Searching for truth and reconciliation in Sierra Leone

The Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission Working Group has released an initial study of the performance and impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in that country. The objective of the study is to open up debate that will lead to an independent evaluation of the performance and impact of the TRC in Sierra Leone. Key issues that the report addresses includes the role of the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, the appointment and role of Commissioners, the issue of local ownership and participation and the role of International NGOs.

It is now over 15 months since the presentation on 5 October 2004 of the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to the President of Sierra Leone at a well-attended ceremony in Freetown. The presentation should have ushered in the ‘follow-up phase’ to the work of the TRC. Yet at the time of writing, the work of implementing its recommendations is not even close to beginning. First, there was a long delay in making the report of the TRC available to Sierra Leoneans. Copies of the report only arrived in August 2005. In the previous month, the Government of Sierra Leone (GoSL) published a White Paper in response to the report that was widely regarded as weak and inadequate. All this prompted many Sierra Leoneans to fear that the TRC process had fatally lost momentum.

In recent months, there has been progress. Following private interventions by the Commissioners of the TRC and civil society campaigning, there was a parliamentary debate on the TRC report in November 2005 and a Bill has been laid before the legislature which contains many of the key recommendations in the report.

This bumpy start to the ‘follow-up phase’ is only the latest of many difficult moments for the TRC. It has been a deeply flawed and problematic process from its birth in 1999, when the peace agreement was signed. The TRC aimed to help heal divisions caused by 10 years of brutal civil war. Tens of thousands of people were killed, maimed or tortured during the conflict - most by rebels of the Revolutionary United Front.

Although the story of the TRC process is not yet over, the Sierra Leone Working Group on Truth and Reconciliation (WG) has undertaken an initial assessment, based on over 30 interviews and meetings between April and August 2005 with Sierra Leonean and international stakeholders, of the performance and impact of the TRC – this with a view to identifying what lessons can be learnt for future transitional justice initiatives elsewhere and developing recommendations for action that will help ensure that the ‘follow-up phase’ in Sierra Leone is credible and effective.

We hope that this report will be seen as a constructive early contribution to what should be a much wider and deeper debate in Sierra Leone and internationally. The WG believes that an independent evaluation of the TRC should be jointly commissioned by all stakeholders to the process during 2006, with a commitment to publishing its conclusions and recommendations promptly and in full. This should include a systematic sampling of public views through focus group work. The importance of getting down to community level cannot be overstated. The sampling would also be an opportunity to discover public views about the Special Court, which ran concurrently with the TRC (We asked David Crane, the then Prosecutor of the Special Court, if it had undertaken any surveys recently of how Sierra Leoneans viewed the Court. He responded that the Court was “not in the popularity business”. However, earlier he had described the Court as “for and about the people of Sierra Leone”.)

It is particularly important that Sierra Leonean voices are heard at the international level, where criteria for assessing the successes and failures of the Sierra Leonean ‘experiment’ may be different from those locally and where different agendas may shape the conclusions reached. People have a right to know the truth about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

With regard to the ‘follow-up phase’, we are aware that the historical record elsewhere is not encouraging. Few TRCs have been characterized by effective follow-up. Even in the South African case, there is widespread disaffection on the part of victims’ support groups about the response of the Government to the recommendations of the TRC report, not least in the sphere of reparations. If there is not a credible and effective ‘follow-up phase’, many Sierra Leoneans will legitimately ask whether the TRC was ever more than an expensive ‘talking shop’.

Our study has identified a series of key issues in relation to which important lessons should be learnt regarding the TRC process in Sierra Leone.

Firstly, when the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) agreed in 1999 to play the leading role in organising and overseeing the implementation of the TRC process, the decision was widely welcomed. Mary Robinson, then High Commissioner, had been a signatory in June 1999 of the ‘Human Rights Manifesto for Sierra Leone’, which endorsed the idea of a TRC. However, based on the interviews we conducted, Sierra Leonean and international stakeholders were generally very disappointed by the performance of the OHCHR. There was a remarkable consensus on this issue amongst interviewees who disagreed on many other issues. The OHCHR was widely seen as having fatally combined an unhealthy obsession with micro-management with an inadequate capacity to undertake a professional oversight role. It was allegedly weak at raising funds and then very slow to release them.

Secondly, the majority of Sierra Leonean and international stakeholders that we interviewed felt that the TRC process had fallen seriously short of what had been hoped for in terms of local ownership and participation. The sensitization exercise during the preparatory phase was widely viewed as deficient. For example, there was a tendency to assume that radio messages would be enough by themselves to alert Sierra Leoneans to the existence of the TRC when what was needed was to work with civil society organizations to ensure that each chiefdom and village was visited and re-visited. Only by these means could public confidence and understanding of the TRC process – and its relationship to the Special Court - have been achieved. While this failure partly reflected lack of funds, it also reflected a reluctance to develop a genuine partnership with local civil society organizations that could have assisted.

Strong views were also expressed about the failure to use traditional reconciliation mechanisms appropriately. Particular anger was directed by some at incidents where such mechanisms were allegedly ‘customized’ to fit the time available before the Commissioners and staff had to move on to their next appointment. In general, many felt that not enough time had been given to the reconciliation aspect of the TRC’s mandate. At other points, ‘western’ models of reconciliation were reportedly employed, such as handshakes or hugs, which had little relevance to the Sierra Leonean context.

Thirdly, a number of Sierra Leonean stakeholders that we interviewed expressed the view that the role of international NGOs in the TRC process was not always as positive as it could have been. Sierra Leoneans have become aware of the international networks that exist in the sphere of transitional justice in the course of the TRC process. The time may have arrived for these international networks to be rendered more transparent and for potential conflicts of interest such as those raised by our experience in Sierra Leone to be addressed. Nobody doubts the need for professional expertise in the sphere of transitional justice; however, experience shows there will be occasions when the perspectives and interests of governments, multilateral agencies and local civil society will diverge.

The Sierra Leoneans we interviewed between April and August 2005 were deeply frustrated by the long delay that had occurred in publishing the final version of the TRC report. So too were many international stakeholders, although some felt that it had been unavoidable because of the poor quality of the report – including the omission of some conclusions and recommendations that had previously been agreed – that was presented to the President in October 2004. Whatever the reasons, between October 2004, when it was presented to the President, and August 2005, when copies of the final report arrived in Freetown, there were reportedly only ten copies of the report in the entire country. Expectations had been raised, only then to be dashed. The former Chairperson of the TRC, Bishop Joseph Humper, claimed that the reason for the long delay was that the report was being re-edited and typographical errors eliminated.

Based on its findings, the Sierra Leone Working Group on Truth on Reconciliation makes the following recommendations to those involved in the designing and implementing of future transitional justice initiatives. They should establish stronger safeguards to prevent political interference in transitional justice processes. They should ensure that international commissioners working for TRCs spend enough time in-country to discharge their roles effectively. They should ensure that local ownership and participation are more strongly reflected in sensitization work, evidence giving/collection and reconciliation initiatives. Finally, they should establish the principle that all transitional justice processes should be subject to independent evaluation and that reports arising should be published promptly and in full. Amongst other recommendations, the Working Group calls on the Government of Sierra Leone to take steps to encourage the dissemination of the final version of the TRC report; undertake a reparations programme that is open, consultative and inclusive, working closely with civil society; support the immediate establishment of an interim follow-up committee comprising all Sierra Leonean stakeholders; and support the establishment of an independent evaluation of the TRC process.

* For a copy of the full report, please contact
- From outside Sierra Leone:
John Caulker, Chairperson of the Working Group via johncaulkerfoc (at) yahoo.com
- From within Sierra Leone:
Mr. John Koroma Jr. Tel 232 76 634465 email: johnkoroma2001 (at) yahoo.com

* Please send comments to [email protected]