Hopes and uncertainties: Liberia's journey to end impunity

International Journal of Transitional Justice

Volumn 6, Issue 2, 2012, Pages 331-343

  Weah, Aaron ^a,b  

^a Governance Commission   (Liberia)

^b International Center for Transitional Justice   (Liberia)

Author keywords

Ethno nationalism; Liberia; Perpetrators; Postwar corruption; Victims

Indexed keywords

EID: 84871681865     PISSN: 17527716     EISSN: 17527724     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/ijtj/ijs007     Document Type: Article

References (41)

1. The author would like to thank Nahla Valji, Lans Gberie, David Backer, Lizzie Goodfriend, Jonny Steinberg, Thomas Jaye, editors of IJTJ and the anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier draft
2. Verdier was the chairman of the Liberian TRC. Prior to this, he served as a member of the technical committee that drafted and advocated for the TRC Act.
3. Members of the 52nd legislature listed in the TRC final report: Senator Jonathan Banney (recommended for prosecution)
4. Senator Adolphus Dolo (prosecution)
5. Senator Prince Johnson (prosecution)
6. Senator Isaac Nyenabo (lustration)
7. Representative Saah Richard Gbollie (prosecution), Representative Kai Farley (prosecution)
8. Representative Edwin Melvin Snowe (recommended for economic crimes investigation and prosecution). On 9 January 2012, the 53rd legislature was inaugurated. While some of the individuals named in the TRC report were voted out in the October 2011 elections, others were voted back into office.
9. Stephen Ellis, The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War, 2nd ed. (New York: New York University Press, 2006).
10. Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Final Report (June 2009), 134
11. In 1847, Liberia was declared a sovereign state by freed slaves who were repatriated from North America by an American nongovernmental organization. The terms 'Americo-Liberian' and 'Congo' are used to describe the descendents of this group of settlers, including those rescued from high seas during the abolition of the slave trade. According to Liberian history, this group of settlers, who never exceeded 5% of the population, ruled indigenous people with an iron fist for well over 130 years from Monrovia.
12. Although both were aspiring towards the same goal - social justice - their philosophy and methodology were different. The former leaned more towards social democrat ideology while the latter referred to its orientation as 'African socialist.'
13. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President (New York: Harper, 2009)
14. Personal interview, Saydee Mombo, executive director for Center for Trauma Healing and Conflict Resolution, Monrovia, Liberia, 9 August 2009
15. Government of the Republic of Liberia Executive Mansion, 'Liberia Shows Dramatic Improvement in Controlling Corruption,' http://www.emansion.gov.lr/doc/Liberia_Corruption. pdf (accessed 13 February 2012).
16. Personal interview, Nyankor Matthews, director of Public Debt Audit, General Auditing Commission, Monrovia, Liberia, 20 June 2011. Since 2007, the Liberian General Auditing Commission has submitted 65 audited reports of various ministries and agencies to the president for action, but little has been done. All the reports found that corruption is rampant, widespread and systematically practiced in postwar Liberia. Despite the 65 reports, only one attempt has been made to prosecute an official of government for corruption.
17. Paul James-Allen, Aaron Weah and Lizzie Goodfriend, Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Transitional Justice Options in Liberia (New York: International Center for Transitional Justice, 2010), 16
18. Personal interviews, 10 individuals, mainly street peddlers, Monrovia, Liberia, 1-15 July 2009
19. 'TRC's "Most Notorious,"' New Democrat, 6 July 2009
20. 'TRC Furore Overshadows Peace Building Proposals,' IRIN News, 9 July 2009
21. 'TRC Torpedoes Peace Process,' Analyst, 6 July 2009. Some of the key personalities in the coalition were
22. Thomas Nimely Yaya (representative of Movement for Democracy in Liberia at the peace talks and formerly foreign minister in the transitional government)
23. Louis Brown (government of Liberia representative at the talks and formerly foreign minister before Taylor's departure to Nigeria)
24. Senator Prince Johnson; George Boley (formerly head of Liberia Peace Council); Roland Duo (militia general during Taylor's regime)
25. Joe Gbala and Kai Farley (representatives of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy)
26. Sando Johnson (government of Liberia)
27. Jackson Doe (cabinet minister under Johnson Sirleaf's government and cousin of the late President Samuel Doe)
28. The TJWG is credited for early advocacy on transitional justice in Liberia, drafting the TRC Act and campaigning for its passage at the legislature
29. The coalition is not a prominent civil society outfit. In fact, little is known about it following its criticism of the TRC report.
30. Email correspondence, David Backer, College of William and Mary, 14 February 2012
31. Personal interview, Peterson Sonyah, president of the Liberia Massacre and Survivor Association, Monrovia, Liberia, December 2009
32. Personal interview, TRC Chairman Jerome Verdier, Monrovia, Liberia, 31 March 2009
33. Priscilla Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity (New York: Routledge, 2000), 25
34. Johnson was the head of the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia. An ethnic Gio, he captured the late President Samuel Doe, an ethnic Krahn, and supervised his execution. The execution, involving torture and mutilation, was videotaped and later viewed at cinemas across West Africa and beyond.
35. Aaron Weah, Samuel Toe and Aaron Sleh, Impunity under Attack: The Evolution and Imperative of the Liberian Truth Commission (Monrovia: Civic Initiative, 2008)
36. Additional recommendations included reparations for war victims, the 'palava hut' process (a local dispute resolution mechanism), memorialization and investigation into economic crimes
37. An atai shop is a Liberian Starbucks in miniature, where issues arising from newspaper articles and national politics are often discussed. The discussants are predominantly male and many are unemployed. It is a tradition reportedly brought down from Guinea during the early 1990s.
38. 'Sirleaf "Sorry" She Backed Taylor,' BBC, 12 February 2009
39. The Congress for Democratic Change, a political party formed ahead of Liberia's first postwar elections in 2005, is perceived as the party of the dispossessed. Winston Tubman, former UN diplomat, and George Weah, a former world-famous footballer, are the leaders. The Unity Party, headed by Johnson Sirleaf, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is perceived as the party of technocrats (and elites), in which the ordinary man or woman has little opportunity for advancement. The National Union for Democratic Progress was recently organized to contest the 2011 general and presidential elections. Headed by Prince Johnson, it symbolizes the ethnonationalism of Gios and Manos. Shortly after the 1980 military takeover that overthrew the settlers' regime, ethnic Gios and Manos were systematically purged by ethnic Krahn loyalists. Like Johnson's party, the National Democratic Party of Liberia tends to symbolize the ethnonationalism of Krahns. This party was organized after the 1980 coup, which brought to power Doe, an ethnic Krahn.
40. Amos Sawyer, 'Emerging Patterns in Liberia's Post-Conflict Politics: Observations from the 2005 Elections,' African Affairs 107(427) (2008): 195
41. Other shifts involved former generals using their civil war credentials to declare support for certain presidential candidates