ICTJ Activity

With the departure of former president Charles Taylor and the conclusion of a Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Accra, Ghana in August 2003, Liberia entered its first period of relative calm in 14 years. After a two-year transitional government, elections in November 2005 brought economist and former World Bank official Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf to the presidency for a four-year term.

The country is grappling with the significant challenges it faces in dealing with past human rights abuses. Yet, there are encouraging signs that Liberia may be moving toward a period of formal reckoning with its violent past.

The 2003 Comprehensive Peace Agreement mandated the creation of a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which was passed into law by the National Transitional Legislative Assembly in June 2005. President Johnson-Sirleaf has been supportive of this endeavor since her first days in office. She inaugurated the nine-member Commission in February 2006 and formally launched the active phase of its two-year mandate at a public ceremony in Monrovia on June 22, 2006.

Since January 2004, ICTJ staff have traveled to Liberia many times to assist with the establishment of the TRC and with the design of a police vetting program. In January 2006, the ICTJ deepened its engagement with Liberia by opening a small office in Monrovia. Since then, the Center's senior staff and locally-based consultants have worked together to hold intensive meetings with the TRC, civil society, and government representatives.

The ICTJ's office in Monrovia has undertaken numerous trainings, information-sharing sessions, and less formal discussions around the range of transitional justice initiatives taking place in Liberia. Thus far these have focused on truth commissions and security sector reform, but the Center keeps an eye on other institutional reform efforts and remains engaged in debates about the nature of potential memorialization efforts, reparations plans, prosecution strategies, and the interconnection of all of these endeavors.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission

From August 2004 until Commissioners were appointed in late 2005, working closely with the UN Mission in Liberia and the Transitional Justice Working Group (a coalition of national NGOs), the Center provided input on the creation of the TRC, the drafting of the TRC Act, planning for the TRC's operations, the process of selecting Commissioners, and other activities.

At the invitation of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the ICTJ's Priscilla Hayner led a two-day training for the TRC Selection Panel in August 2005. She also worked closely with civil society and other actors to advocate for broad public engagement in the process of nominating commissioners and for the transparency of the selection process.

On October 19, 2005, the head of state, Chairman Gyude Brant, announced the names of the nine new Commission members: Sheikh Kafumba Konneh, Rev. Amb. Gerald Coleman, Cllr. Pearl Brown Bull, Retired Bishop Rev. Arthur F. Kulah, Cllr. Jerome J. Verdier, Mrs. Massa Washington, Mrs. Dede A. Dolopei, Mrs. Oumu K. Sylla, and Mr. James H.T. Stewart. Mr. Verdier was selected by the Commission to serve as chair, and Mrs. Dolopei as deputy chair.

The TRC was inaugurated in February 2006 and immediately launched their preparatory period, which officially ended with the launch of the Commission's work in June 2006. During the preparatory period the ICTJ worked closely with civil society and media groups as they began engaging with the TRC.

The ICTJ has worked with the Commission on matters such as interpreting their mandate, organizational structure, workplanning, planning for statement taking and training statement-takers, and public hearings.

During the Commission's preparatory period, the ICTJ undertook the following formal workshops and conferences around the TRC process:

• Introduction to truth commissions and operational management for commissioners (February 2006). A week in advance of the inauguration of the Commission, the ICTJ conducted a training on operational challenges confronting truth commissions.
• Reporting on the Liberia TRC for domestic journalists (March 2006). Working with the Press Union of Liberia, the ICTJ helped organize this training to introduce journalists to the TRC. The outcome of the training was a draft code of conduct, which has since been enacted.
• Workshop on the participation of civil society in the Liberia TRC process - May 2006. The Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG) in Liberia and the ICTJ organized a consultative session about the role of civil society in the work of the TRC. Approximately 50 civil society representatives attended, coming from all counties in Liberia, and also from Sierra Leone.
  

 

With the launch of the Commission's operational phase in June 2006, the ICTJ began to focus more explicitly on addressing specific operational challenges. Formal training sessions have included:

• Managing Truth Commissions Affinity Group (June 2006). Immediately following the TRC's official launch, the ICTJ hosted a retreat for commissioners and staff. Senior ICTJ personnel and senior staff of other truth commissions attended.

• Training on statement taking (July 2006). The ICTJ conducted sessions on statement taking at a five day training for commissioners, TRC employees, and close to 200 newly hired statement takers. The ICTJ and the Liberia TRC produced a manual for statement takers.
  
• Training on gender in the TRC (December 2006). The ICTJ assisted the Commission in a series of gender outreach and town hall meetings throughout the country. The Center helped the TRC draft a gender workplan and policy.
• Training on media (February 2007). International Media Support, the TRC, the Liberia Media Centre and the ICTJ co-hosted a second media training for 45 Liberian journalists, on the aims, structure and process of the TRC; the role of the media in reporting on the TRC process; and coping strategies for dealing with trauma while covering the TRC process.
• Training on hearings (February 2007). The ICTJ's Liberia team conducted a training on public hearings, and the planning that they require.
• Technical Assistance on Investigation, Research, Prosecution and Amnesty (March 2007). The ICTJ assisted the Commission to think through strategies for economic crimes investigation and research, training the staff of the investigation and research units, and developing preliminary ideas on recommending prosecutions and amnesties.

Vetting and Security System Reform

At the request of the UN Department for Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), ICTJ Senior Associate and vetting expert Alexander Mayer-Rieckh and security system reform (SSR) consultant Serge Rumin traveled to Liberia early in 2004 to assess the state of the security forces. They produced a report that outlined a plan for the reform of the civilian security sector, including the vetting of its personnel, and that DPKO relied on in carrying out its registration and vetting program over the next year and a half.

In mid-2004, the Center, together with the Liberia National Law Enforcement Association (LINLEA), co-hosted a seminar for civil society on security sector reform and provided further advice to the UN mission and the national police on the vetting process.

Since the opening of a permanent office in Monrovia, ICTJ Liberia has continued to work very closely with LINLEA, in carrying out its SSR programming. In January 2006, the ICTJ and LINLEA organized a conference in Monrovia on security sector governance, and in March they organized a conference on civilian oversight of the civilian security agencies. Both conferences were attended by a broad spectrum of representatives from security agencies, government, civil society and the international community.

As a direct consequence of the conference on security sector governance, 150 civil society organizations petitioned the government to create an Independent Technical Advisory Committee (ITAC) on SSR comprising members of government, civil society and the international community.

The ICTJ assisted in the drafting of the petition and ensuring it was received by the government. Consequently a Task Force on SSR has been established by the Governance Reform Commission, which was asked to review current reform efforts and develop recommendations for a national policy. These recommendations were given to the government in April 2007. Two members of the task force represent civil society, including LINLEA.

In March 2006 ICTJ Liberia facilitated a research visit by four Liberian civil society organizations to Sierra Leone to learn from the Sierra Leone experience on SSR. As a consequence, these organizations created an SSR Working Group to act as a focal point for civil society action on security reforms.

The ICTJ has participated in their meetings and provided technical support, such as the provision of an SSR manual, introductions to international partners, and assistance in subsequent research trips to Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa.

For 2007/2008, the ICTJ Liberia SSR program is planning a number of activities, including working with the Center for Criminal Justice Research and Education (CCJRE), an affiliate of LINLEA, to facilitate the production of research and policy papers on SSR issues. The Center is also planning to work with the media extensively on SSR issues and to develop programming around the linkages between institutional reform and the work of the TRC.

Finally, at the request of the UN DPKO Best Practices Unit, ICTJ Liberia is also working on an assessment of the vetting of the Liberian National Police that was undertaken by the UN, and is also independently assessing the process of vetting that was undertaken of the judiciary.

Background

In 1989, the onset of the bloody and ruinous Liberian civil war ended almost 10 years of authoritarian military rule under Samuel K. Doe, backed by members of the Krahn ethnic group. Doe's former procurement chief, Charles Taylor, led a band of rebels to the outskirts of Monrovia, but ECOWAS intervention prevented him from taking the capital.

Instead, a breakaway faction from Taylor's National Patriotic Front, led by "Prince" Yormie Johnson, captured and killed Doe in 1990. In the same year, Dr. Amos Sawyer was named President of an Interim Government of National Unity, with ECOWAS backing. Taylor continued to fight until 1992, when he agreed to the formation of a transitional government. A peace agreement was signed in 1995.

Negotiations sponsored by the United States, the United Nations, the Organization of African Unity, and ECOWAS led to the hasty disarmament and demobilization of the numerous warring factions, followed by elections in 1997. Taylor and his National Patriotic Party won a large majority of the vote, which many attributed to a fear among Liberians that Taylor would simply resume fighting if he lost.

Conflict continued to rage, and in 2003 Taylor was forced to resign and flee into exile in Nigeria, under pressure from the international community and rival factions. In August 2005, the governments of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea formally requested that Taylor be extradited from Nigeria to face criminal charges at the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

The leaders of all three countries signed a communique stating that Taylor had violated the terms of his amnesty by interfering in their affairs. Following mounting international pressure, in March 2006, Nigerian officials apprehended Taylor as he tried to flee the country, and delivered him to the Special Court for Sierra Leone, where he was held for several months as debates took place around where he should serve his sentence if found guilty.

Following a decision by the United Nations Security Council, he was transferred to The Hague in June 2006, where he will be tried by the Special Court for Sierra Leone in a special chamber of the International Criminal Court. The trial is likely to start in mid 2007.

A Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in 2003 mandated the creation of five independent commissions, among them the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the Governance Reform Commission (GRC), which is responsible, among other things, for security sector reform.

In October 2005, Liberia held its first elections. Former World Bank employee Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was declared president by the National Elections Commission on November 23, 2005, following a run-off against challenger and former soccer star George Weah. President Johnson-Sirleaf was inaugurated in January 2006 and immediately embarked on an ambitious agenda meant to move Liberia significantly forward in its recovery from the fifteen year civil war.

Despite significant strides in the stabilization of the country, Preside Johnson-Sirleaf's administration still faces a number of serious challenges. Foremost among them are the sheer numbers of unemployed former combatants, high levels of unemployment, a historical pattern of corruption, and an unpredictable international investment environment. To solidify a durable peace, the Liberian government and Liberian society must address the past, including the institutional and societal causes of the conflict.

For a more detailed description of the conflict, please see
A Brief History of Liberia

(Updated May 07)