

49 Interview with survivor, 17 February 2018, Motormeh.

50 Interview with survivor, 15 March 2018, Motormeh.

51 Interview with community chairman, see note 11.