The Liberian TRC came to a conclusion in 2010, filing a final report and recommending relevant actions by national authorities to ensure responsibility and reparations.
The Special Court for Sierra Leone indicted Charles Taylor, the leader of the rebel group the National Patriotic Front of Liberia to which many of the crimes against humanity are attributed.
The Liberian TRC's mandate was to "promote national peace, security, unity and reconciliation" by investigating more than 20 years of civil conflict in the country and to report on gross human rights violations that occurred in Liberia between January 1979 and 14 October 2003.
The TRC also strove to provide a forum to address issues of impunity and allow victims and perpetrators of human rights violations to share their experiences, thereby creating a clear picture of the past and facilitate genuine healing and reconciliation.
The TRC made suggestions to ensure that victims of the Liberian Civil Wars received appropriate compensation and that perpetrators saw some form of punishment.
[7] Alongside the recommended policy changes, the TRC provided seven lists of persons or groups requiring extra investigation or deserving of amnesty.
The TRC recommended that all individuals and entities noted as most notorious or requiring further investigation have a formal trial in the Liberian justice system.
[8] Among the list of persons that should be "specifically barred from holding public offices; elected or appointed for a period of thirty (30) years" for "being associated with former warring factions" was Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the current president of Liberia.
Priscilla Hayner, the a co-founder of the International Center for Transitional Justice, established three guidelines that Truth and Reconciliation Commissions should follow to ensure due process: the accused should be notified of the allegations held against them, they should be given the opportunity to respond to the charges, and the TRC should make clear in their final report that their findings on individual responsibility do not amount to criminal guilt.
In January 2011, the Supreme Court ruled in Williams v. Tah, a case brought by one of the people listed to be barred from public office in the TRC report.
This decimated a large portion of the TRC's recommendations, allowing people that perpetrated or aided in gross human rights violations to remain in power in Liberia.
The TRC also ran past its indicated period of activity, which caused the final hearings and the report to be rushed to meet the mandated deadline.
This hurriedness caused a disconnect between the names recommended for prosecution or to be barred from office and their specific crimes along with a general lack of evidence to support the claims made by the TRC.