The complementary and conflicting relationship between the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Abstract

Societies emerging from political turmoil and civil unrest associated with gross violations of human rights and humanitarian law face the crucial question of how to deal with these atrocities and put the past in its place. Since the 1980s, this problem has been a major preoccupation of international law and scholarship. The traditional responses include outside intervention in such states pursuant to Chapter VII powers under the United Nations Charter, grants of conditional amnesty to perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity, grants of some form of unconditional amnesty, and prosecution of perpetrators.Nowhere is this question more pressing than in Sierra Leone, which recently emerged from a ten-year civil war characterized by systematic, serious and widespread violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. The Government of Sierra Leone had to make a choice between these four traditional strategies for dealing with these pervasive human rights violations.