Ⅵ. CONCLUSION: LEARNING FROM SSR IN SIERRA LEONE

摘要

As this Whitehall Paper was being written, the Ebola crisis in West Africa -notably in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia - was growing, with 8,000 people contracting the disease and 3,800 dying by October 2014. On 10 October, Sierra Leone recorded its highest official number of deaths in one day to date, at 140. Indeed, at this stage, as David Miliband, former British foreign secretary, noted on a recent visit to Sierra Leone: 'We are at an absolute tipping point where either the disease is contained to the low tens of thousands or it becomes an epidemic of a very serious kind'. There is little doubt that the country is experiencing the worst crisis since the conflict officially came to an end in January 2002. It is clear that while the governments of the region are unable to deal with the crisis without external support, the emergency will also be a fundamental test of the region's stability. Certainly, the Ebola epidemic has the potential to undermine the genuine progress that has been made in the security sector - the focus of this Whitehall Paper - as well as in the economic sphere.