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Latest from USIP on Liberia
- November 20, 2009 | Event
As Liberia continues its struggle to rebuild institutions destroyed by years of brutal conflict, the rule of law has emerged as a focus area of national and international development efforts. A key policy question concerns the future of Liberia’s dual justice system under which a hierarchy of chiefs’ courts managed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs exists in parallel to the formal judiciary. Co-authors Deborah Isser and Stephen Lubkemann discuss the policy implications of the newest USIP Peaceworks with the Chair of the Liberian Law Reform Commission.
- November 5, 2009 | Resource
This report presents the research findings and analysis of ten months of field study as part of the United States Institute of Peace and George Washington University project titled "From Current Practices of Justice to Rule of Law: Policy Options for Liberia's First Post-Conflict Decade." The analysis we present, based on three types of research methods (focus groups, individual interviews with parties to specific disputes, and interviews with chiefs, zoes [traditional leaders], and other justice practitioners) employed primarily in three counties (Grand Gedeh, Lofa, Nimba, and less extensively in parts of Monrovia), is intended to provide the Liberian government and other stakeholders in the country with more robust evidence than has hitherto been available on how both formal and customary justice systems are perceived and utilized by Liberians.
- September 1, 2008 | Resource
Stemming from a survey of more than 1,400 ex-combatants in Liberia's 14-year civil war, this report explores the reasons behind renewed fighting, including poverty, unemployment, peer and family pressure, gender and tribal tensions.
- July 9, 2008 | In the Field
To assist Liberia's recovery after a 14 year civil war, USIP has led an unique program based on both formal institutions and local practices of justice.
In Liberia, a major factor behind the country’s 14 year civil war, which ended in 2003, was discontent with the role that state institutions, including the justice system, played to foster the social, political, and economic marginalization of a majority of the country’s population. The task of rebuilding the rule of law therefore must not focus only on formal institutions, but also on local practices and perceptions of justice.
USIP’s Rule of Law Center of Innovation has recently led a program to build rule of law based on this model. The project aims to develop policy options to expand the rule of law and consolidate peace over the next decade in ways that include the role of informal legal systems and local understandings of justice. The initiative draws on USIP’s ongoing research examining interactions between customary and formal legal systems during post-conflict transitions worldwide.
