This article combines the human security and the impoverishment, risk and reconstructionparadigms to document the threats to survival, development, and wellbeing evident bywidespread poverty, strained social cohesion, and other recurrent multiple threats to humansecurity in post-conflict Sierra Leone. Against this backdrop, the Bondo secret society whosecentral rite of initiation is female circumcision and which among other functions is the gatewayto leadership has achieved hegemonic status as a vote bank. The double appropriation of thegendered symbolic power and the social cohesion and mobilization skills of Bondo initiates bySoweis and politicians pose severe threats to women’s human and reproductive rights, and stallsdevelopment. The prevention of modifiable causes of insecurity, the strengthening of international norms, support of Sierra Leonean social resilience and institutions that protectindividuals from threats are required to improve human security.