Authors: Unknown
Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding on the Ground: Victims and Ex-Combatants (Law, Conflict and International Relations) (45 page)
Traditional or customary justice mechanisms are not a panacea, nor are they a guarantee for human rights, which leads even their most avid proponents to call for their systematic institutionalization. “I endorse the mechanism, but it should be contextualized; not everything should go to the Palava Hut,” says one human rights activist. “Preconditions are required. Tribal disputes, such as differences between families, or specific violations, can work in Palava Hut. Gross violations, such as massacres, should not go to the Palava Hut.”
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If Liberians are committed to implementing certain TRC recommendations through this process, system designers will have to define its scope, parameters, and powers, while acknowledging the tensions between traditional justice programs and the statutory judicial system.
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For all its challenges, many Liberians trust Palava Hut and believe this form of customary justice could provide perpetrators with accountability while achieving some reconciliation. Former TRC commissioner Pearl Brown Bull, whose teenaged son was murdered during the war, states:
The Palava Hut is the right situation for Liberia: It will condemn wrong-doings. It is the best way forward. We are a religious country. Everyone believes in the hereafter, and we all want to be on the right path for the hereafter. To get forgiveness, through cleansing, they really have to mean what they say. We do not have capacities in jail, and why put people up for human rights violations when they can contribute to society?
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Here we see the hope and pragmatism of Liberians who have been victimized by the war. They acknowledge the inherent failings of the TRC but remain hopeful that high-profile and ordinary perpetrators alike will eventually account for their actions during the war and make public amends.
Reconciliation Through Reparations
Many suggest Liberians’ war-weariness is partly what keeps the country at peace, but numerous Liberians are tiring of the unsuccessful pursuit of formal justice.
Some are seeking to move beyond prosecutions altogether: “I’m focused on the long-term perspective, how the non-controversial recommendations will be implemented. I don’t want to be looking at prosecution and lustration right now, perhaps never.”
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In this respect, a number of Liberian peace and transitional justice activists believe that the emphasis placed on the Liberian TRC’s “naming of names” for prosecution and lustration is not only problematic, but it serves as a detriment to other parts of the report. Beyond the TRC, there are other measures that can also work towards reconciling a nation so long divided.
The TRC’s recommendations for reparations and memorialization have been glossed over in favor of the drama surrounding prosecutions and censure. While not eschewing formal legal measures, pragmatic Liberians see these options as less likely to encounter political opposition while still reaching out to the victims of the conflict. “Prosecution and reparations are not in tension and these are not weak alternatives,” says Aaron Weah. “They are true victim-centered approaches. They are weak alternatives when they are used to buy silence, but if they evolve from society and victims’ groups, and have political buy-in, then these are not weak at all.”
The statute creating the TRC mandates it to make recommendations regarding reparations (TRC Act, art. 4, sec. 26). The final report recommends a Reparations Trust Fund of US $500 million over 30 years. According to the TRC, monies for the Fund are to be generated through the nationalization of a Monrovia office building that was initially built with tax money, as well as the nationalization of the J.J. Roberts scholarship fund. The proceeds of the scholarship fund will be earmarked for educating “the children of Liberia.”
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The most casual reader will find it difficult to imagine how the nationalization of a single building, which has since been taken over by the government for public use, could ever generate the hundreds of millions of dollars required to deliver the kinds of reparations that the TRC envisions. Even members of the Independent Human Rights Commission, the Liberian body established to administer reparations, express doubts about where their funding will come from, and their ability to work autonomously. “If you want to remain independent you can’tbe beholden financially, otherwise you are under government control,” says commissioner Thomas Bureh. “We need to be independent, so we need external support.”
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The commissioners do not acknowledge that external donors might also infringe on the Commission’s autonomy and, although no donors have yet committed any kind of funding, they remain optimistic—some would say naïve—about the Commission’s financial prospects. “We’ve got to take people at their words that they are going to be supportive,” says commissioner Boakai Dukuly.
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The reparations proposal is well-intentioned, but woefully incomplete, and subject to much disagreement. For example, within the first five years, that is to say until 2014, “all direct victim support programs must be implemented including memorials, victim support and the process of prosecution.”
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However, the Commission gives little clue as to who should receive reparations, although victims may be individuals or collectives, and women are highlighted
as “absolute priorities.” As far as the form that reparations should take, the TRC enumerates a range of health, educational, economic, and infrastructural services.
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“The whole idea of caring for victims is new to Liberia, which is why they are so important,” notes Aaron Weah. “During the war and the peace agreements, more attention was given to appeasing the perpetrators, the warlords and the combatants than in dealing with the victims.” Again, in intent, the TRC report seeks redress for victims, but in practice it fails them. Unlike the Ghanaian TRC report, which created a list of victims, the Liberian report provides no preliminary list of potential victims who could or should benefit from reparations. Additionally, and possibly more importantly, the reparations programs that the TRC recommends require massive resources that Liberia simply does not possess. In the laundry list of Liberia’s urgent needs, it is unlikely that reparations will become the preferred project of an international community that is tiring of the nation’s ongoing demands.
Nonetheless, some believe that reparations are a real means to demonstrate a government’s commitment to respecting the rights and needs of the victims.
All reparations, individual and collective, provide healing. This shows a link between peacebuilding and transitional justice—they are mutually reinforcing, and you cannot have one without the other in post-war Liberia. For instance, if the TRC recommendations consider identity, which they appear to, then there is an issue of memorialization … Any efforts along these lines will go towards stopping a return to war.
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However, this view is rather optimistic. The reality is that widespread reparations in Liberia are as improbable as domestic prosecutions of alleged war criminals. Even if the means existed—which they certainly do not—there is no guarantee that the Independent National Commission on Human Rights (INCHR) could administer the funds in an equitable fashion. In fact, any misappropriation or evidence of favoritism would only serve to exacerbate ongoing societal divisions.
A large majority of Liberians are willing to accept community-level measures or symbolic measures as a form of compensation for their suffering.
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Many communities are pursing memorialization projects to help communities remember and honor those who died in massacres during the civil war. Some forms of memorialization are contentious, but nearly all Liberians can embrace others. Indeed, memorialization efforts such as a national remembrance day, cleansing ceremonies, issuing death certificates to the war dead, and making public apologies to the people of Liberia appear to be quite feasible, as few require many resources.
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While most Liberians express some disappointment about the country’spaceof peacebuilding and the transitional justice process to date, all claim to be hopeful about the future. “I am optimistic because when you see Liberia, you see resilience,” says peace activist Lindora Howard Diawara.
We don’t want to go back to war, we are committed to wanting peace. But peacebuilding is a process, it doesn’t just happen. We can see how far we’ve come since the war, and now we can see how far we need to go.
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However far Liberians must go, all remain committed to peace. Justice, though, remains elusive.
Until now, peacebuilding and transitional justice in Liberia has been an eight-year roller coaster ride of great expectations and dashed hopes. After 14 years of war, and as many breached peace agreements, Liberians were desperate for peace, but many were disappointed by DDR cash payouts that appeared to reward combatants for perpetuating war. Liberians then looked to security sector reform and the TRC for justice, only to feel let down by the emphasis on prosecutions that cannot be pursued within the country’s limited legal system. Some now see Palava Hut and the International Criminal Court (ICC) as providing the potential for some closure. So far, the ICC prosecutor has not indicated that he will pursue criminal prosecutions in Liberia, and the Palava Hut process, although widely supported, has yet to be tried and proven. Whatever transitional justice processes they embrace, it is improbable that all Liberians will get all that they want. Perhaps eventually they will get what they need.
Acknowledgements
I am particularly grateful to Aaron Weah for his invaluable research assistance. I also thank Jim Dube for his legal insight, Stephen Brown for his comments, and the many Liberians working in transitional justice who kindly shared their observations and experiences with me. I am appreciative of the Social Sciences Research Council of Canada and the Trudeau Foundation for financial support.
Notes
1
Refugees International, “DDRR in Liberia: Do it Quickly—But Do It Right,” 3 December 2003, available at: <
http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/reliefweb_pdf/node-138701.pdf
> (accessed 27 June 2011).
2
Kathleen M. Jennings, “The Struggle to Satisfy: DDR Through the Eyes of Ex-combatants in Liberia,”
International Peacekeeping
, Vol. 14, No. 2 (April 2007), p. 208.
3
Ibid. Jennings speculates that entry requirements might have been lowered to ensure the inclusion of “camp followers”: women who were bush wives or fighters or both.
4
Reintegration programming consisted of formal education and vocational or public works training, with the DDR program paying tuition for up to three years and giving participants in registered activities a monthly stipend (between US $15 to 30 per month).
5
UNSC, Fifteenth Progress Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Mission in Liberia. UN Doc. S/2007/479, p. 7.
6
Jennings, “The Struggle to Satisfy,” op. cit., p. 208.
7
Ibid., p. 209.
8
It is common in post-conflict situations that civilian non-combatants (many of whom are victims) perceive programs such as DDR as rewarding belligerents for perpetuating war, but the need for incentives to induce combatants to lay down arms is clear.
9
Frequently, participants in training programs received their monthly stipend late, and often noted that, by the time they received it, a portion had been taken by the school principal or program fund administrator. See Jennings, “The Struggle to Satisfy,” op. cit., p. 210.
10
According to UNDP, 55 percent of Liberia’s population is under the age of 20. Although the Liberian government does not track employment rates, NGOs estimate national unemployment at 65–70 percent. Nearly all who work labor at subsistence wages. See Samwar S. Fallah, “Peace Under Threat,”
D+C
, No. 07/08 2010, Vol. 51, July/August 2010, available at: <
www.inwent.org/ez/articles/176375/index.en.shtml
> (accessed 27 June 2011).
11
Jennings, “The Struggle to Satisfy,” op. cit., p. 212.
12
Helen Liebling-Kalifani
et al
., “Women War Survivors of the 1989–2003 Conflict in Liberia: The Impact of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence,”
Journal of International Women
’
s Studies
, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2009), p. 14, available at: <
www.bridgew.edu/soas/jiws/vol12_no1/pdfs/1_Liebling-Kalifani.pdf
> (accessed 2 April 2011). According to Amnesty International (2008), women and girls represented 30–40 percent of fighting forces, or approximately 25,000–30,000 people. No female combatants negotiated the Accra peace agreement, nor are any presently serving in positions of government authority.
13
National Commission on Disarmament, Demobilization, Rehabilitation and Reintegration (NCDDRR), “Joint Implementation Unit DDRR Consolidated Report (Status of Disarmament and Demobilization Activities as at 11/24/2004),” available at: <
www.humanitarianinfo.org/liberia/coordination/sectoral/DDR/doc/Forthnightly%20Report_24112004.pdf
> (website is currently unavailable as it is in the process of being archived).
14
Irma Specht (ed.),
Red Shoes: Experiences of Girl Combatants in Liberia
(Geneva: Programme of Crisis Response and Reconstruction, International Labour Office, 2006), available at: <
www.humansecuritygateway.com/documents/ILO_ExperiencesofGirlCombatantsLiberia.pdf
> (accessed 27 June 2011).
15
Ibid., p. 82.
16
Amnesty International, “Liberia: No Impunity for Rape, A Crime Against Humanity and a War Crime” (December 2004), available at: <
www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AFR34/017/2004/en/c3b9d317-f7a6–11dd-8fd7-f57af21896e1/afr340172004en.pdf
> (accessed 03 August 2011). Men and boys were also victims of gender-based violence, but women were the majority of victims.