We've blogged here about Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a body established to investigate human rights violations during civil conflict in Liberia from 1979 through 2003. The TRC aims to create "an independent, accurate and objective record of the past and make recommendations reflective of the truth to re-unify and reconcile contending groups and/or the peoples of Liberia." There has been grumbling as of late as to whether these lofty goals can be met, perhaps because its teeth are a bit soft and fuzzy -- the TRC's Mandate enables it to "ensure accountability, political or otherwise" for serious human rights violations and to "recommend amnesty" (for crimes other than war crimes and crimes against humanity) under individual applications, but requires the TRC to grant immunity from prosecution "on account of" statements made or evidence presented before it (i.e. such evidence can't be used against the speaker in court). (In perhaps the weirdest marriage of technology and transitional justice I've seen, the TRC's website offers an amnesty application form with jarring questions such as "How would you describe yourself? Witness; Perpetrator; Other" and "Were you a combatant or member of a warring faction?") The result has been, in the words of the TRC's own press release, "a chorus of denials of atrocities by key war actors." 
This is seriously troubling for those who suffered human rights abuses under the Doe and Taylor regimes, as well as for those with a principled interest in justice for mass violence. It seems that the TRC's behavioral expectations for former warlords may have been overly sanguine; by offering these perpetrators the ability to tell the truth with impunity, it expected that they would come forward and provide a detailed accounting of their crimes. (In the words of the amnesy application form: "What crime(s) do you believe that you committed? Why did you commit the crimes?") Instead, they may have gotten impunity with no truth; recommended amnesty was not a sufficient carrot without the stick of criminal prosecution. While I'm not arguing that prosecution is a necessary component of transitional justice efforts, future institutions might do well to recognize that they need to offer more than the possibility of amnesty and the guarantee of testimonial immunity to encourage wrongdoers to confess to their crimes. The TRC's ultimate goal is to publish a report cataloguing the crimes perpetrated under the Doe and Taylor regimes; if all it ends up with is a transcript full of denials, it may have done more harm than good to their victims and the nation of Liberia.
