The Mano River Union Peace Forum is a joint initiative between International Alert, Conciliation Resources, and local partner organisations in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The position of Director is available.

Santigie Kanu, a member of the military junta that ruled Sierra Leone in the late 1990s, protested that he was being tried by white men as he pleaded not guilty to war crimes and crimes against humanity, at the country's UN-backed Special Court. "I do not understand why I am standing before white people," he told a court hearing, presided over by Canadian judge Pierre Boutet, on Tuesday.

A court has jailed Sierra Leone's former transport minister for two years for illegal possession of diamonds in a trial seen widely as a test of the government's willingness to fight corruption.

Since the successful elections on 14 May 2003, the donor community and the people of Sierra Leone have grown increasingly frustrated with stagnating reform and recovery, says this new briefing from the International Crisis Group. UNAMSIL is due to depart by December 2004 but the police and military are still fragile, so it would be wise to have contingency plans. The situation in neighbouring Liberia also remains a security risk. There is no systematic plan of decentralisation, and local elections scheduled to take place by the end of the year are likely to be postponed. Efforts to address rampant corruption have proved fruitless and Sierra Leone’s diamond mines remain poorly monitored with illegal mining and smuggling still estimated to produce hundreds of millions of dollars that are unaccounted for and unavailable to help rebuild the economy.

Santigie Kanu, a non-commissioned officer who formed part of a military junta that ruled Sierra Leone from 1997 to 1998, was indicted for war crimes on Wednesday by the country's UN-backed Special Court. Kanu, who is popularly known as "Brigadier 55," was charged on 17 counts with violating article three of the Geneva Convention and committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Human Rights Secretariat Manager will closely work with the Sector Manager and Project Manager in establishing an effective network of agencies and relevant stakeholders, supporting capacity building activities of legal practitioners and local authorities.

Civil Society in Sierra Leone should hold the government accountable for recommendations made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and press the Attorney General either to forward corruption cases to the courts or explain delays. This is according to recommendations made in a new report from the International Crisis Group. The report notes that the donor community and the people of Sierra Leone have grown increasingly frustrated with stagnating reform and recovery.
It described troubles across Sierra Leone’s borders, especially in Liberia, as "worrisome".

The Special Court for Sierra Leone has moved with relative rapidity to bring to justice those who bear the greatest responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the country’s eleven-year civil war. However, senior court officials have acknowledged that they underestimated the difficulty of achieving recognition and international cooperation. The International Crisis Group (ICG) warns that the court needs to be careful not to appear to be subject to outside influence if it wants to fulfil its mandate with impartiality and provide a “new model” for international justice.

A programme to rehabilitate more than 7,000 child soldiers who fought in Sierra Leone's decade-long civil war is in danger of stalling because of a serious shortfall in funding, the UN children's fund (UNICEF) warned on Tuesday. UNICEF said that US $1.4 million is needed immediately and a further $2.5 million would be required in the "near future" if their critical re-education and re-training programmes were to be completed.

A group of 767 people walked l3km to Lumley beach on May 31st to raise money for cataract victims and condom users. The sum of one hundred and nine million Leones was raised.

"Thank God for arriving home safely,” says 20-year-old Emerson Fowai, who was among 360 Sierra Leoneans evacuated from war-torn Liberia last week. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) commenced the repatriation of Sierra Leonean refugees from Liberia last week. And, so far, close to 700 have been transported in two batches.

On the eve of the African Union (AU) summit in Maputo, Amnesty International called on all African governments to fulfil their obligations under international law and to cooperate fully with the Special Court for Sierra Leone. "African governments meeting in Maputo should state publicly their commitment to cooperate with the Special Court; failure to do so will undermine the integrity of the AU," Amnesty International said.

Almost one quarter of a million displaced Sierra Leoneans were resettled in their areas of origin by the end of 2002, officially ending the internal displacement crisis in the country and further consolidating recovery after more than a decade of devastating civil war. A success story, in which the wishes of internally displaced people themselves prevailed, said some observers. Not so, insisted others, pointing to numerous flaws and problems along the way. So was the resettlement process really the final chapter in Sierra Leone's displacement story? Arguably not, at least with respect to durability of return and resettlement as required by the UN Guiding Principles.

The IRC seeks a Sexual & Gender Based Violence Program Coordinator for its Guinea program. The Coordinator will prepare proposals, narrative reports and other written documentation, including budget information and monitoring; Assist in identifying and developing continuing education activities and supervision of existing staff; interviewing, hiring, training and supervision of new personnel; Develop and implement training materials for SGBV staff, and other target groups of the SGBV program ranging from community representatives to Guinean legal & judicial representatives.

In a bid to fight malaria among refugees in West Africa, the UN refugee agency has started testing new anti-malaria tools in two refugee camps in southern Sierra Leone. Under a project co-funded by the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid Office, more than 16,000 refugees in Largo and Tobanda camps are taking part in a trial of insecticide-treated plastic sheeting.

A global initiative to end the trade in "blood diamonds" has been a mixed success in war-ravaged Sierra Leone with a sharp rise in export earnings but illegal mining flourishing nonetheless. A decade of atrocities and the illegal trade in the tainted stones, popularly known as "blood" or "conflict diamonds", have helped make Sierra Leone one of the poorest countries in the world.

The International Rescue Committee seeks a Training Consultant to work closely with the GBV Coordinator and GBV Manager, in Kailahun, Sierra Leone. The goal of the GBV Program in Sierra Leone is to build the capacity of community-based structures to respond to and prevent incidents of Gender-based Violence.

Amnesty International has expressed deep shock at the Sierra Leone Parliament's ratification of a reciprocal impunity agreement with the United States of America (USA). "This is a completely unacceptable decision especially at a time when the country is starting the process of dealing with the mass human rights abuses that have taken place in its recent past," the organisation said.

This report documents that internally displaced women and girls in Sierra Leone have suffered an extraordinary level of rape, sexual violence and other gross human rights violations during their country's civil war, with half of those who said they came into contact with RUF (Revolutionary United Front) forces reporting sexual violence.

The Campaign for Good Governance (CGG) has noted with disappointment the recent decision of the Government of Sierra Leone to sign an Article 98 agreement with the United States. Although the full text of the agreement has not been made public, the official Sierra Leone News Agency (SLENA) stated that the agreement "essentially obliges Sierra Leone and the United States to first seek each other's consent before surrendering any of their suspected nationals to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for prosecution."