TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Robitaille, Marie-Claire
AU  - Milla, Joniada
        TI  - Peacekeeping and the Prevalence of Female Genital Cutting in Sierra Leone
        PY  - 2026/Aug/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 18875
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp18875
        AB  - While the Sierra Leone government is under pressure from the international community to ban the practice of female genital cutting, very few among the politicians and civil society are willing to abolish a practice that is seen as a prerequisite to mark the entry into adulthood. Cultural practices, however, are not immutable. In this article, we postulate that the peacekeepers’ presence in Sierra Leone during the 2000-2005 UNASMIL mission caused a shift in the female genital cutting practice. Using a difference-in-differences identification strategy and data from three waves of the Demographic and Health Surveys, carried out in 2008, 2013, and 2019, we show that women who were 19 years or younger at the start of the mission and who live within a 10-kilometre radius of a peacekeeper base have a 2.2 percentage point lower probability of being cut. The result holds for a variety of robustness checks. We provide evidence that peacekeepers’ demand for transactional sex is likely driving the results.
        KW  - female genital cutting
KW  - norms diffusion
KW  - peacekeepers
KW  - Sierra Leone war
KW  - transactional sex
        ER  -