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colonialism in 1961, the war soon lost the veneer of any legitimate aspirations. Not onlythe RUF, but also both its allies and opponents, indulged in tactics of the utmost brutality. [1]
    Like all wars, it had its phases, with a series of regime changes in the central government, transformations in the profile of the rebel groups, and unsuccessful attempts at compromise and peace negotiation. A promising attempt to resolve the conflict, reached atAbidjan, Côte d'Ivoire in late 1996, and brokered by various international actors including the United Nations, [2] soon broke down. The climactic conclusion was a devastating attack on the capital in January 1999, chillingly labeled “Operation No Living Thing.” With Freetown in ruins, the government sued for peace. The formal beginning of the end of the conflict was the Lomé Peace Agreement of 7 July 1999, between the Government of Sierra Leone and the Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone. [3] The agreement provided a controversial amnesty, sometimes also referred to as a pardon or reprieve, for perpetrators of atrocities on all sides of the conflict. [4] The Special Representative of the Secretary‐General of theUnited Nations, Francis Okelo, formulated a reservation to the amnesty provision, insisting that it could not apply togenocide, crimes against humanity,war crimes, and other serious violations of international law. [5]
    The Lomé Peace Agreement pledged the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), to be set up within ninety days. Although efforts were soon directed to this task, [6] legislation for the purpose was not adopted by Sierra Leone's Parliament until February 22,2000. [7] Pursuant to section 6(1) of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act 2000 (TRC Act) , the Sierra Leone TRC was established “to create an impartial historical record of violations and abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law related to the armed conflict in Sierra Leone, from the beginning of the Conflict in 1991 to the signing of the Lomé Peace Agreement ; to address impunity, to respond to the needs of the victims, to promote healing and reconciliation and to prevent a repetition of the violations and abuses suffered.”
    The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a creation of the Parliament of Sierra Leone, in pursuance of an undertaking found in Article XXVI of the Lomé Peace Agreement . Although a national institution, the TRC had an international dimension because of the participation of the Special Representative of the Secretary‐General for Sierra Leone and theHigh Commissioner for Human Rights in its establishment. These two senior United Nations officials were responsible for recommending the appointment of the three members of the Commission who were not citizens of Sierra Leone. [8] Virtually all of the financing for the Commission came from international donors, with the Office of the High Commissioner assuming the responsibility for fund‐raising. Initially budgeted at $10 million, [9] poor donor response resulted in a reduction to less than $7 million. In the end, the TRC received approximately $4 million, a disappointing result that seems to indicate an indifference to its mission, despite grand statements to the contrary. In contrast, theSpecial Court for Sierra Leone, also funded by voluntary contributions from international donors, has a much larger budget, albeit one scaled down from an amount that originally exceeded $100 million to about $56 million over three years. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights withheld 13 percent of the funds that it raised as an overhead oradministrative fee. [10]
    Although section 6 of the TRC Act might be taken to suggest a limit on the TRC's temporal jurisdiction from 1991, when the war began, until the Lomé Peace Agreement of July 7, 1999, in practice the Commission did not operate as if its investigations were confined by this period. The TRC Act also required the