by Nurat Uthman
Liberia’s lower house of parliament on Tuesday approved a motion to set up a long-awaited war crimes court, more than two decades after the end of a devastating civil conflict.
The vote is the first step towards trying perpetrators of human rights violations and what the resolution terms “economic crimes” during two civil wars which left an estimated 250,000 people dead between 1989 and 2003.
While Liberia’s bloody conflicts resulted in massacres, mutilation, rape, cannibalism and the forced recruitment of child soldiers, no trial has yet been held inside the country.
“The resolution has been passed, and justice for the Liberian people has finally arrived,” said Jonathan Fonati Koffa, speaker of Liberia’s House of Representatives, after the vote.
Lawmakers danced, sang and chanted: “War crimes court, we want justice,” according to an AFP correspondent at the scene.
More than two-thirds of the house voted in favor of the resolution, which will now be debated by the Senate before it is passed onto President Joseph Boakai.
If it gains final approval, a statute will be drafted to establish the court.
Boakai said, during his swearing-in speech in January, that his government would explore the possibility of opening a “war and economic crimes court” for “those who bear the greatest responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
A Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 2009 recommended the establishment of the court, but the call went largely unheeded as a number of accused warlords remain influential in their communities.
Some of the most prominent warlords named in the TRC report, including Senator Prince Johnson, have yet to be held accountable for actions during the war.
Johnson has argued that he is protected by a general amnesty granted to all sides in the conflict as part of a peace agreement at the end of the war.
Tuesday’s resolution stated that the House of Representatives supports the “full implementation of the TRC recommendations, including the establishment of an Extraordinary Criminal Court in Liberia and commits to working with Boakai for the court’s establishment.”
