Exposed to civil war as children, Sierra Leone’s young adults suffer in the labour market • Training programs are needed compensate for the education gap created by the confict in Sierra Leone – Young adults who were preschool or primary school age during the civil war accumulated less education and are now less likely to be employed. • Labour market policies should include inclusive employment programs – The negative employment effects on people exposed to the confict are more signifcant for women than men. Key messages No. 214 March 2020 Policy Brief The violent civil confict in Sierra Leone that lasted from 1991 to 2002 destroyed most of the country’s social, economic, and physical infrastructures. By the end of the war, almost half the country’s pop- ulation was displaced (2.1 million people), 50,000 people had died, and more than 40,000 human rights violations had been committed. The violence began in the east, spreading to the north and south almost four years later. It only reached Freetown, the capital city, in the west in 1998. A peace agreement signed in January 2002 marked the end of the war and the beginning of the transition to peace. The govern- ment of Sierra Leone implemented a range of post-confict policies. These policies included economic measures to encourage econom- ic growth and employment opportunities, and active labour-mar - ket policies—particularly skills development training—to increase youth employability. Young adults (aged 18-35 in 2019) represent about 34% of Sierra Leone’s population, are the country’s largest population group, and most were exposed to the confict as children. The highest rates of unemployment and underemployment are among young adults. Around 50% of the young adult population is illiterate (compared to 39% in Sub-Saharan Africa) and 60% is structurally underproductive. The lack of economic opportunities for young people goes beyond an economic problem to threaten Sierra Leone’s fragile social and political stability. Understanding how exposure to confict as children affects future employment outcomes can help the government design effective interventions to encourage economic growth and peace. A team of local PEP researchers sought to assess how exposure to confict at key stages of early life affects future labour mar- ket outcomes. Sierra Leone’s young adults struggle to fnd decent work By James Fomba Sandy, Isata Mahoi, Vincent de Paul Mboutchouang and Jorge Davalos The analysis The team constructed an index of confict exposure at the chiefdom level. The in- dex is based on an aggregation of crimes against individuals, crimes against assets, and public order crimes. Exposure was as- sessed for men and women born between 1978 and 1993 in Sierra Leone at different stages of life: • pre-birth/in utero (up to two years before birth), • early childhood (0-3 years), • preschool age (4-6 years) • primary school age (7-13 years) Given that the confict affected different areas of the country at different times, the research team used a difference-in-differ - ence approach to analyse data from the 2011 Sierra Leone Integrated Household Surveys (SLIHS), the Truth and Reconcil- iation Committee (2004), and the Sierra Leone Local-Location Event Dataset (SLL- LED) derived from the No Peace Without Justice (2004) report. Photo: Dominic Chavez/World Bank