By: R. Joyclyn Wea
MONROVIA-The Alliance for Transformational Justice-Liberia with funding from the Open Society Initiative for West Africa has launched the Untold Story-Memoir of Liberia Civil War Project.
Launching the project at a local hotel in Monrovia recently, the Founder of ATJL, Jeremiah Swen said the project is intended to ensure that the voices of massacred survivors whose stories were not captured in the TRC’s report are heard and become a manifestation of practical reality.
Swen mentioned that the project is also intended to ensure that untold stories of massacres are brought out, ensure to guarantee the next generation that there will be non-recurrence and a platform created to ensure that when those stories are told, they will be documented and published.
In remarks, a representative of the Independent National Commission on Human Rights welcomed the documentation and publication of the atrocities committed during the Civil war and committed the Commission’s support towards ATJR as the Commission looks forward to stronger coordination and collaboration.
Giving the overview of the project, the Vice Chairperson on Policy and Project, Adolphus Dupley named the building of local resilience, ownership and provoke national and international actors for adhering and comprehensively implementing the TRC’s Recommendations, the establishment of a Special Ordinary Tribunal on War Crimes, provision of health and social services to war victims, among others as the mission of ATJL.
Dupley said, the objective of the project is to fully and timely implement the TRC’s report and use same to achieve lasting healing, reconciliation and accountability-instilling deterrence as legal and moral instruments-preventing past occurrences and fostering inclusive and sustainable development.
He furthered that monitoring shall be conducted as to the time-bound targets associated with partner or donor’s commitments.
“These commitments flow from grants approval fund transfer as reference to approved timetable implementation, reportage, and partners’ certificate of successful completion. Partners, as members of the technical advisory working group, shall use such audience to further proof.”
The ideal concept of the Alliance for Transitional Justice-Liberia was birthed in February 2018. The alliance became a full-fledge national transitional justice central coordinating platform on October 15, 2018. This marked the consummation of 16 institutions drawn from civil society organizations, faith-based, legal, educational and research, women or youth focus and networks of massacre’s survivor’s related institutions, agreed to defeat impunity is a broader but consolidated approach, foster sustainable healing and reconciliation through the full and timely implementation of the 2009 truth and reconciliation commission’s report.
The objective is to fully and timely implement the TRC report and use same to achieve lasting healing reconciliation-instilling deterrence as legal and moral instruments-preventing past occurrences and fostering inclusive and sustainable development.