Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission: An Interim Assessment‪.‬

Introduction After 14 years of civil war that left 200,000 dead and a million displaced in a small country of four million people, in 2003 Liberia's warring factions concluded a peace agreement that called for the creation of a truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) as part of the process of restoring and rebuilding the nation. Truth and reconciliation commissions are civilian bodies set up for a limited period of time to investigate a past history of violations of human rights. Invariably, truth commissions gather evidence of violations committed by state actors and insurgent groups and issue a report recommending changes in state institutions and policies to prevent such violations from occurring in the future (Hayner, 1994).