After a wobbly start, the Office of the War and Economic Crimes Court of Liberia (OWECC-L) has hit stride. In July 2025, it launched a road map, its strategic plan outlining milestones and critical timelines towards the court’s creation. Its agenda formed the basis for a robust outreach campaign across rural Liberia which spanned six months.
The machinery backing the road map and its outreach campaign is the National Transitional Justice Committee (NTJCC), a platform comprising the civil society, faith-based groups, rural female activists, victims’ groups, development partners, the United Nations Human Rights Office and the media. Compared to other transitional justice coalitions, the NTJCC is deliberate in its composition and reaches out way beyond the capital, Monrovia. In December, it submitted two draft bills for a War and Economic Crimes Court and a National Anti-Corruption Court, to the office of the president. According to the timeline laid out in the road map, both mechanisms are expected to be operationalised before 2029.
These critical outputs are perceived to have bestowed upon OWECC-L a renewed sense of purpose, inspiring hope and confidence in the country’s search for accountability at home and abroad. However, it will be misleading to view this progress as the unanimous position by all Liberian elites, because the challenges to establishing the War and Economic Crimes Court are multilayered.
Members of the victims’ and faith-based communities suspect that various actors may try to spoil or obstruct the actual creation of the court. Among them, some members of the current legislature, some members of President Boakai’s cabinet – though they are not named in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report issued in June 2009 – as well as some civil society actors, who also are also mobilized to disrupt the process.
Despite these challenges, the two most critical issues that can make or break the process are a clear financing strategy, independent of US and European Union fundings and a robust legislation that is sound and conceptualised to co-exist with Liberia’s dated constitution while drawing practical lessons from other comparative hybrid tribunals.
Who’s trying to sabotage the court?
Engaged in a cold war of some sort, the Liberian elites have taken sides on the establishment of the court. Some are aligned with President Boakai’s “ARREST Agenda” – Agriculture, Roads, Rule of Law, Education, Sanitation and Tourism in which the rule of law component champions wartime justice – while others are opposed to it. Some are loud in their opposition, while others prefer to stay quietly non-aligned. The latest feel no sense of personal obligation to go along with the President’s decision to mobilize resources in establishing the court. In this non-aligned posture, without a sense of obligation and urgency, prioritisation of the court is unnecessary.
Former presidents Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and George Weah are vehemently opposed to the establishment of the court because they view it as counterproductive to Liberia’s stability. Thomas Yaya Nimley, a sitting senator from Grand Gedeh county and former head of the Movement of Democracy in Libera (MODEL), one of the warring factions that signed on 18 August 2003 the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement, is also sternly opposed to the process.
But beyond these outspoken critics, there are growing suspicions over senior cabinet members sabotaging the process.
When the executive order to establish the War and Economic Crimes Court was renewed in April 2025, it allocated 2 million US dollars for the year to its creation. The ministry of finance and development planning promised then to disburse the first instalment of $500,000 as staggered payment. But instead of disbursing the initial amount, the ministry later indicated that it will only be able to pay $300,000, and then again a much lower amount... Six months after the executive order was renewed, the promises had never been fulfilled. The civil society, faith groups, and victims’ groups had to protest and take action against both the ministry of finance and the ministry of justice. In the ensuing stand-off, Peterson Sonyah, the president of the Liberia Massacre and Survivors Association (LIMASA), asked Minister Augustine Ngafuan: “Who are you protecting?”
Sonyah’s question goes to the heart of victims’ groups suspicion about the lack of unity of purpose within president Boakai’s cabinet. Though Ngafuan is not named in the TRC Final Report and served as a distinguished student leader during the period of the civil wars (1990-2003), it is feared that the delayed payment of OWECC-L’s operation funds is not due to a drop in revenue, but to a deliberate attempt to sabotage Boakai’s agenda for civil war-era accountability. According to Sonyah, Ngafuan replied: “I am not protecting anyone.” On December 3, 2025, I wrote to the minister and copied his special assistant in an email requesting for an interview to probe further what appears to be a grave allegation. He never replied.
A flurry of draft bills to weaken the future court
In December 2025, two draft bills were submitted to the office of the president. One of the bills regards the War and Economic Crimes Court of Liberia and the other the National Anti-Corruption Court. Prior to the submission of these two bills, senator Joseph Kpator Jallah from Lofa county had submitted another bill to his colleagues in the legislature. His draft bill – which was incoherent and not addressing the model selection, the definition of violations nor the trial chambers – was meant to do two things: to serve as a place holder until a more detailed bill is drafted, and to obstruct and undermine OWECC-L from being the lead institution.
Few months later, the Independent Human Rights Commission of Liberia working in concert with a select number of civil society organisations discretely and without wider consultation, also put together its own draft bill and had it submitted to the legislature. The move by the Human Rights Commission – which has a standing memorandum of understanding with the OWECC-L and is an active member of the NTJCC – is viewed as more adversarial than collaborative. This draft bill was yet another iteration of the 2019 draft bill put together by the National Bar Association, a somewhat improved version of the draft statute inserted in the TRC final consolidated report.
I spoke with members of the legislature on the situation of all these competing bills seeking to establish the War and Economic Crimes Court and one of the lawmakers said that the only institution authorized to submit a bill before the legislature is the OWECC-L. I had access to the bill submitted to the office of the president, and reviewed it.
The bill’s strengths and weaknesses
The Liberian TRC consolidated report submitted in June 2009 contained a draft statute on the establishment of an extraordinary tribunal. By inserting a draft bill in the final report, the TRC attempted to be prescriptive in terms of model selection, definition of violations and the trial chambers. This 2009 draft bill has ever since formed the template of all subsequent draft statutes developed for the purposes of prosecuting war crimes in Liberia.
Ten years later, in 2019, the Liberian National Bar Association in collaboration with transitional justice actors put together a slightly different version of what the TRC had inserted in its final report. The definition of violations including genocide was retained. The TRC’s vision to have the trial chamber subsumed under the Liberia’s supreme Court was also maintained. But reviews by a team of international lawyers showed that this draft bill was weak and poorly conceptualised. Considering the high threshold for genocide, it would be extremely difficult to prove that genocide was perpetrated in Liberia.
The current draft bill put together by OWECC-L is a much-improved version of the 2009 and 2019 bills. It is comprehensive and provides clarity on the overall legal approach to prosecuting civil war-era violations. Two key strengths are notable in this regard. One, the focus on sexual crimes, especially violations perpetrated against women is consistent with the total universe of violations as documented in the TRC reports. Two, it’s imaginative in terms of complementarity with the regional court of ECOWAS and the International Criminal Court (ICC) as it acknowledges both courts.
While this version is much improved, it could be strengthened in a number of places. To start, there’s no definition of massacres in the entire document. This limitation is also reflected in the TRC final report. For a country that records 226 sites of massacres, a definition of massacre consistent with the United Nations is absolutely necessary. Likewise, the relationship between the trial chambers and the Supreme Court of Liberia is unclear, as to how they will function together.
Some of these gaps could have been improved if the process of writing and reviewing such a draft bill were consultative and inclusive of all stakeholders. But out of five members of the NTJCC I interviewed, only one has had the opportunity to review the draft. On the contrary, in 2004, the process leading to the drafting of the TRC Act was broad-based and consultative. Such consultations which included the four regions of the country and the collective aspirations for prosecution, memorialisation, reparations and the Palava Hut, actually shaped the mandate of the TRC. And that is what is missing here with the OWECC-L’s current draft bill, the only legal one.
Lack of financial strategy
Liberia’s transition from a humanitarian phase to a critical developmental phase is aligned with the National Vision 2030. The National Vision 2030 is Liberia’s long term development strategy promulgated in 2012. One of its primary objectives is to make a clean break from the path of dependency on aid to develop a strong domestic economy. The dismantling of the USAID last year has had far less disruption than initially anticipated. And this outcome must be assessed as a litmus test in the consolidation of Liberia’s postwar economy. The demonstration of macroeconomic stability in the face of external pressure shows significant progress.
But despite the level of stability, the budget process remains fraught with poor economic planning and prioritisation. Firstly, the budget has been criticised for being too ambitious and seeking to do too much in one calendar year. Secondly, the OWECC-L operation is less reflected as a matter of urgency than as an afterthought. The original strategy to bankroll Liberia’s War and Economic Crimes Court was envisioned through US money, but with USAID dismantled, and the European Union reassessing its priorities for Liberia, there is great cause for concern. What is more, the Swedish Embassy, one of Liberia’s largest funders on peace and security, is leaving the country in October 2026. Nevertheless, the national budget projections remain indifferent and don’t reflect these developments. Rather, it allocates a measly of $1.3 million dollars against OWECC-L almost 4-million-dollar budget.
In postwar Liberia, there is a correlation between wartime impunity and post-war corruption. The economic crimes, ill-gotten wealth, that resulted in the form of the pillaging and plunder of public coffers continue with impunity. Also, the casual violence perpetrated during the civil wars and drug addiction used as a tool to perpetrate this violence is being normalised. The 74% of the population that accounts for what I describe as the lost generations, those born in 1990s and 2000s, are perceived to be the most affected part of the society. Without the establishment of the War and Economic Crimes Court and other complementary measures of transitional justice, these dangerous trends will insidiously continue.
This is why a unity of purpose with a sense of urgency is warranted among all officials of government. The choice of the non-aligned is a luxury we cannot afford. Officials such as the vice president, the minister of foreign affairs, the director of the cabinet, the office of the speaker of the house of representatives who are in direct contact with OWECC-L or the victims’ groups come across as champions of the process. This is an example of the officials who are aligned, that is worth emulating by those non-aligned.
Aaron Weah lectures negotiation and conflict transformation at Liberia’s prestigious Foreign Service Institute (FSI) and decision making in international politics decision making at the IBB Graduate school of International Relations, University of Liberia. Weah was recently nominated by the Government of Liberia to African Union Committee of Experts on Reparations (AUCER). He serves as the Director of the Ducor Institute for Social and Economic Research, a Liberia-based think tank.
