Interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone are failing to produce stable states capable of exercising the full range of sovereign responsibilities. Why is this the case and what more can be done? This study by the International Crisis Group argues that a fresh strategy is needed if both are not to remain shadow states, vulnerable to state failure. It suggests that the international community needs to make genuinely long-term commitments to enable new political forces to develop.
Both Liberia and Sierra Leone are failing because they treat peace building as implementing an operational checklist, involving fixes to various institutions and processes, without tackling underlying political dynamics. Individuals with criminal pasts are treated as viable political interlocutors. Judicial and law enforcement institutions have never functioned effectively, and thus their repair without reform is no solution. New national militaries are untested, and their adherence to constitutional order uncertain. Voices from civil society – which could catalyse real change – tend to be marginalised, while the economy is left vulnerable to criminal capture.
A more radical strategy is needed. After restoring security, the international community should target its interventions to help build non-political and professional law enforcement and judicial institutions to establish the rule of law, protect civil rights and foster a public space within which citizens can hammer out their own solutions.
- In Liberia it should also assume responsibility for revenue collection: Presently the system of collecting revenues is obscured, making it easy to engineer corruption.
- Once funds begin entering the treasury transparently, it should be up to Liberians to decide how to use them.
- This prescription cannot be applied to Sierra Leone because its elected government is already in place and unlikely to give up so much control.
- Stop-gap measures are in place in Sierra Leone that try to insert accounting mechanisms at the final stages of the revenue process.
- In Sierra Leone, steps should be taken to protect freedom of expression, to give the Anti-Corruption Commission prosecutorial powers and to establish a public complaints mechanism applicable to newly-elected district governments.
This proposed approach can only succeed over a much longer time frame than the international community has hitherto envisaged.
- International donors should: shift the focus of reintegration programs toward education and agriculture, including infrastructure; give greater support to civil society; provide long-term funds for law enforcement and justice sector reform.
- The Liberian and Sierra Leone governments should enact legislation to guarantee all citizens equal access to land use and to prevent rights to such use acquired by working and improving land from being revoked by traditional authorities.
- The UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) should extend military observers tours to one year, the entire period to be spent at a single site, to increase their ability to gather useful information.
- The Government of the United States should give a 15 to 25-year security guarantee to Liberia; provide incentives for Liberians resident in the US to participate in rebuilding Liberia and target financial crimes committed by members of the U S based diaspora.
- The UK Government should confirm the long-term security guarantee to Sierra Leone for a 25-year period.
