Transitional Justice in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth versus Justice by Naomi Roht-Arriaza Read Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Naomi Roht-Arriaza
live together; let's work together and rebuild our country . . . Now I just cannot understand what more I'm expected to do.
Leader of evidence:
Your Excellency, the Leader of APC this morning, before the Commission, apologised for all the mistakes he had done. He had done that on the 14th, he did that again and he is using the platform of the Commission in fulfillment of all the efforts of your Excellency in this regard. Would your Excellency want to send a direct message to the people of Sierra Leone on reconciling the differences that did exist, and possibly do exist. That was my question Sir.
H.E. Dr. Tejan Kabbah:
If you want to say . . . I will give you ok, I want peace, I want reconciliation, I would repeat it as many times as ever as you want. Please all Sierra Leoneans, all of us, let's work together, let's forget about the past; those that have to face the court, let them face the fact that they have to face the court and go on if they have justification, it depends, let them go ahead and do it. Now, those who have done something wrong to others, please go and apologise to them; and if they don't listen to you, go to the Vice President, come to me, we will go to your community get things organised. [21]
It was an unfortunate ending to the process, and a bad omen for the follow‐up to the work of the Commission.
In parallel with these quite public activities, the Commission also undertook a more discreet program of research and investigation. Hereit was terribly handicapped by poor resources. This part of the Commission's work is a story of missed opportunities, although the existing staff performed honourably and produced results of good quality.
The final phase of the Commission's work, the drafting of the report, took more than one year. Indeed, the Commission spent considerably more time writing up its results than it did in the operational phase of its mandate. The delays were partly the result of staffing shortages, and also the consequence of an overly ambitious vision of the report. It was decided that the report should be several volumes in length, perhaps so as to match that of the South African Commission. A shorter and more succinct report would have been far more accessible to Sierra Leoneans, and yet could have covered all of the essentials.
Findings and recommendations
Under the TRC Act , the Commission was charged with making findings and recommendations. According to section 17, “[t]he Government shall faithfully and timeously implement the recommendations of the report that are directed to state bodies and encourage or facilitate the implementation of any recommendations that may be directed to others.” The findings and recommendations are, in effect, a summary of much of the report. Their implementation will be one of the tests of the effectiveness of the Commission.
It must be said at the outset that the causes of the conflict were not at all evident, and that there are many conflicting versions and accounts. In this respect, the Sierra Leone TRC differs fundamentallyfrom the South African experience, where the root evil – apartheid – was never really in question. A condemnation of the racist regime and a dedication to political transition were the underpinnings of the South African TRC's work. There was nothing comparable in Sierra Leone. The Lomé Peace Agreement itself, which brought the civil war to a close and was at the origin of the call for a truth commission, was a cease‐fire between warring factions, rather than a decisive victory by one side over the other, and a triumph for any particular vision or ideology. One of the most significant, but also potentially controversial, contributions of the Truth Commission is its analysis of the background of the conflict, and its attempt to identify causes.
Many accounts of the Sierra Leone conflict have laid most of the blame on external factors, for example charging Libyan leader Ghaddafi with fomenting the
Leader of evidence:
Your Excellency, the Leader of APC this morning, before the Commission, apologised for all the mistakes he had done. He had done that on the 14th, he did that again and he is using the platform of the Commission in fulfillment of all the efforts of your Excellency in this regard. Would your Excellency want to send a direct message to the people of Sierra Leone on reconciling the differences that did exist, and possibly do exist. That was my question Sir.
H.E. Dr. Tejan Kabbah:
If you want to say . . . I will give you ok, I want peace, I want reconciliation, I would repeat it as many times as ever as you want. Please all Sierra Leoneans, all of us, let's work together, let's forget about the past; those that have to face the court, let them face the fact that they have to face the court and go on if they have justification, it depends, let them go ahead and do it. Now, those who have done something wrong to others, please go and apologise to them; and if they don't listen to you, go to the Vice President, come to me, we will go to your community get things organised. [21]
It was an unfortunate ending to the process, and a bad omen for the follow‐up to the work of the Commission.
In parallel with these quite public activities, the Commission also undertook a more discreet program of research and investigation. Hereit was terribly handicapped by poor resources. This part of the Commission's work is a story of missed opportunities, although the existing staff performed honourably and produced results of good quality.
The final phase of the Commission's work, the drafting of the report, took more than one year. Indeed, the Commission spent considerably more time writing up its results than it did in the operational phase of its mandate. The delays were partly the result of staffing shortages, and also the consequence of an overly ambitious vision of the report. It was decided that the report should be several volumes in length, perhaps so as to match that of the South African Commission. A shorter and more succinct report would have been far more accessible to Sierra Leoneans, and yet could have covered all of the essentials.
Findings and recommendations
Under the TRC Act , the Commission was charged with making findings and recommendations. According to section 17, “[t]he Government shall faithfully and timeously implement the recommendations of the report that are directed to state bodies and encourage or facilitate the implementation of any recommendations that may be directed to others.” The findings and recommendations are, in effect, a summary of much of the report. Their implementation will be one of the tests of the effectiveness of the Commission.
It must be said at the outset that the causes of the conflict were not at all evident, and that there are many conflicting versions and accounts. In this respect, the Sierra Leone TRC differs fundamentallyfrom the South African experience, where the root evil – apartheid – was never really in question. A condemnation of the racist regime and a dedication to political transition were the underpinnings of the South African TRC's work. There was nothing comparable in Sierra Leone. The Lomé Peace Agreement itself, which brought the civil war to a close and was at the origin of the call for a truth commission, was a cease‐fire between warring factions, rather than a decisive victory by one side over the other, and a triumph for any particular vision or ideology. One of the most significant, but also potentially controversial, contributions of the Truth Commission is its analysis of the background of the conflict, and its attempt to identify causes.
Many accounts of the Sierra Leone conflict have laid most of the blame on external factors, for example charging Libyan leader Ghaddafi with fomenting the
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