Sierra Leone's peace process: The role of the human rights community

The Sierra Leone human rights community has played a high-profile role in the country's long and troubled peace process. This paper seeks to both describe and assess that role and takes account of, inter-alia, the activities of NGOs and the United Nations human rights program. The period chosen for review, 1998 to 2000, covers the most significant stages of the peace process: from the return to Sierra Leone of its elected government in early 1998, through the phase of the Lome peace negotiations/agreement, to the adoption of the Abuja Agreement in November 2000. The paper concludes that the human rights community can take credit for a substantial contribution to the peace-building process. Failures on the part of the human rights actors to achieve peace-process related goals are also identified and analyzed.