‘The Home Stress’: The Role of Soldiers’ Family Life on Peacekeeping Missions, the Case of Sierra Leone

Abstract

Through the case of the Sierra Leonean deployment on the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), this study argues that family-related stress is an often-overlooked challenge in peacekeeping deployments. Using in-depth interviews with Sierra Leonean soldiers who were part of the deployment, military decision makers, and foreign advisors, this article lays out specific factors that created family-related tensions and contributed to lowered morale for Sierra Leonean peacekeepers. It demonstrates that the family-related stress on deployment is not only an issue of family separation, it is entangled with the historic trajectories of the armed forces and the sending country’s socio-economic conditions. The focus on Sierra Leone highlights the additional and unique burdens that soldiers and their families may endure in troop contributions from lower-income countries.