International Criminal Court (I.C.C.) And Post Conflict Peace Building Process In Liberia 2003-2013

Abstract

Liberia is a country located in West Africa, it has experienced two protracted civil wars, one from 1989 to 1996 and the second from 1999 to 2003. With the end of the first civil war, Charles Taylor emerged as the President of the country. His coming to power nevertheless came with lots of quagmire. However, after the first civil war, many peace building processes have been carried out to arrest the situation of incessant violence in the country, these processes to a relative extent was making progress in addressing the issues among the warring parties, but was interrupted by undue intervention. It is against this backdrop that the study therefore seeks to examine the International Criminal Court and post conflict peace building process in Liberia; 2003-2013. To achieve this, the study focused more on ascertaining whether the International Criminal Court intervention was favourable to peace building in Liberia within the year under review. The study adopted qualitative descriptive method of data collection and analysis. The Human Needs theory was also employed to aid the focus of the study. The study nonetheless adopted the One Group Pre Test Post Test design as the guiding blueprint to the work. In the course of the research work, we found that the ICC intervention was not favourable to the post conflict peace building in Liberia. We also found out that the ICC was not a credible factor for peace building in Liberia. Hence, the study recommends that for there to be an enduring peace in Liberia, the government should put in more efforts to putting an end to structural violence by adopting home grown programs and strengthening the independence the judiciary, thereby satisfying the human needs of the Liberians.