Sierra Leone Project Scope

The Sierra Leone War Crimes Documentation Project includes work in three distinct areas:

Data Collection and Analysis

The ABA Rule of Law Initiative believes that the collection and quantitative analysis of war crimes and human rights violation data can yield results directly useful to Sierra Leone's accountability mechanisms. Thus, the ABA Rule of Law Initiative is capitalizing on its experience mounting similar interviewing projects in Kosovo to select, train, and field teams of interviewers to collect additional data to contribute to such an analysis. In addition, the ABA Rule of Law Initiative is supporting data collection by domestic organizations to provide additional sources of information thereby generating more comprehensive analysis and reporting.

Assistance to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is making use of the Analyzer database technology, developed by the ABA Rule of Law Initiative and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG), to facilitate quantitative analysis of the information collected by the TRC. However, before interview data can become a statistically valid picture of events it must be "coded," that is raw narrative data must be reduced to component parts, including the numbers and types of violations. The Analyzer database is designed to assist with this effort, but the human decision making element cannot be completely eliminated by technology. Coding is an integral element of the data processing and must be done correctly and consistently to produce good data. As such, the ABA Rule of Law Initiative is working with HRDAG to select, train, and second "coders" to the TRC to complete its data coding effort. The ABA Rule of Law Initiative is also supporting the participation of statisticians to assist T RC staff in incorporating statistical analysis of abuses into the TRC final report.

Assistance to the Special Court

Accountability mechanisms only succeed if they gain the support and trust of local institutions and the local community. The more local legal professionals are able to participate in the work of these bodies, the more the local community will have faith in the outcomes. As such, the ABA Rule of Law Initiative is providing a subgrant to the Sierra Leone Bar Association to fund an internship program for Sierra Leonean legal professionals to gain valuable work experience with the Special Court.