Liberia has been urged to implement the recommendations of a truth commission dating back to 2009 in order to ensure full and true reconciliation.
While speaking at a conference in the country’s capital Monrovia, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said it was “critical to implement the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and for the legislature to pass key bills that will support local inclusion and reconciliation.”
“Liberia is at a turning point,” she said, adding that a lasting peace “will only be possible if we ensure full and true reconciliation.”
According to Mohammed, peace would “remain fragile as long as people feel excluded from the economic and political life of the country, and as long as corruption undermines confidence in institutions”.
A Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up by former president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf with an aim of probing war crimes and rights abuses linked to conflicts in Liberia that happened between 1989-2003.
The commission recommended the creation of a compensation scheme alongside a dedicated war crimes court.
Those measures have not been implemented yet.
While speaking to the AFP news agency, Mohammed said she wanted Liberia to deal with the “unfinished business” of its long civil conflict, for which no one has ever been prosecuted for war crimes, ahead of the March 30 departure of all remaining peacekeepers.
Liberia’s President George Weah has been accused of sidelining war victims when he chose Vice-President Jewel Howard Taylor, ex-wife of former rebel leader and president Charles Taylor, as his running mate in last year’s election.
Taylor who is serving a 50-year sentence for war crimes in a British jail was convicted of funding rebel groups in Sierra Leone and not the recruitment of child soldiers, killings, rape and pillaging of which he is accused at home.
Former warlord Prince Johnson who is serving as a senator now is one of those recommended for prosecution by the truth commission. He backed Weah’s bid for presidency.
It is estimated that around 250,000 peole died in the back-to-back 1989-2003 conflicts.
President Weah has said his government must ensure “that either we forget or justice is done to those justice needs to be done to” while emphasizing that perpetrators had to “face their victims”, without elaborating on how.
Weah meanwhile said the UN had the government’s “fullest commitment to the continued consolidation of peace in Liberia” and would “warmly welcome a continued partnership”.
