The renewal of the mandate of the Office of the War and Economic Crimes Court for Liberia (OWECC-L) has rekindled the long-held hopes of victims, activists, and civil society groups of seeing justice and accountability for the atrocities committed during the country’s brutal civil war period.
“The people who committed most of these crimes are dying and getting old. I can die anytime. If we all die, who will they call to testify?” one survivor told YAME Media, voicing the fears of many that they may not live long enough to see justice done.
The stakeholders have also been heartened by the increase in the office’s budget to US$2 million from US$380,000, with expectations that this will help to speed up the transitional justice process that started more than 20 years ago.
Dr Jallah Barbu, the Executive Director of OWECC-L, welcomed the increased resources, saying the larger budget signalled strong political will for the court’s establishment.
“This is a moment of accountability and healing for the wounds that have lingered since the war,” he was quoted as saying during a press conference in Monrovia.
President Joseph Boakai issued a new executive order to renew the mandate of the OWECC-L on April 30, 2025, as civil society groups called for the court’s establishment to be made more credible and sustainable through formal legislation instead of executive orders, which in Liberia last only one year. They argued that although the orders can be renewed, they do not hold the same legal authority or permanence as legislation passed by the national legislature.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said legislative action is essential to ensure the court’s long-term viability as it would provide a stable legal foundation to secure budgetary allocations through the legislative process, define the court’s structure, jurisdiction, appointment procedures, and enable meaningful international cooperation.
According to HRW, although the executive order secured endorsement from both houses of Liberia’s legislature in March 2024, it lacks the permanence required to maintain momentum toward justice.
“Victims have had no access to justice in Liberia for civil war-era crimes since the end of the conflicts in 2003. A war crimes court to fairly try the crimes is needed without delay,” the organisation said in a statement.
“President Boakai promised Liberians accountability for wartime atrocities… Additionally, he should collaborate with the legislature to replace the executive order with formal legislation, ensuring the office can sustainably develop the framework for establishing the War and Economic Crimes Court,” said HRW’s Michelle Reyes Milk.
“Liberia’s quest to bring closure for victims of civil war atrocities, and ensure their access to justice, remains a major priority. We call for government and international support to ensure the establishment of the court,” said Adama Dempster, Secretary-General, Civil Society Human Rights Platform of Liberia, adding that the process must advance beyond executive action and move toward formalised legislation to prevent any setbacks.
The lack of resources has slowed down progress and raised concerns about the government’s commitment to justice and accountability. The OWECC-L has received significantly less financial support compared to Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which operated from 2005 to 2010.
“Imagine, our staff have not taken pay for two months. We don’t have the necessary funds to do the things we are supposed to do, and the little money the government has committed is tied up in bureaucratic red tape,” lamented Executive Director Barbu, according to Smart News Liberia, in March 2025.
The establishment of a war crimes court in Liberia was one of the recommendations of the TRC, which was established to investigate the crimes committed during the civil wars and armed conflicts that assailed the country between 1979 and 2003 and help Liberia recover.
Its primary purpose was to investigate and document gross human rights violations, promote national healing, and recommend measures for accountability and reconciliation. The TRC also provided a platform for victims and perpetrators to share their experiences with the aim of fostering a shared understanding of the past and preventing future violence.
Apart from the establishment of a war crimes court, the truth commission also recommended reparations for victims, including financial compensation, psychosocial support, and community rehabilitation projects.
President Boakai is the first of three Liberian heads of state to act on the TRC recommendations by signing the executive order establishing the OWECC-L in May 2024.
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President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who was in office from 2006 to 2018, chose not to act on the recommendations. The TRC report recommended that she be barred from holding public office for her alleged links with former president Charles Taylor, who was convicted of war crimes by the Special Court for Sierra Leone. However, the Liberian Supreme Court in 2011 ruled that the TRC recommendations barring several people from holding public office were unconstitutional.
“When we had the peace talks in Accra in 2003, we had a choice of going for a war crimes tribunal or calling for a truth and reconciliation commission. The Accra talks agreed that the right as the first step was a TRC… Its mandate by legislation is clear: to investigate the root causes of conflict… and to find where justice is part of the healing process,” Sirleaf was quoted as saying in 2012 in defence of her lack of action on the recommendations.
“We also recognise that while justice is important, reconciliation is also an important part of it… if we went fully with justice and prosecuted everybody, you’d have to prosecute thousands and thousands of people, and that in itself might have an unacceptable response.”
Her successor, George Weah, initially expressed support for the tribunal but later changed his mind, citing concerns over peace and stability.
The election of President Boakai signalled a U-turn after he formally established the OWECC-L to coordinate efforts with the Independent National Commission on Human Rights (INCHR) and other key stakeholders to ensure the court’s successful implementation.
The justice and accountability process is further complicated by opposition from some of Liberia’s elites, lawmakers, former warlords, and ex-rebel generals who wield influence in the government and public life and fear prosecution or argue that the court could destabilise the country.
Former President Charles Taylor, who was forced to resign and go into exile as part of a peace agreement ending Liberia’s second civil war, had staunchly opposed such a tribunal. He was accused of supporting rebel groups in neighbouring Sierra Leone and was indicted by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone.
The TRC recommended that Prince Johnson, a former warlord who was, until his death in November 2024, a senator in the Liberian legislature, be barred from holding public office. His rebel group, the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL), captured then-President Samuel Doe in 1990, tortured him, and killed him. Johnson has opposed a war crimes court and vowed to campaign against any presidential candidate who was committed to setting one up. The influential senator of Nimba County supported Sirleaf, Weah, and Boakai.
Although Liberia has struggled to prosecute civil war-era crimes domestically, some accountability has been achieved through international cases under universal jurisdiction.
Alieu Kosiah, former commander of the rebel group United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO), was convicted by the Swiss Federal Criminal Court in June 2021 for war crimes, including murder, rape, and an act of cannibalism committed during Liberia’s first civil war (1989–1996).
On appeal in 2023, Kosiah was also found guilty of crimes against humanity. He received a 20-year prison sentence, marking the first conviction for Liberian civil war crimes in Switzerland and a landmark case for prosecuting such crimes under Swiss law.
Kunti Kamara, another former ULIMO commander, was arrested in France in 2018 and was in 2022 convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity related to atrocities committed in Liberia. An appeal court upheld Kamara’s conviction for “acts of torture and inhuman barbarity” against civilians between 1993 and 1994, including eating the heart of a teacher.
Martina Johnson, a former commander in Taylor’s NPFL, was arrested in Belgium in 2014 for alleged involvement in war crimes, including mutilation and mass killings during the first Liberian civil war. Her case is still pending.
Agnes Reeves Taylor, the former wife of Charles Taylor and an alleged NPFL member, was charged in the UK in 2017 with acts of torture committed in Liberia between 1989 and 1991. However, her case was dismissed in 2019 due to insufficient evidence.
In the United States, Mohammed Jabbateh, a former ULIMO leader, was convicted in 2017 – not for war crimes, but for immigration fraud and perjury after lying about his role in wartime atrocities on immigration forms.
Similarly, Jucontee Thomas Smith Woewiyu, a former NPFL spokesman, was convicted in the US in 2018 for immigration fraud and perjury related to concealing his involvement in war crimes.
In a civil lawsuit in the US, Moses Thomas, a former commander of the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL), was in 2021 found liable for the massacre of 600 civilians at St Peter’s Lutheran Church in Monrovia, Liberia, in July 1990. The Pennsylvania court found that Thomas, as commander of the AFL’s elite Special Anti-Terrorist Unit, ordered and directed one of the deadliest civilian massacres in Liberia’s First Civil War, and was liable for war crimes, crimes against humanity, extrajudicial killing, attempted extrajudicial killing, and torture. The court ordered that Thomas pay the four survivors of the massacre who brought the lawsuit US$ 84 million.
Charles Taylor Jr, commonly referred to as Chuckie Taylor, a son of the former Liberian President Charles Taylor and a former head of the brutal Anti-Terrorist Unit, was convicted in the US in 2008 of torture committed in Liberia. This was the first US conviction under a federal anti-torture statute, which prohibits American citizens from participating in torture outside the United States. He is serving a 97-year sentence.
Charles Taylor was convicted in 2012 by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone for war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, this conviction was only for crimes committed in Sierra Leone, not Liberia.
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Liberia’s civil wars trace their origins to the 1980 military coup that ousted President William Tolbert and brought Master Sergeant Samuel Doe to power.
Doe’s regime was notorious for repression and corruption, and by the late 1980s it had lost both domestic legitimacy and international support. Consequently, on Christmas Eve 1989, Charles Taylor, a former official under Doe, launched an insurgency from neighbouring Ivory Coast using the NPFL to topple him.
The conflict quickly escalated as multiple armed factions emerged, including Prince Johnson’s INPFL, leading to chaotic, ethnically charged warfare.
Despite the overthrow and execution of Doe in 1990, the warring factions failed to agree on a new government and years of fighting followed. The first civil war ended in 1997 with Charles Taylor’s election as president, but peace was short-lived; a second civil war erupted in 1999, fuelled by unresolved grievances and continued armed opposition.
By the end of the conflicts in 2003, more than 250,000 people had been killed. Nearly one million Liberians were displaced, with about 780,000 becoming refugees and 500,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs).
At the civil war’s peak, half the population was reported displaced, either within Liberia or in neighbouring countries. Camps for displaced persons were often used as recruitment centres for militias, with children being the primary targets.
There were widespread and systematic atrocities including summary executions, massacres, rape, mutilation and torture, and the forced conscription of child soldiers.
