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ICTJ Activity

The International Center for Transitional Justice has worked in Sierra Leone since 2001, providing technical assistance to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the Special Court for Sierra Leone, as well as engaging in capacity building with civil society. 

From the first days of the TRC to the end of its mandate in October 2004, the ICTJ played an important advising role, providing the truth commission with technical assistance and expert knowledge to develop sustainable strategies for accountability, prosecutions, and reparations. In 2005 the Center assisted local lawyers in drafting a TRC implementation bill that received support from the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) and the Parliamentary Human Rights Committee. This bill was subsequently submitted to the Constitutional Review Commission, which is reviewing the country's 1991 Constitution to make recommendations for amendments.

Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission

The ICTJ provided the TRC with specialized trainings on public hearings; assistance in developing an approach to the community-based reconciliation program sponsored by the UN Development Program (UNDP); and hosting a meeting in Freetown to exchange experiences and discuss challenges with senior staff from truth commissions in Ghana, Peru, South Africa, and Timor-Leste. The Center was instrumental in assisting the TRC in devising an approach to reparations. It also provided advice on the TRC's relationship with the Special Court for Sierra Leone. 

The ICTJ has been actively involved in efforts to advance the implementation of the recommendations in the TRC's final report, submitted to the government in October 2004. These recommendations address not only the underlying causes of the conflict but also some of the most significant problems Sierra Leone now faces. Following successful general elections and scaling down of the UN Mission, the new UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNIOSIL), the newly established Human Rights Commission-Sierra Leone, and civil society groups convened in November 2007 to consider the implementation of the TRC's recommendations. The plenary at this conference prioritized implementation of a reparations program. 

Reparations Program

Sierra Leone's reparations program was first suggested by the Lomé Peace Agreement, which called for the establishment of a Special Fund for War Victims (Art. XXIX).  In 2007, based on the recommendation of the TRC, the Sierra Leone government designated the National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA) as the official implementing agency. The ICTJ has been involved in training NaCSA officials and other civil society members on reparations. The reparations are intended to include "a broader sense of justice that goes beyond individual satisfaction and includes recognition for the harm suffered, as well as a sense of civic trust and social solidarity." (See Sierra Leone Report, volume 2, chapter 4, paragraph 5.)

In October 2007, ICTJ jointly convened with South Africa's Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR), Ghana's Center for Democratic Development (CDD), and the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI) a seminar that focused on the challenges of implementing reparations recommendations. Representatives of NaCSA, the Sierra Leone Commission on Human Rights (CHR), and civil society participated along side other participants from Ghana, Liberia, and South Africa.  In July 2008, the ICTJ convened a follow-up meeting on reparations in Monrovia, Liberia.  The meeting addressed specific practical issues and limitations that might arise in implementing reparations programs in conditions of post-conflict economic hardship. Participants were drawn from Ghana, Liberia and from Sierra Leone - including NaCSA, the CHR, and civil society organizations that included those working on gender, the Sierra Leone Special Court and amputees and other victims of the conflict.  

Special Court for Sierra Leone

In addition to its work on the TRC, the ICTJ has engaged in efforts to stimulate civil society participation in the Special Court for Sierra Leone by establishing and coordinating a court monitoring program run by local activists. The Sierra Leone Court Monitoring Programme (SLCMP) issues occasional essay series and newsletters documenting and analyzing Court activities; hosts a radio discussion program in Freetown and community town-hall meetings in the provinces; and maintains an extensive Web site. Based on its experience of monitoring the Special Court, the Program began covering local courts, the national anti-corruption commission, and the implementation of the TRC's recommendations. SLCMP has also trained numerous young civil-society activists in critical analysis and advocacy of justice issues.

With the University of California, Berkeley, the Center also organized seminars for Special Court judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. At the time this was the only training available to the judges, who reported that it was very helpful to their work. Observers commented that the treatment of witnesses in court improved after the training seminars.

The ICTJ provided advice on all issues arising from the complex relationship of the TRC and the Special Court, including the critical question of whether the Special Court's detainees should testify before the TRC. The Center also participated in and helped facilitate a national consultation on public expectations of the Court, culminating in a National Victim Commemoration Conference.

The Center has advised and provided technical assistance to the Court on legacy issues such as its ability to have a lasting, positive impact on the Sierra Leonean legal system. A joint UNDP/ICTJ project helped fund two organizations: a new NGO, the Law Reform Initiative, which has redrafted criminal law provisions; and a local group of female activists who drafted a new law redressing gender inequality. The criminal law provisions are still under consideration, but the draft gender-inequality laws were incorporated into three gender-parity bills enacted in 2007. The Law Reform Initiative also participated in ICC Statute implementation workshops and drafted a Code of Conduct for Judges. In addition, the Center met with members of the University of Western Ontario Faculty of Law in New York in 2007 to plan for "residual issues", i.e. the obligations that will continue beyond the life of various international and hybrid criminal tribunals.. The Center also participated in a Special Court's Conference, in Freetown in March 2008, to consider the "residual issues" that will need to be addressed after the Court ends its judicial activities and physically closes down and has continued to work with Special Court consultants on designing memorials.

Since the capture of former Liberian warlord Charles Taylor in March 2006, the Center has closely monitored the processes leading to his transfer, publicly advocating for his trial to remain at the Special Court in Freetown rather than move to The Hague. Since the final decision to transfer him the ICTJ has worked closely with partners in Sierra Leone and at the ICC to ensure that international fair-trial standards are pursued and adhered to; that a robust and transparent outreach program is established well before proceedings start, to make the trial as accessible as possible to people in Liberia and Sierra Leone; that judges are adequately informed of previous hybrid tribunal challenges; and that the utmost care is taken to provide security to victims and witnesses.

The ICTJ also continues to monitor, analyze, and comment on the ongoing trials at the SCSL in Freetown and maintains close partnerships with local NGOs.

Peace-building Commission

Sierra Leone is one of three countries on the agenda of the newly created United Nations Peace-building Commission (PBC). The ICTJ has been encouraging the PBC to focus on justice issues. To this end, in February 2007 the Center helped a member of civil society address the PBC on Sierra Leone's progress toward implementation of the TRC's recommendations. In June 2008 the Center invited another member of Sierra Leonean civil society to speak to the PBC on transitional justice and peace building in post-conflict Sierra Leone. Earlier in May 2008 the director of the Center's Africa Program, Suliman Baldo, spoke to the PBC on consolidating peace in Sierra Leone.

The Center has also focused on increasing the engagement of government officials and civil society with the PBC. In May 2007 the Center organized a meeting in Makeni with civil society partners to strengthen civil society participation in the PBC. A follow-up seminar, aimed at further strengthening civil-society monitoring of the implementation of projects funded by the Peace Building Fund (PBF) took place in Freetown in May 2008.  Also in May 2008 the Center held seminars for parliamentarians on peace building and transitional justice.

Communicating Justice

The ICTJ has joined with the BBC World Service Trust in a project on communicating justice, to raise levels of public awareness and public debate of transitional justice issues in five post-conflict countries in Africa including Sierra Leone. In October 2007 the Center and BBC World Service Trust trained 20 journalists in Freetown on how to communicate the outcome of the application of various transitional justice mechanisms and design ways to encourage their managers or editors to support their efforts. The training participants are currently engaged in follow-up activities via online learning and local mentoring.

Civil Society Projects

The Center helped to establish an innovative project, the National Vision for Sierra Leone, in which Sierra Leoneans were invited to express their hopes for the future of the country through poems, songs, paintings, photographs, and other creative works. Participants ranged from child amputees and excombatants to ordinary citizens. The ICTJ has also worked to stimulate civil society interest and participation in transitional justice processes through a series of workshops and the production of a citizen's handbook on the TRC and the Special Court.

Through its sustained activities in Sierra Leone over the past few years, the Center has enhanced the capacity of local partner organizations as well as individual activists. For instance, one of the Center's oldest Sierra Leonean partners has traveled to and provided advice in Uganda and Afghanistan, in addition to assisting in drafting truth commission legislation in Liberia. PRIDE, a Sierra Leonean organization with expertise in involving excombatants in transitional justice processes, traveled to Liberia on the ICTJ's behalf to assess the situation there. Previously, with the help of the Center, the Post-Conflict Reintegration Initiatives for Development (PRIDE) researched excombatants' views of the Special Court and the TRC.

The ICTJ has also worked to stimulate international debate and improve understanding by producing and circulating several papers on the TRC and the Special Court. The objective of such projects is to document Sierra Leone's unique transitional justice experience so that it can continue to provide valuable insights elsewhere in the world.

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Background

Sierra Leone is emerging from a 10-year conflict marked by intense and cruel violence against civilians, corruption, struggle for control of the diamond mines, and recruitment of child soldiers. The civil war has left the country in physical and economic ruin. Tens of thousands of civilians are dead, and the number of persons raped, mutilated, or tortured is much higher. The war captured international headlines because of a prevalent policy of forced amputations carried out even on very young children.

In July 1999, after almost a decade of civil war, the government of Sierra Leone and the leadership of the main rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), signed a peace agreement in Lomé, Togo. The peace accords included an unconditional general amnesty for all parties to the war; local and international human rights groups and others strongly criticized it. The government and RUF agreed to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that became operational only in late 2002, although passed into law in February 2000. The TRC submitted its final report to the Sierra Leonean government in October 2004.

Several months after the Lomé peace agreement was signed conflict broke out again. In May 2000 RUF forces captured some 500 UN peacekeepers, leading to British intervention. Subsequently the Sierra Leone government asked the UN to help establish a Special Court. In August 2000 the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1315, mandating the creation of the Special Court to prosecute "those persons who bear the greatest responsibility for the commission of violations of international humanitarian law." The Special Court for Sierra Leone was established by an agreement between the UN and the government of Sierra Leone in January 2002, and its officials arrived in Freetown in July 2002. The trials of RUF leaders and Charles Taylor are ongoing. Two other cases against the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and the Civil Defense Forces (CDF) have gone through both trial and appeal processes. Special Court operations are expected to wind down in 2010.

The highest-profile case before the Special Court started June 4, 2007, when former Liberian President Charles Taylor's trial began at a remote chamber of the Special Court, housed on the grounds of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Taylor, who was arrested in March 2006, is being tried in The Hague because of security concerns. His trial is expected to have a significant impact on Sierra Leone and Liberia, both of which were brutally affected by his rule. A significant amount of support for Taylor  persists in both countries, creating possibilities for renewed tension.

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(Updated July 2008)