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Human Rights Challenges for the New Government

Liberia’s first national elections since the signing of the Accra peace accords will be held on October 11, 2005. An estimated 1.3 million persons registered to vote during the voter registration process, held between April 25 and May 21.⁵ At stake in the October 2005 polls are the presidency, the 30-seat Senate and the 64-seat House of Representatives. On August 13, 2005 the Chair of the National Elections Commission (NEC), Frances Johnson Morris, announced the final list of qualified candidates, which consisted of 22 presidential hopefuls, 206 for the Senate and 503 for the parliament.⁶

The leading candidates for the presidency include Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of the Unity Party, George Weah of the Congress for Democratic Change, and Charles Brumskine of the Freedom Party. Sirleaf, 70, is a veteran Liberian politician who made an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1997. She is a former Liberian finance minister, banker and senior official at the U.N. Development Programme and is running on a platform of ensuring good governance in Liberia.⁷ George Weah, 38, is a former soccer star and UNICEF Goodwill ambassador with no previous experience in politics. He counts on widespread support from Liberia’s youth and former combatants, and is running on a campaign of restoring basic services, tackling corruption and improving basic education.⁸   Charles Brumskine, 54, headed the Senate under former President Taylor but in 1999 fled to the United States after falling out with him.

Other presidential hopefuls include Roland Massaquoi of Taylor’s National Patriotic Party, Varnie Sherman of the Action Party, and Winston Tubman, the son of a former president. Two former rebel faction leaders are also in the running: Sekou Damate Conneh, the former political leader of the LURD, and Alahji Kromah, the former leader of the United Liberation Movement for Democracy-Kromah (ULIMO-K) rebel group, which fought Taylor during Liberia’s first war. 

Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of Liberian refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) were unable to return home in time to register to vote. The National Electoral Commission, in consultation with UNMIL, decided to exclude absentee voting due to concerns about the credibility and transparency of out-of-country voting, logistical challenges, and the difficulty of obtaining permission from certain asylum countries to allow registration and voting in their territories.⁹

Generally to date, the preparations, registration and campaigning stages of the October 2005 elections have been free of major irregularities. The Liberian press has functioned openly and without fear of reprisal; the registration process for candidates appeared to be transparent and open; and candidates have for the most part campaigned in a secure environment free of overt intimidation.¹⁰

However, key issues with long-term implications have not been given adequate attention during the election campaign.  These include the imperative of a human rights agenda for the new government; Charles Taylor’s continuing interference in Liberia and the region; and the participation in government of persons responsible for serious human rights abuses.

The Need for a Human Rights Agenda

The campaign rhetoric of most presidential hopefuls appears to revolve around the international community’s top priority: fighting endemic corruption. However, other key rule of law issues that could advance respect for human rights have received little attention. These include the crucial importance of rebuilding Liberia’s fractured judicial system, the merits of pursuing justice for the victims of the horrific atrocities that marked Liberia’s armed conflicts, and the imperative of keeping human rights abusers out of the new Liberian police and armed forces.¹¹  As noted by one political observer: “The candidates have taken no initiative to address anything human rights-related. In fact, it is the press and the public who are pushing them by asking questions on judicial reform or the Taylor-surrender problem. Otherwise, the candidates are steering clear of these issues.”¹²

The only accountability-related issue which has featured prominently in the campaign is the debate on whether or not indicted war criminal and former Liberian President Charles Taylor should be surrendered to the Special Court for Sierra Leone.¹³  In a nationally televised debate on August 22, 2005, the four presidential hopefuls gave their tentative support for his surrender, albeit conditional of proof that Taylor had broken the terms of his asylum agreement.  Roland Massaquoi, the candidate for Taylor’s NPP party, suggested that Taylor’s surrender should be left up to the Liberian people to decide, presumably by referendum.¹⁴ 

To be effective in establishing the rule of law in Liberia, any new government and leader will need to pay more attention in office to the outstanding critical human rights issues than they have on the campaign trail. Without tackling these issues, the tremendous progress made in Liberia over the last two years could be severely compromised.

Reports of Charles Taylor’s Interference in the Political Affairs of Liberia 

In 1997 Liberia experienced flawed elections, characterized by considerable intimidation of voters by Charles Taylor. It has been noted that Taylor’s 1997 victory was in large part due to the implicit threat that he would resume the fighting if he lost.¹⁵ Unsurprisingly, given what the population had suffered, Taylor and his National Patriotic Party (NPP) won some 75 percent of the vote.

In June 2003, the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), a U.N.-backed tribunal established to prosecute individuals who bear the greatest responsibility for serious violations of international humanitarian law, unsealed an indictment of Taylor for his role in supporting the Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone and other armed opposition groups. Taylor is indicted on seventeen counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity against the people of Sierra Leone. These crimes include killings, mutilations, rape and other forms of sexual violence, sexual slavery, the recruitment and use of child soldiers, abduction, and the use of forced labor.  Taylor has been at the center of West Africa’s 15-year cycle of violence and instability, having brought civil war to Liberia and fueling brutal insurrections in Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire and cross-border attacks into Guinea.¹⁶

Consistent reports exist of Taylor interfering in Liberian affairs for his own ends, despite the terms of the agreement with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo which granted Taylor asylum. In his June 7, 2005 report on Liberia, the U.N. Secretary-General stated that “Charles Taylor is reportedly in regular contact with his former business, military and political associates in Liberia and is suspected of sponsoring a variety of presidential candidates with a view to ensuring that the next Liberian Government will include his sympathizers.”¹⁷  On July 28, 2005, a communiqué issued by the Mano River Union, a regional organization which includes the governments of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, cited allegations of Taylor's involvement in an attack on the Guinean president, gathering armed people in the forests of Liberia, and making telephone calls to Liberian officials.¹⁸

Several western diplomats interviewed by Human Rights Watch expressed concern that Taylor is intent on returning to Liberia after the elections and will interfere in the electoral process to secure such an outcome.¹⁹ According to one political observer: “The Taylorites are working to ensure that they get a sympathetic reception in the new government so that Taylor will not be turned over to the SCSL.”²⁰

A May 2005 report by the Coalition for International Justice accused Taylor of maintaining a vast financial network worth up to US $210 million held in bank accounts in West African countries, Europe and the Caribbean. Citing police and intelligence officials in Europe, the report claimed that Taylor maintains at least thirty front companies to protect his assets from U.S. and U.N. efforts to freeze them. It claimed that Taylor used his resources to undermine the political process in Liberia, including by funding at least nine political parties contesting the elections, funding civil unrest in Liberia, and training a small military force which could be used to foment instability in Liberia and beyond.²¹

The primary mode of Taylor’s influence would be through his financial support of presidential and parliamentary candidates from his former party, the National Patriotic Party (NPP), which remains one of the wealthiest and best organized political parties in Liberia. Although the U.N. Security Council has called for member states to freeze the financial assets of Charles Taylor and his family, members of his former regime, and his close associates, the transitional government of Liberia, has largely failed to enforce it.²²  In early 2005, the Liberian Supreme Court overturned the government’s decision to freeze the assets of two close Taylor associates—Benoni Urey and Emmanuel Shaw—who own large shares of the cell phone company Lone Star.²³

In July 2005, Liberia's justice minister, Kabineh Ja’neh, a former political leader with the LURD, characterized as “incontrovertible” the evidence that Taylor was deeply involved in the country’s political activities, and urged the Liberian government to conduct an urgent review of the terms of Taylor’s exile agreement with Nigeria.²⁴ On August 8, 2005, Ja’neh went on to accuse Taylor of having phone and personal contact with supporters in Liberia and abroad who were intent on influencing the upcoming political affairs of Liberia.²⁵

The Security Council’s imposition of a travel ban on members of Taylor’s inner circle has not prevented personal contact between Taylor and his associates in Liberia, some of whom are under U.N. travel ban.²⁶ Several prominent politicians close to or sympathetic to Taylor who are not subject to the travel ban have publicly said they frequently visit him in Calabar.²⁷ In addition, although UNMIL monitors the airport and borders, it is likely that members of Taylor’s inner circle who are on the travel ban list continue to visit him in Calabar. The December 2004 report from the U.N. Panel of Experts, mandated to report on the enforcement of the U.N. sanctions in Liberia including the asset freezes and travel bans, said they had received several reports of persons on the travel ban list regularly visiting Taylor in Calabar.²⁸ A member of the Panel told Human Rights Watch that one way persons on the travel ban list pass through the airport is through the use of forged diplomatic passports, which are easily purchased in Monrovia for about US $1000 to $5000.²⁹

In principle, U.N. sanctions, which have for several years been imposed on arms, diamonds, timber and the travel of those deemed a threat to peace, could greatly reduce the ability of Taylor and others to influence the elections, undermine the newly elected government, and foment instability in the region. However, one obstacle to the proper enforcement of these sanctions is ambiguity over the extent of UNMIL’s responsibility to both monitor and enforce them.  The Secretary General’s June 2005 report on the situation in Liberia appears to demonstrate this: on the one hand the report states that “the Security Council has not given UNMIL the mandate to monitor or enforce the measures imposed by resolution 1521 (2003), as renewed by resolution 1579 (2004).”³⁰  However, it then states that UNMIL has nevertheless “been mandated with a number of responsibilities that have a bearing upon the implementation of those measures.” It goes on to describe how UNMIL civilian police and military personnel engage in the monitoring of border crossings, air and seaports, and cordon and search operations to recover arms and ammunition. Political and military observers interviewed by Human Rights Watch characterized these activities as sporadic and intermittent at best and noted that in practice UNMIL has taken a very narrow interpretation of their mandate vis-à-vis the enforcement and monitoring of the sanctions.³¹

Human Rights Watch believes that Security Council resolutions which both established UNMIL—Resolution 1509 from September 19, 2003—and those which relate to the work of the U.N. Panel of Experts—Resolution 1521 from December 22, 2003 and Resolution 1607 from June 21, 2005—clearly provide UNMIL with the authority to enforce the sanctions.³²  Human Rights Watch urges UNMIL to actively monitor, enforce and report any violations of the sanctions to the Panel of Experts and U.N. Sanctions Committee.³³ 

Human Rights Watch is also concerned that other African countries—including Togo and Nigeria—could do more to comply with the sanctions and facilitate the work of the Panel of Experts. In August 2005, Human Rights Watch received a report that Benjamin Yeaten, former head of the Liberian Special Security Unit, had violated the travel ban and traveled from his residence in Togo to a country in central Africa.³⁴ For its part, Nigeria did not facilitate entry of the Panel of Experts into its territory to investigate compliance with the travel ban and asset freeze.³⁵ 

Alleged Human Rights Abusers and the Elections

Three former faction leaders, five individuals subject to United Nations sanctions for their engagement in activities aimed at undermining peace and stability in Liberia and the sub-region, and several former high-level military commanders against whom there are credible allegations of responsibility for serious human rights abuses and violations of the laws of war during Liberia’s armed conflicts are running for office in the 2005 elections. Other members of the former factions are forming alliances and strategizing for influential appointments in the new government. ³⁶

Human Rights Watch is concerned about the risks associated with the election or appointment into public office of these individuals. The abusive records of these men and women, none of whom were ever prosecuted for alleged crimes, raises concerns that they may resort to force and other extra-legal measures to circumvent and subvert Liberia’s political process and the legal system. The risk for this would be especially acute following the eventual withdrawal of U.N. peacekeepers and in face of continuing inadequacies within the Liberian security sector.

Five candidates for public office—Adolphus Dolo, Edwin Snowe, Jewel Howard Taylor, Kai Farley and Myrtle Gibson—are subject to a U.N. imposed travel ban for constituting “a threat to the peace process in Liberia” or for being “engaged in activities aimed at undermining peace and stability in Liberia and the sub region,” mostly notably by remaining in close contact with Charles Taylor.³⁷ Snowe and Howard-Taylor are also subject to a U.N. assets freeze similarly drawn up to “prevent close family or associates of former President Taylor from using misappropriated funds or property to interfere in the restoration of peace and stability in Liberia and the sub-region.³⁸

Edwin Snowe, the former Managing Director of the Liberian Petroleum and Refining Corporation (LPRC) who is running for the legislature for Montserrado County, and Jewel Howard Taylor, a wife of Charles Taylor who is running for the Senate in Bong County, are both accused of funneling money from Liberia to Charles Taylor in Nigeria³⁹ and are subject to both a U.N. travel ban and assets freeze.⁴⁰ 

Human Rights Watch has documented scores of war crimes and other serious violations of international law committed by combatants under the command of the two former faction leaders running for president: Sekou Damate Conneh from the LURD and Alahji Kromah from ULIMO-K. ^{41 These violations include sexual violence, forced labor, summary execution including massacres, torture, forced recruitment, the use of children as soldiers, and the indiscriminate shelling of the civilian population with mortar-bombs. A third former faction leader who is running for the Senate, Prince Yormie Johnson from the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia, played a leading role in the extrajudicial execution of former President Samuel K. Doe in 1990.}

Several other former high-level military commanders alleged to have been involved in past abuses are running for the Senate and House of Representatives, including:

• Adolphus Dolo, a former NPFL general who is seeking a Senatorial seat in  Nimba County, is described by the travel ban report as “a [r]enegade supporter of former Liberian President Charles Taylor.” Human Rights Watch documented Dolo’s involvement in attacks against civilians and war crimes committed during the armed conflict in Cote d’Ivoire in 2003.⁴² Credible allegations also exist of Dolo having used child combatants during Liberia’s armed conflicts.⁴³ According to a May 2005 report by the Coalition for International Justice, Taylor has in recent months funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to Dolo and another commander and instructed them to recruit several hundred  combatants for use in future armed conflict in Liberia and elsewhere. Dolo has denied these allegations.⁴⁴ 
• Saah Richard Gbollie, a former commander with the NPFL and officer with the Liberian police, is seeking a legislative seat in Margibi County.  While serving as the deputy director for operations with the Liberian National Police, Gbollie was directly implicated  in the arrest, beating and torture of two well known civil society members: journalist Hassan Bility and  human rights lawyer Tiawon Gongloe. In January 1998, Bility was allegedly arrested and beaten by eight officers under Gbollie’s command.⁴⁵ On April 24, 2002, Gongloe was reportedly stripped and severely beaten by three security agents on Gbollie’s orders.⁴⁶, ⁴⁷.  Mr. Gongloe told Human Rights Watch that Gbollie had presided over his torture.⁴⁸
• Edward N. Slanger is seeking a Senatorial seat in Grand Gedeh County. While serving as an officer with the Armed Forces of Liberia under President Samuel K. Doe he was accused of killing civilians from ethnic groups, particularly the Gio and Mano, in retaliation for their alleged support of a coup against then president Doe in l985.⁴⁹ Slanger appeared on local television in 1985 and claimed that he and a group of soldiers had broken into the home of the coup leader, Thomas Quiwonkpa, and executed him. They later paraded Quiwonkpa’s body parts around Monrovia.⁵⁰ 

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In the early months of 2005, there was debate within Liberian society as to the merits of allowing persons accused of serious crimes or subject to U.N. sanctions to run for office. The Accra peace accords originally contained a clause that prohibited leaders of the former factions, individuals accused of serious human rights violations, and persons who had criminal records from seeking elected office.⁵¹ However, the clause was later removed because of opposition from faction leaders.⁵²

Local human rights activists called for the National Electoral Commission (NEC) to pass regulations that would prevent alleged human rights abusers from contesting the elections. On February 12, 2005, Geoffrey Rudd, the Charge D’Affaires of the European Commission in Liberia, laid out the EC position on election criteria in a letter to Jules Frippiat, the Director of UNMIL’s Electoral Division. In the letter, Rudd requested that former warlords, persons subject to UN sanctions,⁵³ and anyone with a criminal record be excluded from contesting the election.⁵⁴ On February 23, 2005, a coalition of civil society organizations requested that the NEC prohibit anyone on the U.N. sanctions list from running for office.⁵⁵

Neither UNMIL nor the NEC supported the establishment of additional criteria for political candidates. In a letter dated February 16, 2005 the Special Representative of the Secretary General in Liberia, Jacques Klein, rejected Rudd’s request, laying out several rationales. First, Klein argued that the establishment of additional criteria violated Article 25 of the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights, which protects the right to run for office as a basic human right, and, as such, should not be “lightly curbed.”⁵⁶ Second, he argued that Liberia’s current legal framework—including the Accra peace accords—already prohibits certain incumbents from contesting the elections, and that the NEC does not have the authority to supplement this legal framework. Finally, Klein suggested that it would be difficult and potentially destabilizing to adopt such criteria, given the difficulty of defining categories such as “warlords” and in view of the risk that such a move could be perceived by faction leaders as an effort to undermine their role in implementing their own peace agreement.⁵⁷

Likewise, in an interview with Human Rights Watch, the NEC chairman, Frances Johnson Morris, rejected the idea of human rights criteria, arguing that: (1) neither the Accra peace accords nor the election law calls for such criteria; and (2) without a court to prosecute and convict accused persons, such criteria would be difficult to define.⁵⁸

However, if the newly elected Liberian government wants democratic institutions and processes to endure, it must address the continuing threat posed by these individuals. A key way to minimize this threat is for the newgovernment and the international community to urgently decide on the most appropriate way to hold accountable perpetrators of serious crimes, including those elected to public office. As a first step those elected officials alleged to have committed human rights abuses either directly or   as a matter of command responsibility should be investigated by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and, depending on the outcome, recommended for prosecution. 

As the new administration considers who to appoint to cabinet level, para-statal and other key government positions, the president should refrain from appointing any individuals against whom there are credible allegations of abuse. To further sideline past abusers from political power, the newly elected president should establish a commission mandated with setting up a vetting procedure to screen out such applicants. Similar to the vetting process already established to screen out past abusers from the new Liberian police and army, the commission must vet all public appointees including those appointed by the president. Those most responsible should also be held accountable for their crimes. 

Under the current constitution of Liberia, legislators do not have immunity from prosecution, as is common elsewhere.  Human Rights Watch in general opposes immunity provisions for serious violations of international human rights or humanitarian law. The new president must ensure that no future laws would provide immunity to legislators or other officials for serious international crimes.⁵⁹