A history of Sierra Leone relevant to the 1990s war might begin with ruling relations and trade among Mende, Temne, Limba, Fula and other ethnic groups in the region well before Portuguese sailor Pedro da Cintra first mapped the area in 1462 (Hirsch, 2001). It probably should discuss the slave trade, which devastated many West African communities and strengthened others as they gained weapons in exchange for the people they captured and traded, first to the Portuguese and later, by the 18th century, to the British (Shaw, 2002). These relations and the ways in which people organized to protect themselves must have influenced the recent war but are outside the scope of this book. I begin instead with British colonial practices of indirect rule that entrenched a rigid, patrimonial system of governance, undermining traditional checks and balances within indigenous governing structures and enabling power abuses by elites.

COLONIALISM, PATRIMONIALISM AND THE ENTRENCHMENT OF CLIENTALIST RULE

In 1787, the British government banned slavery on British soil and founded the port and settlement of Freetown, to which it could ‘repatriate’ freed slaves from its settler colonies. Freetown also provided an administrative and trading base through which resources from the hinterland could be channelled. The ethnically diverse descendants of these repatriated slaves, known as Krios, tended to embrace British culture and valued high levels of education. They formed a vibrant commercial and administrative core of the colony of Freetown throughout the 19th century (Reno, 1995; Hirsch, 2001).

The British colonial government might have taken advantage of the ability and willingness of Krios and other African entrepreneurs to fill commercial and administrative positions in the interior. Instead, they restricted control of these informal markets to allied regional chiefs, fearing that an African entrepreneurial class might threaten the administrative status quo (Reno, 1995). Reno argues that indirect rule through local chiefs set the stage for the Sierra Leone state's later collapse. The colonial state was continuously short of revenues and officials had to find inexpensive and politically viable ways of controlling the interior.

“THERE IS NO BAD BUSH TO THROW AWAY A BAD CHILD”: THE GUIDING IDEAL

Sierra Leoneans dug into their “treasure trove called custom” and found a national sustaining myth. “There is no bad bush to throw away a bad child” means that children will always be forgiven and someone – in the extended family or village – will always take them in. This communitarian ontology, which proponents contrast with Western individualism, extends beyond children. It holds that everybody belongs to a community, everyone can contribute to its welfare, and everyone has a valued place in it. This is the perfect ideal for a country needing enormous community capacity to forgive and reabsorb the displaced, the wounded and the guilty. And it directly addresses the first conciliatory need of peacetime after an intra-communal war: individualcommunity reconciliation.

Unsurprisingly, reintegration workers were passionate about this ‘African’ ontology that appeared early in my interviews and became a theme of inquiry. Does this ideal of community belonging and forgiveness reflect the reality of most Sierra Leoneans or is it a romantic and useful conciliatory ideal, similar to the concept of ubuntu in South Africa? If it did once reflect a reality, can a warstrained community still absorb so many troubled and needy people, as the ideal suggests? Government leaders, NCDDR and reintegration organizations hope that communities have that capacity. Selling this ideal to excombatants, war victims and the population is key to their reintegration strategy.

The reintegration workers I interviewed tended to stress three things: the need to provide excombatants with economically viable alternatives to fighting; the natural capacity of African cultures and communities to absorb all community members; and the desire of most traditional Sierra Leoneans to be amongst their own people.

The war in Sierra Leone is usually portrayed as a ‘rebel’ war and a war of soldiers gone bad. We are reminded of horrific crimes, of rapes, amputations, torture and murder and of the children, drugged and traumatized, who were forced to do these things. This simplistic portrayal does not begin to capture the war dynamics, which are integral to promoting reconciliation. Reconciliation cannot occur when entire segments of actors are dismissed in the dehumanizing term, ‘lumpen.’ The TRC report (2004) provides important insights into people's motivations and strategies and the power struggles and untenable situations that people found themselves in

THE RUF INSURGENCY

The date of March 23, 1991 is usually given for the beginning of the incursion but cross-border NPFL engagements with the Sierra Leone army began in 1990. This porous border had long been crossed for trade between Liberians and Sierra Leoneans who had more connection with Liberia than with Freetown. As the Liberian war worsened, refugees and armed supporters of President Samuel Doe crossed into Sierra Leone seeking refuge or the opportunity to regroup. Soon Taylor's NPFL forces followed them, sometimes looting and harassing locals before returning to Liberia (TRC, 2004).

After complaints by villagers of Bomaru, Kailahun District, the Sierra Leone government sent a platoon of about 30 soldiers to the area. However, soldiers began to befriend and trade with the very rebels they were sent to deter, exchanging cigarettes and food for looted Liberian goods. The March 23 raid at Bomaru by 40 to 60 NPFL troops may have been the result of a deal that went bad with these soldiers (TRC, 2004). However, the TRC (2004) writes, the attack:

John Caulker is a busy man. Criss-crossing Sierra Leone every week or two between the bustle of Freetown and remote villages along barely passable roads in Kailahun District, the seasoned human rights activist and founder of the NGO, Forum of Conscience, is constantly in demand. In Freetown he juggles media interviews, meetings with international donors and agencies, discussions with staff and interns, and frequent requests for interviews and assistance from researchers like me. We are all interested in the reconciliation project that is his brainchild: Fambul Tok. When he travels up country, largely out of reach, he and his staff coordinate, train and assist teams of local Fambul Tok volunteers to promote reconciliation for, and dialogue about, war-related crimes in their villages.

Fambul Tok – “family talk” – is a Krio expression that means a family meeting to resolve a dispute. According to Caulker, traditionally, when Krio families had an internal conflict they would call a family meeting and talk it out. Many cultures in Sierra Leone had similar traditions, he argues, and these need to be resurrected to deal with tensions both from the war and after, especially those that arise when victims, perpetrators and their families live in the same community (interview, Bo, May 16, 2008).

Six years after the war ended, Forum of Conscience staff and community volunteers were organizing community reconciliation ceremonies in villages across Kailahun District, a region that was particularly devastated by the conflict. Appropriately the first ceremony was held on March 23, 2008 in Bomaru, along the border with Liberia, which was the first village that the rebels attacked when they launched the war exactly 17 years earlier.

When I heard about the Fambul Tok program, I was preparing to fly to Sierra Leone for a follow-up visit five years after my original research. This was exciting news. If perpetrators were apologizing for their acts and if people were talking publicly about war crimes within their communities, this would indicate a dramatic shift from the situation five years ago when perpetrators were largely unwilling to apologize and Sierra Leoneans frequently asserted that they do not traditionally talk about past conflicts.

In 2003, the reconciliation process in Sierra Leone was at an impasse. Sierra Leoneans – still in shock from the war, willing to make sacrifices for peace, consumed with the struggle to survive economically, and wanting to see their brothers, sisters and children back home – were quick to say they would reconcile with and forgive excombatants. However this only meant that they were willing to coexist peacefully and without ostracism. People's declarations of forgiveness and reconciliation were riddled with phrases like “We have no choice,” “What else can we do?” “We want peace,” and “We forgive because the government (or religion) says we must” that reflect, in Musa's words, a spirit of sacrifice and helplessness rather than heart-felt reconciliation.

This raises the question of whether post-conflict reconciliation is as smooth as the word ‘process’ suggests. Is there a point at which reconciliation becomes stuck or resistant to moving forward towards its deeper, sentient forms? If this is so, why does it happen? Let us review what we know.

This research found that the four main conciliatory needs in post-war Sierra Leone are:

• 1. Intra-individual reconciliation: Individuals need to reconcile (heal or come to terms) with what happened to them or what they did during the war;

• 2. Individual-community reconciliation: Perpetrators, collaborators and beneficiaries need to re-earn the trust of the community and victims need to regain trust in the community;

• 3. Intra-group reconciliation: Fighting factions – the RUF, Sierra Leone Army, and the CDF – need to come to terms with their responsibilities for war atrocities. The public also needs to acknowledge what these forces did.

• 4. Individual reconciliation with political leaders and government: Citizens need to trust their political and governing leaders and institutions at national and local levels.

The first three conciliatory needs are products of war – although the issue of marginalized youth long preceded the fighting and this will also have to be resolved. The fourth relates to the war's root causes that are commonly associated with government mismanagement, corruption and discriminatory social and legal structures. Notably, all four involve sentient reconciliation.

Truth commissions were originally designed to investigate serious human rights abuses but since the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation (1990–91) and, most famously, the South African TRC (1995–2000), they are also being asked to promote national reconciliation. The nature of that reconciliation, however, is never sufficiently outlined in their mandates. This leaves public expectations high and chances of failure, derision or dismissal even higher as creating national reconciliation is beyond a TRC's capacity. Later I will argue that truth commissions are best designed to promote national narrative reconciliation – public agreement that past violations occurred and that they were wrong – and to provide a diagnosis of what went wrong in the past and what needs to be changed in the future.

Partly because of high expectations and vague mandates, recent truth commissions have promoted reconciliation where they can, urging victims to reconcile with those who harmed them. For example, a Sierra Leone TRC poster read: “Save Sierra Leone from another war. Reconcile now. TRC can help.” And Sierra Leone TRC Commissioner Ajaratou Satang Jow asked a witness whose children were killed by rebel-allied soldiers, “Are you willing to be reconciled, for the sake of peace? Are you ready to forgive?”

This raises the question of how inter-individual reconciliation promotes national reconciliation. Surely victims and perpetrators need to commit to obeying the law and not taking revenge, but beyond that, is there a relationship between reconciliation at the two levels? If so, we need to be clear about how this relationship functions. If not, then perhaps we should not be pushing victims to forgive and reconcile with those who harmed them, given the severity of many human rights abuses and the fact that there oft en is no justice in transitional contexts.

Assessing reconciliation in post-conflict societies must therefore begin with understanding the ‘geography of reconciliation’: clarifying major levels and types of reconciliation identified in peacebuilding literature. In this way we can locate reconciliation goals and specify their qualities and relationships with each other.

Valentine's Day 2003. The plane from London touches down on a typical sweltering night at Lungi International Airport, just a short ride in a dilapidated military helicopter from Freetown. Once the tired passengers and I have collected our luggage and passed through customs and immigration, we are greeted by a throng of young men, clambering to assist us with our bags, guiding us through the otherwise easy process of arranging a ticket for the helicopter. Anything for a generous tip.

Welcome to Sierra Leone, a country where legions of young men and women need to find a way to support themselves and their families or, given the opportunity, they will return to the only profitable activity they know: the business of war.

That night I moved into the compound of a Krio family in Congo Town, on the more affluent west side of Freetown. The compound would be my home for the next two months and living there exposed me to the complicated interrelationships and interdependencies of people in Sierra Leone. My interviews provided my data but my day-to-day relationships with my Sierra Leonean friends, acquaintances and cohabitants provided the all-important context for my research. Through them I learned about the power and dependency relationships between men and women, and people of different ages, classes and ethnicities that enabled and shaped this war and provides the context within which peace will be built – or lost.

In Freetown, most people get around by poda poda (public minivans) or public taxi. Both take a set number of passengers, have set rates and go set routes, though they are not labelled. Except at the final stops, a person wanting to catch one of these poda podas needs to stand at a given but unmarked place and as the poda poda slows down, she needs to shout out where she wants to go. If the poda poda is going there – and if it has room – the driver will stop, the ‘apprentice’ (driver's assistant) will open the door and she can get on. If not, the poda poda will not stop and she must shout at the next one.

People say that many poda poda and taxi drivers are excombatants, trying to find new ways of surviving and perhaps saving money for school.

When a country emerges from civil war or state tyranny, the first concerns of the transitional government are to maintain the peace and (re)build institutions of responsible government, including the rule of law. Reconciliation goals must be understood within this context as they exist among many peacebuilding concerns. Most types of reconciliation are not priorities in the immediate transition from war to peace.

We might envision the priorities of a transitional government like this: This chapter locates political and national reconciliation amongst the many concerns of transitional states. I argue that while almost all forms of reconciliation are important for long-term peace, justice and democratic governance, only two forms are relevant in the early stages of peacebuilding.

POLITICAL RECONCILIATION AS ENVISIONING A SHARED POLITICAL PROCESS

Long before the remarkable peaceful transition from apartheid rule to democratic governance in South Africa, the seeds of reconciliation had been planted. The African National Congress (ANC), the main organization opposed to apartheid, had always articulated an inclusive vision of South Africa where people of all ethnicities would share a political process as equals. When leaders finally negotiated a peace settlement, most South Africans could accept it because the vision had long been in place (A. du Toit, personal communication, October 18, 2004).

National political reconciliation begins with this vision. It begins before the peace agreement when leaders or representatives from conflicting groups meet and imagine a future together with a shared political process. Total war victories are rare. Most successful peace processes occur when conflicting factions negotiate a settlement and agree that they have more to gain from a shared political process than from fighting.

This vision of a shared political future, which I call stage-one political reconciliation, must be accepted both by leaders and, in most cases, the population. Knox and Quirk (2000) observe that in Israel/Palestine the divisions are popularly supported and leaders will have difficulty negotiating a sustainable settlement without democratic support. In such divided societies conciliatory eff orts must help leaders and citizens imagine an interdependent future. Such a shift did occur in Northern Ireland which once had strong popular support for segregation.

COLONIAL PERIOD

1787 The British government bans slavery on British soil and establishes the port and settlement of the Province of Freedom, later Freetown, to which it can ‘repatriate freed slaves from its settler colonies. The British maintain the area around Freetown as a colony. 1896 The British government proclaims the interior of Sierra Leone to be a protectorate and administers it indirectly through cooperative chiefs.

1951 Formation of Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP).

1957 SLPP wins national elections. Milton Margai becomes president.

INDEPENDENCE AND LEAD-UP TO WAR

1961 Independence.

1962 SLPP wins national elections.

1964 President Milton Margai dies. His brother, Albert Margai, succeeds him.

1967 All People's Congress (APC) wins national elections. APC government is formed in 1968 with Siaka Stevens as the new president.

1970 Former APC supporters, led by John Karefa Smart, break off to form the United Democratic Party (UDP). Senior officers, notably Army Force Commander John Bangura, who are thought to be sympathetic to the UDP, are forced to retire.

1971 Bangura and a group of army officers, including Foday Sankoh, are implicated in a failed coup. Bangura and three other officers are executed. Sierra Leone becomes a republic and a de facto one party state.

Mid-1970s Libyan government becomes increasingly involved in Sierra Leone. It funds Green Book study groups at Fourah Bay College which espouses a populist, revolutionary and anti-imperialist ideology. 1978 National elections increasingly violent. Sierra Leone becomes legal one-party state.

1982 National elections extremely violent. Entire villages are destroyed. Villagers in Ndorgboryosoi, Pujehun, challenge government's imposed candidate and the government sends security forces. This remains a source of local anger.

1985 Student demonstration at Fourah Bay College. Student Union president Alie Kabba and four others are arrested and expelled. After their release they move to Ghana where Kabba becomes Ghadafi's Sierra Leonean contact person. President Stevens retires and is succeeded by Brigadier Joseph Saidu Momoh. 1987 High inflation and plunging diamond revenues. IMF forces Momoh to agree to strict austerity measures, including a drastic reduction in rice subsidies.

THE MAGNITUDE AND MULTITUDE OF GROSS HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES

This book must start with a confession and an apology.

First the confession. A work such as this is not able to do justice to a topic as broad as that set out in the title i.e. reparations for gross human rights abuses. The main focus of this book, the central shocking social fact which gives rise to all the nuanced legal and political debates discussed in this work, is that human beings are capable of treating other human beings with unspeakable cruelty. If this book has a heart, it lies in the recognition of the fact that both ancient and recent human history is littered with examples of widespread and gross violations of human rights. These violations, serious outrages to humanity, continue in places such as Darfur in the Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Iraq, even as this work is being written. The sheer extent of the past and present abuses of human rights makes it impossible for the topic of reparations for such abuses to be dealt with in one short book.

Then the apology. This book is an eclectic mix of perspectives, dealing with a range of specific widespread abuses, which occurred at different times in various parts of the world. Because of the nature of the book, it deals with gross human rights abuses in a highly selective and somewhat arbitrary manner. And because this work deals selectively with only a small fraction of the wide range of gross human rights abuses which have taken place during the relatively recent past it is appropriate that an apology be offered at this early stage of the book. The reader should not lose sight of the broader picture of human suffering captured in the phrase ‘gross human rights abuses’. As Michael Osborne (whose chapter on reparations for apartheid is included in this book at pages 231-293) writes: ‘Fundamental human rights continue to be violated with impunity almost everywhere. The human rights revolution is not just unfinished. In a sense, it has yet to attain material reality’.

INTRODUCTION

The lawsuits filed in the United States by victims of apartheid represent perhaps the most ambitious attempt thus far to use the Alien Torts Claims Act (the ATS), to obtain compensation for the human rights violations of transnational corporations. The dismissal by a New York Court of a consolidated action against corporations active in South Africa during apartheid therefore came as a blow to human rights activists, who had hoped that the ATS was emerging perhaps as the only effective means available anywhere of holding corporations legally accountable for international human rights violations. (The matter is, at time of writing, on appeal.)

It is said that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 inaugurated a human rights revolution. Over the next half-century, the broad promises of the Declaration were fleshed out in a series of conventions and multilateral treaties, addressing areas ranging from civil rights, to social and economic rights, to environmental rights. But for the most part, these documents embody unrealised ideals. Human rights have continued to be violated with impunity almost everywhere. The human rights revolution is not just unfinished. For many, it has yet to attain material reality.

One of the gaps in human rights enforcement has been in its failure to address violations perpetrated by non-state actors. Both individuals and corporations have largely escaped responsibility. That has begun to change. The Pinochet case undermined one of the redoubts of individual impunity; the immunity historically enjoyed by heads of state. But the problem of holding corporations to account for their international misdeeds has remained intractable.

It is now generally accepted that corporations can be both criminally and civilly liable under international law. Yet, it has proven very difficult to find a forum to which they can be summoned. Home-country courts are seldom receptive to suits alleging human rights abuses by their corporate citizens committed in distant lands. Tribunals of host countries, ever hungry for foreign investment, are likewise often closed to suits against foreign corporations. (The apartheid case teaches that, just as individual perpetrators are often immunised by post-transition amnesty programs, transnational corporations may benefit from the protection of a new government.) Finally, corporations do not generally fall under the jurisdiction of international criminal tribunals.

Reparations claims have many forms, depending on the historical and political context in which they arose. Southern African claims often turn on specific land dispossessions. The Herero, a Namibian tribe of about 120,000 have persisted in a reparations claim against Germany that dates back at least to 1946, when Paramount Chief Frederick Maharero tried to place claims against Germany before the newly formed United Nations. The legal basis of this action, as well as its timing, was tied directly to the widespread genocides committed by Germany against various peoples during World War Two. German genocide against their people in the Herero War of 1904-1905 opened the twentieth century's wave of genocides. The idea that Germany could occupy land, in Africa or Europe, forcibly relocate vast populations in doing so, justify these actions on racial grounds, and kill whole populations whether they resisted or not, was not simply the result of Nazi ideology. This kind of thinking had a precursor in German South West Africa, now Namibia, just after the turn of the century. If the Herero were not at present rigorously pursuing reparations claims against Germany, the Herero War would be relegated to the status of an obscure historical footnote, with 60,000 nameless dead. Instead, the legacy of this war follows modern Germany with a clear message: genocide is never forgotten. The purpose of reparations is symbolic as well as financial. It matters both that Germany acknowledges these past wrongs, as well as compensates its victims.

GERMAN COLONISATION OF NAMIBIA AND THE HERERO WAR

The conquest of Africa, Asia, and Latin America by European nations gives rise to a wide range of demands for reparations. These conquests, spanning more than four hundred years, took a variety of forms, but all were bloody in one form or another. Millions of indigenous people died, were enslaved, or forcibly removed from their lands. Whole European societies were planted in different parts of the world, including the modern nations of Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Other European colonies were returned to the political control of indigenous populations, including Namibia, South Africa, Angola, and Zimbabwe.

Germany came late to the business of colonisation, only arriving in Africa in the 1880s. This late start put Germany, a nation with grand ambition, ‘behind’ other European countries, a factor that may have increased the violence of colonial warfare in German South West Africa.

‘Repairing the Past? International Perspectives on Reparations for Gross Human Rights Abuses’, is a timely work which provides a comprehensive overview of the development of reparations, documenting the experiences of victim/ survivor groups in their attempts to secure justice for gross violations of human rights.

In their introductory chapter, entitled ‘Reparations for Gross Violations of Human Rights in Context’, Max du Plessis and Stephen Peté set out the history of mass killings of civilians and genocide that have taken place in the last century, beginning with the genocide of the Herero people in Namibia by the German Colonial forces and ending with the current genocide that is taking place in Darfur in Sudan. While international law has developed, leading to the recent establishment of the International Criminal Court, which was designed to hold those responsible for gross violations accountable, the international community has been unable to stop the ongoing violence and killing of civilians in Darfur, making a mockery of the notion that ‘it should never happen again’.

I believe that the most important components of transitional justice must be the rights of victims, which include the right to the truth, the right to acknowledgement, the right to reparations and the obligation to take steps to ensure that the violations will not occur again. In this way impunity will be addressed, provided that the structural causes of the conflict are comprehensively dealt with. Let us never forget that impunity gives rise to gross violations of human rights.

In theory, the right to reparation is an established right under international law with the earliest examples of reparation arising in the context of wrongs committed by states against states. However, the notion that individuals should be entitled to hold their own governments, corporations or other citizens accountable did not occur to those in power until after the end of the Second World War. The chapter on the history of the holocaust reparations written by Regula Ludi outlines the historical origins of individual reparation mechanisms. Ludi points out that the rights of individuals to redress for state crimes was first recognised in a legal document drafted at the Paris Reparation Conference of 1945. For victims and human rights advocates who had lobbied around this issue, this marked a turning point.