"Donors will only be successful in building the rule of law in Liberia  if
they address the serious abuses of the past."

********

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andy Mensah" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2004 10:18 AM
Subject: [unioNews] Liberia: Do not forget the crimes


Friday, February 6, 2004
<H3>Liberia: Do not forget the crimes</H3>
Corinne Dufka IHT



NEW YORK
On Friday, Secretary of State Colin Powell and UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan are hosting an international donors' conference to raise
$500 million to rebuild Liberia. They should also break the silence
on justice in Liberia.

Donors will only be successful in building the rule of law in Liberia
if they address the serious abuses of the past. Should the conference
fail to produce the necessary funds and long-term attention to
matters such as bringing Charles Taylor, the exiled president-
warlord, to justice, Liberia could well slide back into chaos.

In 1989, Taylor, a little-known rebel leader, launched a rebellion to
take control of Liberia. Rebel groups and horrors against civilians
multiplied. Signature atrocities included widespread rape, massacres
inside churches, mutilation and torture, cannibalism and the forced
conscription of child combatants. Today, 14 years and two civil wars
later, life is unbearable for the average Liberian.

Since 1990, Human Rights Watch researchers have taken hundreds of
testimonies from victims of egregious violations by all warring
parties.

Villagers were rounded up and burned alive, displaced civilians were
massacred as they tried to flee, women and girls were brutally raped.
And these were not random incidents. They were the result of a
deliberate policy by the highest levels of government and rebel
leadership.

Today there is some cause for optimism. A peace agreement in August
provided for a two-year transitional government, disarmament and
demobilization of the fighting forces, and elections in 2005. Taylor
was indicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone for war crimes
committed in Sierra Leone. In September, the United Nations mandated
the deployment of 15,000 UN peacekeepers, who are now in the process
of being extended countrywide.

However, Liberia's needs are profound. More than 40,000 combatants,
including some 15,000 children, must be disarmed, retrained and
provided with meaningful work. Hundreds of thousands of civilians,
who were forced to flee their homes during the wars, must be
reintegrated into their towns and villages from squalid camps in and
outside Liberia. The crumbling, looted infrastructure of hospitals,
schools and courts must be rebuilt. The army and national police must
be thoroughly revamped and retrained.

One priority, however, remains conspicuously absent from the
reconstruction agenda: the need for justice and accountability for
the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against
thousands of Liberians over the past 14 years.

While the peace agreement provides for a truth and reconciliation
commission, the international community and the Liberian transitional
government alike have avoided openly discussing - let alone tackling -
 justice and accountability. Liberia's current minister of justice,
himself a former rebel leader, has recently and predictably rejected
the need for justice.

The peace accord avoided the discussion of a general amnesty,
committing only to discuss it at an unspecified future date. American
officials told Human Rights Watch that "sometimes we need to be
patient, sometimes justice can wait." This view is at odds with the
fact that numerous high-level and well-known war criminals are
holding government portfolios. Waiting to convict them could easily
translate into a consolidation of their positions, giving them the
means to launch another war that the fragile region could ill afford.

Many argue that justice is a luxury given the enormousness of
Liberia's needs, or that those who insist on accountability for
heinous war crimes are spoilers, saboteurs of peace. But the price of
a future cycle of violence is even higher.

Most recently, in neighboring Sierra Leone, murderous rebels were
given an amnesty as a condition for signing a peace accord. They went
on to attack both the government and UN peacekeepers. In any
discussion of reconstruction and peace-building, justice must be
front and center.

Kofi Annan and Colin Powell should urge the transitional authorities
in Liberia to avoid granting a general amnesty, and should ask the
international community to press for justice and accountability for
the abuses committed there.

Finally, they should strongly urge Nigeria's president, Olusegun
Obasanjo, to comply with international obligations and hand Taylor
over to the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

The international donors' conference on Liberia will need to weigh
many competing priorities for the country's reconstruction. But
neglecting to focus on justice could potentially undermine any
prospect for long-term peace and indeed cost the international
community more in the long run.

***
The writer is the researcher on Liberia and Sierra Leone at Human
Rights Watch. She was based in Freetown, Sierra Leone, 1999 to 2003.

 Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune




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