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ICTJ began work in Liberia in 2004 and opened an office in Monrovia in January 2006. As ICTJ has responded to transitional justice needs in Liberia over the last six years, our involvement has evolved significantly. Our initial engagement in Liberia was designed to provide support to the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and security sector reform (SSR) processes. Since then, our work has matured into a broader program that also includes oral history components as well as technical assistance on issues of reparations, community and national memorialization, prosecutions, and institutional reform.

Background

Liberia is a West African country with a population of some 3.4 million. For over 130 years a small, non-indigenous community, largely descended from freed U.S. slaves who had settled in Liberia in the mid-nineteenth century, ruled the country. Constituting only five percent of the population themselves, Americo-Liberians repressed the indigenous majority and dominated the country's political and economic landscapes. In April 1980, Samuel Doe, an indigenous Liberian soldier, led a coup to overthrow the Americo-Liberian government and assumed the role of President.

Doe's regime was characterized by brutal and oppressive tactics, and in 1989, Doe's former procurement chief, Charles Taylor, organized an armed movement called the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) against him. The NPFL insurgency soon gave rise to a number of splinter factions, one of which—the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL)—killed Doe in 1990. Despite thirteen peace agreements, which were followed by brief ceasefires and attempts at forming new governments, including the election of Charles Taylor into the presidency in 1997, fighting in Liberia continued until 2003.

The conflict was characterized by widespread human rights violations, including massacres, enslavement, sexual violence, mutilation, the use of children in armed conflict, enforced disappearances, and more. Women and children experienced disproportionate levels of abuse.

Liberia's fourteen-year civil conflict came to an end with the 2003 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in Accra, Ghana. Following the administration of a two-year transitional government, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was elected President in 2005. Since then Liberia has become more stable, but its stability remains fragile. As Liberia’s efforts to entrench democracy and a strong human rights culture advance, efforts to address the root causes and legacies of the conflict should be a priority for state authorities, civil society and Liberia’s international partners.

Against this backdrop, two main transitional justice processes have been operating in Liberia: the official truth-seeking process, mandated to facilitate national unity, reconciliation and justice; and the SSR process, mandated to restore security through police and army rebuilding, reform and training. These processes, both created under the CPA, have suffered from capacity constraints and questions of credibility that leave room for legitimate criticism. However, they have also produced some significant results.

The SSR process has been operating since 2003, led both by the United Nation Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), which oversees the police, and the U.S. State Department and its implementing partners Dyncorp and the Pacific Architectural and Engineering Company (PAE), which oversee the national army. The army was completely disbanded and then rebuilt; by early 2010, over 2,000 new soldiers had been trained. Meanwhile, the police force has been vetted and retrained, and currently has a force numbering more than 3,500. Additionally, in 2008 the government created a special Emergency Response Unit, totaling more than 130 police officers, to deal with serious security problems in and around Monrovia. Reform of other national agencies and private security forces are ongoing.

The TRC, which officially launched its operations in June 2006, collected nearly 20,000 statements, heard nearly 800 testimonies in public hearings, embarked on an extensive research and investigations initiative and conducted a variety of public outreach activities. After being granted a nine-month extension, as permitted by its mandate, the TRC released an "unedited" version of its final report in June 2009. The final "edited" version was subsequently released in December 2009, and contains a number of recommendations on further transitional justice processes for the country.

As actors in Liberia continue SSR efforts and determining how to proceed nationally with TRC recommendations, many individuals and community based organizations are developing innovative ways to deal with Liberia’s history in their own communities.

A more detailed description of the conflict can be found in A Brief History of Liberia.

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ICTJ Activity

ICTJ has focused its current program on strengthening the capacity of Liberians to continue advocating for and designing future transitional justice mechanisms, with a particular focus on human rights NGOs, women's rights groups, media institutions, and victim associations.

As transitional justice processes develop at the national level, actors will need access to technical assistance and lessons learned from other contexts. At the same time, it is also vital to support Liberians in taking advantage of local-level opportunities to account for the violations they and their communities have suffered.

Based on these needs, ICTJ's programmatic priorities in Liberia through 2011 are as follows:

• Making transitional justice initiatives more accessible at the community level by facilitating engagement with the TRC's final findings and recommendations and encouraging reconciliation through local memorialization efforts, unofficial truth-telling processes and community dispute resolution initiatives.
• Supporting national post-TRC initiatives, including the establishment and operation of the Independent National Commission on Human Rights (INCHR), the institution mandated to follow up on TRC recommendations.
• Consolidating capacity of individual Liberians and Liberian civil society organizations to pursue transitional justice and peacebuilding efforts.
• Improving coordination among all actors working on transitional justice and peacebuilding projects, particularly local civil society.
• Enhancing the breadth and depth of public outreach and media coverage of transitional justice and peacebuilding in both urban and rural Liberia, working in partnership with Liberian media institutions and other international partners.

In all initiatives, ICTJ's overall aim is to build sufficient capacity among both individuals and institutions to sustain transitional justice efforts long after ICTJ and other international actors are no longer involved in Liberia.

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(Updated April 2010)