ICTJ Activity

With the departure of former president Charles Taylor and the conclusion of a comprehensive peace agreement in Accra 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 now faces significant challenges in dealing with past human rights abuses. The Special Court for Sierra Leone has indicted Taylor, but he remains in exile in Nigeria and out of the Court's reach. The national criminal justice system in Liberia is weak, limited in reach, and severely lacking in resources. The peace agreement signaled only that an amnesty would be given consideration at a later date, though two prior amnesties remain in place and have not been challenged in court.

Since January 2004, ICTJ staff members have traveled to Liberia several times to assist with the establishment of a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and with the design of a police vetting program.

Vetting and Security Sector Reform

At the request of the UN Department for Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), ICTJ Senior Associate and vetting expert Alexander Mayer-Rieckh and security sector reform 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. After an initial assessment by International Policymaker Unit Director Priscilla Hayner in mid-2005, the ICTJ plans to return to Liberia in early 2006 to conduct a thorough assessment of police, other security sector, and judicial vetting processes, and to track the army vetting program. The Center is working closely with LINLEA on its security sector reform work. In January 2006, the ICTJ and LINLEA will co-host a workshop for civil society on proposed legislation to establish a Law Enforcement Services Commission to provide civilian oversight of the security sector.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Working closely with the UN Mission in Liberia and the Transitional Justice Working Group, a coalition of national NGOs, the Center has provided extensive advice on the creation of the TRC, as well as on all Commission-related work. In August 2004, ICTJ staff members attended a three-day workshop held in Monrovia to discuss and debate the draft TRC legislation. Following the August 2004 workshop, the Center contracted a consultant, Sierra Leonean truth commission expert Paul James Allen, to participate in a three-week session to draft the TRC legislation.

Ms. Hayner returned to Liberia several times during the first half of 2005 to finalize the TRC act and work closely with civil society, the UN Mission in Liberia, and government officials on planning for the TRC's operation. In August 2005, at the invitation of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Ms. Hayner led a two-day training for the TRC Selection Panel. She also worked closely with civil society and others 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 Colman, 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.

The ICTJ expects to return to Monrovia in late 2005 to work with the commissioners on developing the Commission's work plan.

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. The Nigerian government has reiterated its stance that Taylor will only be handed over to an elected Liberian government.

A Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in 2003 mandated the creation of a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and an act establishing the TRC was passed into law by the National Transitional Legislative Assembly in June 2005. Commissioners were named in October of the same year.

Liberia held its first elections since Taylor took power in October 2005. Former World Bank employee and finance minister 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.

(Updated Feb 06)