Transitional Justice Forum

Liberia: Truth and Reconciliation Commission releases Volume I of Final Report

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia (TRC) uploaded the first volume of its final report to its website on January 24. Two other volumes are due to be released prior to the end of the commission’s mandate on June 22, 2009.

Volume I is 107 pages long and contains an analysis of the legal nature of the conflicts in Liberia, as well as a list of findings and recommendations. The commission has reserved the right to make additional determinations and recommendations in the final consolidated report. The TRC keeps Liberians in suspense and many thorny questions are left for the final two volumes of the report.

The TRC recommends “prosecutions in a court of competent jurisdiction and other forms of public sanctions”. It has promised to issue a list of names of individuals not recommended for prosecution as well as more detailed recommendations on the establishment and nature of such a criminal court. Not surprisingly, the recommendation of prosecutions has attracted a lot of attention and controversy. Ex-rebel leader Prince Johnson, who is now a senator, already warned that there would be trouble if anyone tried to arrest him.

The commission also called for the establishment of a National Palava Hut Forum as a complementary tool for justice and national reconciliation. The Palava Hut process is a dispute resolution mechanism that has traditionally been used in Liberia in the case of conflict between two groups. The TRC suggested that reparations shall apply to communities and individuals and that general amnesty should be granted for children. Others may be recommended not to be prosecuted if they admit their wrongs and express remorse. Further recommendations concern institutional reform which the TRC thinks must be implemented to promote “good governance” and human rights.

Liberian President Johnson Sirleaf testified before the commission on February 12

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf last week testified before the TRC and said that she had initially supported Taylor’s war effort and even raised funds for him, but denied ever having been a member of his group. Sirleaf's appearance came as a surprise to many as it was not previously announced by the commission. "If there's anything I need to apologize to this nation for is the fact I was fooled by Mr. Taylor,” local radio stations reported her as telling the commission.

Commission takes into account antecedents back until 1822

There are some very positive features about the first volume of the TRC’s report: The report clearly explains the methodology of the commission, its structure, who has been involved in its work and how the commission interpreted its own mandate. It provides an honest outline of some of the challenges the TRC has faced. Importantly, the commission took the liberty not to narrow its analysis to the period of January 1979 to October 2003. The Truth and Reconciliation Act of May 2005 allowed the commission to also take into account “any other period preceding 1979” and the TRC has taken full advantage of this clause. The chapter on the root causes of Liberia’s conflicts begins its analysis in 1822; the year in which Americo-Liberians began settling in. The commission points out that the historical antecedents of tensions are “far more complicated than Black Colonial paradigm machinations” and that both settler and natives generated misconceptions, fear and conflict with one another.

Some Skeptical Thoughts on Volume I and Suggestions for the Final Consolidated Report

The commission could still make changes or elaborate on its views in the consolidated version of the report. Here are thus a few thoughts and suggestions:

• To a large extent, the TRC takes a very legalistic approach, even if the commission states that it is “not a court or tribunal”. Long sections are dedicated to an analysis of which parts of international and domestic law applied at what point. While the main legal conclusions are convincing, the analysis is not always waterproof (e.g. including “imprisonment” among violations of preemptory norms of international law or stating that there was no definition of economic crime and that the TRC would therefore “adopt” one to hold perpetrators accountable). Why does the TRC spend a section on the appropriate “standard of proof” if it is not a judicial organ? Obviously, the TRC must be applauded for avoiding to make statements without considerations of evidence, but I wonder how much of the report will resonate with ordinary Liberians. The conflict is presented almost “faceless”. Compared to reports of other truth commissions, little is said about the concrete experiences and the daily life of the population during the 14 years of violent conflict. Let’s hope the consolidated version gives those Liberians who testified before the commission a voice in the final report. The TRC must have collected a rich amount of statements, videos, photographs and drawings. Including some of this material (by respecting the consent of those concerned) might help to make the report more accessible and relevant to ordinary citizens. Another idea would be to follow the example of the Sierra Leone TRC which has produced illustrated versions of its report for young children and for students at senior schools. WITNESS, an international NGO, was invited by the Sierra Leonean Truth and Reconciliation Commission to produce a video accompaniment to the official TRC report.
  
  
• Another critical issue of the Liberian TRC’s Volume I concerns reparations. While the commission suggests that “reparation is a desirable and appropriate mechanism to redress the violations of human rights”, it fails to acknowledge that reparations are not only a desirable element of transitional justice, but that the State of Liberia has legal obligations to provide them. It is important that the TRC corrects this mistake in the consolidated report and clearly states that reparations are due as a matter of law.
  
  
• Last but not least, there seems to be an yawning gap between the TRC’s finding that “the major root causes of the conflict are attributable to poverty, greed, corruption, limited access to education, inequalities; identity conflict, land tenure and distribution” and the way the commission conceives the abuses of the past. An example: Violence against women is a central part of the commission’s mandate and the first volume of its report. However, the underlying assumption seems to be that women primarily suffer from direct sexual violence (gang rape, sexual slavery, torture, etc.). Indeed, this was and unfortunately continues to be one of the worst aspects of Liberia’s human rights situation. At the same time, the more subtle gender dimensions of the conflict are glossed over. The narrow way the TRC seems to have conceptualized the harm suffered by victims – women in particular – almost exclusively deals with the civil and political dimensions of the violations of their rights. If the TRC diagnoses issues such as the limited access to education or land tenure as the major root causes of the conflict, Volume I of its report does not really discuss the economic, social and cultural dimensions of human rights violations. The TRC’s mandate refers to all gross human rights violations and is not limited to civil and political rights. Moreover, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia is among the first ones to explicitly include economic crimes such the exploitation of natural or public resources to perpetuate armed conflicts in its mandate. It remains to be seen if this promising feature can be fully explored in Volume II and III of the final report. The Liberian TRC should grasp the opportunity to detail its views in the upcoming consolidated report. For instance, a more detailed analysis of the conflict’s impact on the victims suffering from limited access to education or land tenure might reveal a further gender dimension, etc. The Commission should make sure its recommendations, including those on reparations, are in line with its diagnosis that the major root causes of the conflict are linked to violations of economic, social and cultural rights.

A number of excellent articles in the latest issue (December 2008) of the Oxford International Journal of Transitional Justice deal with precisely this question: “Can transitional justice today afford not to concern itself directly with social injustice and patterns of inequality, discrimination and marginalization that were underlying causes of a conflict and that inflicted major suffering and victimization on vast swathes of a population?” The issue is worth reading.