Whereas Sierra Leone held four successful elections, including two transfers of power to the opposition since 2002, following the end of a decade-long civil war that claimed more than 50,000 lives and countless casualties; Whereas the people of Sierra Leone will return to the polls in 2023 for the country’s fifth general election, which will include a Presidential, parliamentary, and local council races; Whereas the upcoming elections will take place amid the country facing economic challenges and rising inflation; Whereas the African Development Bank (AfDB) reported Sierra Leone’s inflation rose to 26.1 percent in 2022 from 11.9 percent in 2021, driven by food and fuel inflation, and depreciation of the leone as a function of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the COVID–19 pandemic; Whereas Sierra Leone has a long history of politicization along ethnic lines with ethnopolitical cleavages identified in electoral results; Whereas the Afrobarometer reported a noticeable decline in welcoming attitudes toward people of different ethnicities and political affiliations over the last two years; Whereas, in 2020, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) found that Sierra Leone has been experiencing a slow increase in political violence as early as 2014, peaking around the 2018 elections and remaining at high levels since; Whereas the country’s police force has been implicated in the excessive use of force, notably during an August 2022 protest in which more than 20 protesters and several officers were killed in Freetown; Whereas, since 2018, the International Republic Institute reported trust in the Sierra Leone’s National Electoral Commission (NEC) has fallen by 49 percent with only 18 percent of Sierra Leoneans polled identifying they trust the NEC a great deal ; Whereas independent journalists, media outlets, and press freedom advocates expressed their ongoing concerns over political elites’ use of libel and sedition laws to subvert reporting on elections and high-level corruption