@article{ref1,
title="When the mountain broke: disaster governance in Sierra Leone",
journal="Disaster prevention and management",
year="2021",
author="Melis, Samantha and Hilhorst, Dorothea",
volume="30",
number="6",
pages="14-25",
abstract="PURPOSE When a major landslide and floods devastated Freetown, Sierra Leone had just overcome the Ebola crisis, which had left its mark on socio-political relations between different disaster response actors. With international disaster response frameworks increasingly shifting to local ownership, the national government was expected to assume a coordinating role. However, in &quot;post-conflict&quot; settings such as Sierra Leone, intra-state and state-society relations are continuously being renegotiated. This study aimed to uncover the complexities of state-led disaster response in hybrid governance setting at national and community levels in the response to the 2017 landslide and floods. <br><br>DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH During the four months of fieldwork in Freetown in 2017, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with various state, aid and societal actors were conducted. <br><br>FINDINGS The findings show that a response to policy building on the idea of a uniform state response did not take into account intra-state power politics or the complexity of Sierra Leone's hybrid governance. Practical implications This paper argues for a more nuanced debate in humanitarian governance and practice on the localisation of aid in post-conflict and fragile settings. <br><br>ORIGINALITY/VALUE The study's findings contribute to the literature on the disaster-conflict nexus, identifying paradoxes of localised disaster response in an environment with strong national-local tensions. The study highlights intra-local state dynamics that are usually overlooked but have a great impact on the legitimacy of different state authorities in disaster response.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0965-3562",
doi="10.1108/DPM-03-2020-0076",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/DPM-03-2020-0076"
}