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Leone.
     
     
    [18] See, e.g., Antonia Chayes and Martha Minow, eds., Imagine Coexistence: Restoring Humanity After Violent Ethnic Conflict (San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass Publ., 2003).
     
     
    [19] Tina Rosenberg, “Latin America”, in Alex Boraine, Janet Levy and Ronel Scheffer, eds., Dealing with the Past: Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa (Cape Town: Institute for Democracy in South Africa, 1994), p. 67.
     
     
    [20] See Stover and Weinstein, My Neighbor, My Enemy , pp. 13–20. See also Jose Zalaquett, “Balancing Ethical Imperatives and Political Constraints” (1992) Hastings Law Journal 43, no. 6.
     
     
    [21] Stover and Weinstein, My Neighbor, My Enemy , p. 18.
     

Part 1 Truth, justice, and multiple institutions

Chapter 1 The Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission
     
    William A. Schabas
    National University of Ireland, Galway
     
    Truth and reconciliation commissions have become one of the standard options on the palette of transitional justice alternatives. They stand as something of a half‐way house among approaches towards accountability for past atrocities and other human rights violations. The truth and reconciliation commission does not “forgive and forget,” because it is predicated on public truth‐telling, but nor does it encompass rigorous prosecution by criminal justice mechanisms. The South African model is probably the best‐known, although it had some atypical features, such as the power to recommend amnesty to perpetrators who made full confession of their deeds.
    The Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established in July 2002. It presented its final report to the President of Sierra Leone on October 5, 2004. The actual operations of the Commission, consisting of both private and public encounters with victims and perpetrators, public hearings on thematic issues, and other research and investigation took only about eight months, however. The report provided Sierra Leone with a detailed narrative of the country's history, with a focus on the brutal civil war of the 1990s, analysis of various dimensions of political, economic and social life with a view to understanding the causes of the conflict, and a series of findings and recommendations.
    Perhaps the most distinctive feature of post‐conflict justice in Sierra Leone has been the parallel existence of an international criminal justice mechanism, theSpecial Court for Sierra Leone. In the past, truth and reconciliation commissions have often been viewed as an alternative to criminal justice that, sometimes only in an informal manner, obviates or at the very least suspends prosecutions. In Sierra Leone, the two institutions operated contemporaneously. This unprecedented experiment revealed some of the tensions that may exist between the two approaches. Yet it also demonstrated the feasibility of the simultaneous operation of an international court and a truth commission. The Sierra Leone experience may help us understand that post‐conflict justice requires a complex mix of complementary therapies, rather than aunique choice of one approach from a list of essentially incompatible alternatives.
     
Creation and mandate of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
     
    Sierra Leone's civil war began on 23 March 1991, when forces styling themselves theRevolutionary United Front (RUF) raided a town near the border with Liberia. The declared objective of the RUF was to overthrow the corrupt and tyrannical government of Joseph Saidu Momoh and theAll People's Congress (APC), which had ruled Sierra Leone since the late 1960s. The events that day were little more than a skirmish, but they heralded the beginning of a decade of violence that devastated the country. If the aims of the RUF might have been shared by many in Sierra Leone, who were frustrated by years of dictatorship, and by the descending spiral of poverty and underdevelopment that characterized the country since its independence from British