• IDMC: Future of Returning IDPs is at Critical Juncture • CRISIS GROUP: Staying Focused • CCC: The Fate of Interim Government in the Regional Vortex of West Africa • GLOBAL WITNESS: An Architecture of Instability • DCAF: The Challenges and Opportunities of Security Sector Reform • EARTH INSTITUTE: Prospects for Achieving the MDGs in Post-Conflict Liberia • DPKO: "Rehatting" ECOWAS Forces as UN Peacekeepers: Lessons Learned • KAIPTC: Building Peace on Fragile Foundations: The Liberian Challenge • ISS: Local Catalysts, Global Reactions, Cycles of Conflict in the Manu River Basin • SMALL ARMS SURVEY: Disarming Liberia: Progress and Pitfalls • COALITION FOR INT'L JUSTICE: Following Taylor's Money: A Path of War and Destruction • WORLD BANK: Community Cohesion in Liberia: A Post-War Rapid Social Assessement INTERNAL DISPLACEMENT MONITORING CENTRE Future of Returning IDPs is at Critical Juncture February 2006 Following Liberia’s credible elections in October 2005 there may at last be real cause for optimism for the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by fourteen years of civil war. While the new government of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has been taking the first steps towards economic and security sector reform, IDPs and refugees have been continuing to return home in large numbers. In January 2006 the UN reported that less than 50,000 registered IDPs remained in camps – with some 270,000 already assisted to return to their home areas – and that facilitated IDP return was expected to be completed in April 2006. Yet huge challenges clearly remain. Years of conflict, compounded by acute mismanagement and poor governance, have devastated Liberia’s infrastructure and economy. IDPs are returning to areas without basic social services or livelihood opportunities. Protection concerns as well as urgent humanitarian needs still exist in camps as well as areas of return. Crucially, the reintegration and rehabilitation of ex-combatants is incomplete, which poses a risk to sustained peace and stability. The international community will have to remain seriously committed for as long as it takes to achieve sustainable reintegration and reconstruction. Anything less could presage a slide back to conflict and displacement on a massive scale. Continue Reading
INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP Staying Focused January 2006 While the inauguration of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf as Liberia’s president on 16 January offers great hope, the country will only recover if the government and international community maintain their cooperative momentum. If the newly elected government and donors work together in a good faith partnership guaranteeing a proper flow of funds that are used transparently, the country can make real progress. However, if that sensitive partnership fails, the door will be open for a future, disastrous insurgency. The government and donors need to concentrate on several crucial points: following-through on the Governance and Economic Management Assistance Plan (GEMAP); training the new army; reforming the judicial sector; and rebuilding basic infrastructure. Donors should realise that money spent on Liberia will have a vital stabilising impact on the entire volatile region. Continue reading
CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY CONFLICT Liberia and the Fate of Interim Government in the Regional Vortex of West Africa January 2006 What policy value might derive from analyzing the recent experience of Liberia with interim governments as conflict management and institution building agents? The Liberian case provides a window into a set of factors that exist in a number of countries—fragile regimes that “govern” resource-rich economies—that could potentially lead to state erosion and failure in many countries with these same features: 1. First, Liberia is the prototypical weak state eroded first by privilege, and subsequently by ambitious individuals whose use of armed gangs brought down the state. 2. Second, Liberia, along with Sierra Leone, provides an optic on contemporary warlord politics as a condition with its own specifiable properties and political economy. 3. Third, Liberia’s disintegration, its civil war, the interim governments and its future governance arrangements are intimately tied to subregional politics (t he Mano River Basin). 4. Finally, Liberia’s experience with regional peacekeepers and regional economic arrangements provides both cautionary tales and positive precedents with respect to state-building, governance, stability and legitimacy. Overall, explaining how and why the Liberian state failed, and the challenges and opportunities faced by the international community as it sought to reconstitute a viable Liberian regime, therefore hold lessons for many countries in similar situations. Continue reading
GLOBAL WITNESS An Architecture of Instability December 2005 An upsurge in illegal diamond mining and logging by ex-combatants in Liberia is undermining international efforts to promote good governance and stability in the worn torn West African country, and could fuel a return to warlordism, according to this report by Global Witness. "An Architecture of Instability," warns that the government and its international donors have failed to grasp the challenge of demobilising thousands of ex-fighters who are finding jobs in the illegal mining and logging industries. The regulation of the diamond and timber industries are crucial to the prospects for peace in Liberia because revenues from illegal resource extraction during the civil war funded warlords like the notorious Charles Taylor, now in exile in Nigeria. Ex-combatants were supposed to have been reintegrated into the Liberian economy through a disarmament, demobilisation, rehabilitation and reintegration (DDRR) programme run by United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). But the programme has failed to find sufficient funds to provide enough rehabilitation places, and a lack of employment opportunities has caused these ex-fighters to drift instead into natural resource extraction. Continue reading
GENEVA CENTRE FOR THE DEMOCRATIC CONTROL OF ARMED FORCES The Challenges and Opportunities of Security Sector Reform in Post-Conflict Liberia December 2005 Following 14 years of civil war in Liberia, the successful signing of a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in Accra in August 2003 has resulted in one of the most challenging contexts for post-conflict reconstruction since the end of the Cold War. This paper examines the challenges posed by the post-conflict reconstruction process in Liberia, with particular emphasis on the security sector. It is posited that there is a direct correlation between the reconstruction of the security sector on the one hand, and the prospects for peacebuilding and stability on the other. The paper provides an overview of Liberia’s post-conflict reconstruction process, particularly of the security sector, and notes the lack of a coherent comprehensive framework for the reconstruction of the security sector during Liberia’s transition period. The paper therefore seeks to contribute to the articulation of a more comprehensive and coh erent national reconstruction agenda in Liberia following the October/November 2005 elections. Continue reading
EARTH INSTITUTE Prospects and Opportunities for Achieving the MDGs in Post-conflict Countries: A Case Study of Sierra Leone and Liberia October 2005 In this paper the authors examine the strategies being employed by post-conflict countries in Africa to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The authors argue that to attain these goals, these countries will need to alter the way they undertake development planning. Rather than design strategies to achieve best outcomes with limited resources, reaching the MDGs will require that governments identify what resources are needed in order to meet the agreed ambitious objectives. In post conflict circumstances, as evident in Liberia and Sierra Leone (the two countries we examine), three particular challenges to achieving the goals stand out: a history of economic reversals, extremely weak institutional capacity, and popular distrust of government. The authors argue that rather than treat these features as a limiting factor on development, they should be integrated within development strategies, by including them among the n eeds to be met as part of an MDG strategy and by adopting strategies that draw on considerably more ambitious models of consultation, information dissemination and transparency than are presently being employed. Continue reading
UN DEPARTMENT OF PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS "Rehatting" ECOWAS Forces as UN Peacekeepers: Lessons Learned August 2005 This paper reviews the “re-hatting” experiences of ECOWAS forces to UN forces in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire. Though the re-hatting of ECOWAS forces has greatly enhanced the peace processes in the three Western African countries, a number of challenges have been encountered related to the preparedness, the transformation and the command and control of the forces. The paper concludes that in all three cases where the UN took over from ECOWAS, the UN was unprepared for an orderly transformation of ECOWAS forces into UN forces. In addition, the absence of true joint planning meant that the planning process was aimed at solving specific short term issues of deployment, sustainment or capability rather than taking a broader approach that linked the transition to longer term objectives. Continue reading
KOFI ANNAN INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING TRAINING CENTRE Building Peace on Fragile Foundations: The Liberian Challenge June 2005 Liberia currently has one of the world’s largest peacekeeping missions. Established in September 2003 by Security Council Resolution 1509, the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), has helped to restore relative calm to the country after fourteen years of civil war. Although Liberia is currently stable, the situation remains tense as the humanitarian and socio-economic predicaments leave the country vulnerable to new waves of violence. Nearly 85% of the population is unemployed and 80% live below the poverty line. This paper highlights some of the specific long-term peacebuilding challenges facing the United Nations Mission in Liberia – specifically: the composition and corruption of the Transitional Government and the marginalization of civil society from the political sphere; the problem of the internally displaced; an incomplete rehabilitation and reintegration process for ex-combatants; and the issue o f Charles Taylor. The authors stress the frailty of the Liberian peace process leading up to the elections, and advocate for a redoubling of international efforts and resources to address these highlighted issues. Continue reading
INSTITUTE FOR SECURITY STUDIES Local Catalysts, Global Reactions, Cycles of Conflict in the Manu River Basin June 2005 The area encompassed by Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, and Guinea is rich in diamonds, timber, and cocoa, but incredibly poor in governance, stability, and literacy. Threats to peace in the region are driven by three overarching and interlinked themes: the movement of displaced people; the failure to reintegrate and return them to their homes in the post-conflict context; and the influence of illicit trade. UN missions in the region - UNAMSIL, UNMIL and UNOCI - include two DDR processes with mostly successful outcomes. One of the West’s biggest concerns about the cycles of violence in this sub-region is its connection to terrorism. Al Qaeda is known to have traded in diamonds with the RUF, and the U.S. has already begun anti-terrorist training in other West African nations. The global nature of the trade in valuable resources and small arms does put a spotlight on conflict in the Mano River Basin. A focus on the next generation of warfare (where there are few big, visible adversaries and a lot of small, independent ones) requires a thorough understanding of what defines and threatens peace. Previously the domain of humanitarian work, policy and conflict analysts as well as donors now need to give close attention to the movement of displaced people, the requirements of post-conflict reintegration, and the effects of international trade to build sustainable peace. Continue reading
SMALL ARMS SURVEY Disarming Liberia: Progress and Pitfalls May 2005 More than a decade of civil war in Liberia came to a close on 18 August 2003 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in Accra, Ghana. The CPA called for, among other things, the establishment of a National Transitional Government in Liberia (NTGL) and the implementation of a disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation, and reintegration (DDRR) programme for the country’s estimated 38,000 ex-combatants. Established by Security Council resolution 1509 of 19 September 2003, the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) was charged with the task of keeping the peace while the DDRR programme was planned and implemented. The programme began December 2003, and its DD component officially ended on 31 October 2004. This chapter charts the progress of the DDRR programme in Liberia up to December 2004, one year after eager ex-combatants first surrendered their weapons. The assessment is divided into three se ctions: the first presents the operational process of DDRR and highlights main results to date; the second focuses on the principal difficulties experienced during this process; while the third discusses main challenges ahead. Continue reading
COALITION FOR INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE Following Taylor's Money: A Path of War and Destruction May 2005 This report outlines the financial network of former Liberian president Charles Taylor and demonstrates how Taylor’s control of this revenue stream poses a serious, ongoing threat to Liberia, West Africa, and beyond. It focuses primarily on events since Taylor became president of Liberia in 1997 through to the present. This report estimates Taylor generated an income of at least $105 million per year from 1997 through to the end of his presidency in August 2003. This derived from the continued spoliation of Liberia’s diamonds and timber, and the imposition of private taxes on gasoline and rice importation, and on rubber, coffee and rice production. Since August 2003, Taylor has been exiled in Calabar, Nigeria, where he continues to use his wealth to pursue political objectives in the region. He uses his contacts with international criminal networks to carry out investments, create shell corporations, and hide h is money in order to escape UN and U.S. efforts to freeze his assets. The U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone is seeking to try Taylor for crimes against humanity. Continue reading
WORLD BANK Community Cohesion in Liberia: A Post-War Rapid Social Assessement January 2005 At the core of Liberia’s conflict lies a class of marginal young people who currently lack faith in any kind of institutions. They consider that family, marriage, education, markets and the administration of justice have all failed them. Many have preferred to take their chances with various militia groups. Successful peacebuilding, and reconstruction through community empowerment will, to a large extent, depend upon the dismantling of these institutionally embedded distinctions between citizens and subjects. A genuinely inclusive, appropriately targeted community-driven development (CDD) process could play a crucial role in shaping a different kind of society, but only if it incorporates marginalized and socially-excluded groups in the rebuilding process. Successful social reintegration requires support for local conciliation processes, and mechanisms to encourage open, informed debate around issues of justice and h uman rights. Peace will largely depend on the successful reintegration of ex-combatants and the larger group of dispossessed, uprooted young people vulnerable to future militia recruitment. Jobs and skills training are only part of what is needed. Processes of conciliation, and examination of issues of justice and rights, will also be important. Without support for community-driven peace-making activities, alongside CDD activities, social fund projects may do no more than rebuild some of the societal causes of conflict. Continue reading
Compiled by Robert Hartfiel and Arezou Farivar Human Security Research is produced by the Human Security Centre at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC. The Human Security Centre produces the annual Human Security Report and is funded by the governments of Canada, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. For more information on human security visit the Human Security Gateway, an online research and information database that contains a broad range of human security-related resources. To subscribe to Human Security Research , send an email to hsc.list@ubc.ca with 'subscribe HS Research' in the subject field or click here. To unsubscribe, please reply to this message with 'unsubscribe HS Research' in the subject heading. |
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