Wars destroy not just physical capital but also social capital and psychological wellbeing. Post-conflict recovery seems contingent on healing individuals and restoring their social ties. Can social renewal only occur alongside psychological renewal? We experimentally evaluate community-level reconciliation in Sierra Leone. As a part of the intervention, victims detail war atrocities, and perpetrators confess to war crimes. We find that reconciliation led to greater forgiveness of former perpetrators. It also forged social capital: social networks were stronger and people displayed more community-oriented behavior including higher contributions to public goods. Yet, the process also worsened psychological health, increasing depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. These impacts, positive and negative, persisted for nearly three years after the intervention. Our results suggest that individual healing is not a pre-condition for reconciliation to renew social ties; rather social capital grew at the expense of psychological wellbeing.

Written by Jacobus Cilliers, Oeindrila Dube, and Bilal Siddiqi, Center for Global Development