TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION…
By Josephine Sesay and Expo Interns
Truth commissions offer one of the best mechanisms for transitional justice and state reconstruction in the world. Truth commissions are defined as ‘official, temporary, non- judicial, fact-finding bodies that investigate a pattern of abuses of human rights or humanitarian law, usually committed over a period of time.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established in Sierra Leone in July 2002 after the Truth and Reconciliation Act, 2000 was passed by Parliament followinh recommendation in the Lomé Peace Agreement. It was to address impunity, break the cycle of violence, provide a forum for both the victims and perpetrators of human rights violations to tell their story, get a clear picture of the past in order to facilitate genuine healing and reconciliation.” It dealt with the question of human rights violations since the beginning of the Sierra Leonean conflict in 1991.
During Momoh’s seven-year term, there was a rampant increase of corruption and a total collapse of the economy and the education system. The state couldn’t provide payment for government officials and schoolteachers. This resulted in desperation that led to the raiding and looting of government property. There also became a shortage of necessities, such as gasoline. With no educational system, the majority of Sierra Leone’s adolescents wandered the streets with no purpose or meaning during the late 1980s. Most professionals left the country as infrastructure and common morality declined in conjunction. Sierra Leone became one of the poorest countries in the world by 1991 despite the fact that it profited from an abundant amount of natural resources. These natural resources were comprised of diamonds, gold, bauxite, rutile, iron ore, fish, coffee, and cocoa.
Other related causes were bad governance, injustice, political violence, youth marginalization, youth unemployment, uneven distribution of state resources, nepotism, illiteracy and corruption.
EFFECT OF THE WAR
Enhancing the reconciliation process, Mariatu Sesay and her neighbor, Amara Sahr Kemba, have become best friends. But 21 years ago, at the height of the country’s civil war that killed an estimated 70,000 people and displaced roughly 2.6 million people — more than half the population at the time — Kemba and a group of rebel soldiers murdered Sesay’s family, raped her, cut off her toes, and left her for dead.
“Sesay has been able to forgive me, and we shake hands and communicate daily,” said 40-year-old Kemba, a former child soldier whom a rebel group forcibly recruited into their ranks when he was 13. “When I met her during reconciliation sessions and knelt, cried and begged her for forgiveness, she forgave me. I told her I felt bad how my actions that I did unknowingly, or was forced to do, affected people.”
In an interview with one of the victims of the war, Isatu Kamara lamented her bitter encounter with the rebels. In her voice she narrated “Growing up during Sierra Leone’s civil war, Kamara recalls the day in 1997 when rebels attacked her village, demanding money from her mother who said she didn’t have any. The leader of the group said Kamara would be used an example of what would happen if people didn’t give them what they wanted.”
“They chopped my left arm off and then they did the same to my mother. And then, after that they did the same to several other villagers who were also there on that day,” Kamara explained. During the reconciliation process, she happened to see the perpetrators, Amadu and Joseph and they asked for her forgiveness during the process. She was reluctant at first instance and later reconciled with them.
In another interview with Mr. Alusine Turay, he said that it took three days for his family to walk through the chaos to get to a hospital. After that, he spent several years traveling from one refugee camp to another, seeking help from people in nearby cities.
“My mom and I, during the day, we would go inside the city to beg for money or for food,” he recalled. In the case of Mr. Alusine, reconciliation was not his call, as he demands for justice.
OUTCOME
In July 1999, the Lome Peace Agreement put an end to the brutal conflict that broke out in Sierra Leone on 23 March 1991 and made up about 4.5 million direct and or indirect victims as a result of the conflict. Both, article xxvi of the Lome Peace Agreement and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Report requested the Government of Sierra Leone to set up a Special Fund for War Victims within the shortest delays.
Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) proposed a Reparation programme to be coordinated by the National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA). The Reparations programme targeted five categories of victims as recommended in the TRC report of October 2004: Amputees, Other War Wounded, Victims of Sexual Violence (VSVs), Child Victims and War Widows.
How effective of these recommendations?
According to Fin-Jasper Langmack, in an insight, this outcome was foreseeable. Sierra Leone’s government never showed much enthusiasm for providing reparation to survivors. With limited resources and given the many challenges the country faced – rebuilding society after civil war, pursuing development and later managing the Ebola crisis – political priorities often lay elsewhere. Only upon pressure by AWWA did it apply for funding. Progress always depended on outside resources. Until 2014 – six years into the program – the government contributed 200.000 USD in funds, compared to 7.5 million USD given by the UN. Only when international donations ceased for good did the government provide domestic funds on a larger scale. By 2018 it had still only contributed roughly a quarter of the 10 million USD the program had cost since 2008.
