UN sanctions Sierra Leone

The UN sanctions regime on Sierra Leone was established by the Security Council during the country's civil war (1991–2002) to pressure the military junta that overthrew the elected government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah in May 1997, and later to constrain the Revolutionary United Front (RUF).

The foundational measure was Resolution 1132 (1997), adopted on 8 October 1997, which imposed an arms embargo, a petroleum embargo, and a travel ban on members of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) junta. It also created a sanctions committee (the "1132 Committee") to administer the regime.

After the Lomé Peace Agreement collapsed and the conflict's link to illicit diamond revenues became undeniable, the Council adopted Resolution 1306 (2000) on 5 July 2000, which prohibited the direct or indirect import of all rough diamonds from Sierra Leone unless controlled by a government Certificate of Origin scheme. This was a key precursor to the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (launched 2003) and helped popularize the term "blood diamonds" or "conflict diamonds."

Further resolutions refined the regime:

• Resolution 1171 (1998) lifted measures against the restored Kabbah government but kept the arms embargo and travel ban on non-state forces, particularly the RUF.
• Resolution 1385 (2001) and subsequent texts renewed the diamond ban.

The diamond embargo was allowed to lapse in June 2003 once Sierra Leone's certificate scheme was functioning. The remaining arms embargo and travel ban on non-governmental forces were terminated by Resolution 1940 (2010) on 29 September 2010, which also dissolved the 1132 Committee, formally ending the sanctions program.

The Sierra Leone case is frequently cited in IR scholarship as an early example of targeted ("smart") sanctions combined with a commodity-specific embargo, and as a template later applied to Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.