The News Review:

- Sirleaf should be banned from office: Liberia truth commission
- Sierra Leone’s international image on the upsurge
- PEI pitches in to get war victim new hands
- Sierra Leone Refugee All-Stars feeling at home in New rleans
- Mike McGovern

Sirleaf should be banned from office: Liberia truth commission
AFP
She was inaugurated in January 2006 and established Liberia’s TRC early in her rule. Taylor is already charged with 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from his support of Revolutionary United Front (RUF) guerrillas in neighbouring Sierra Leone’s 1991-2001 civil war. The 61-year-old has been on trial in The Hague since January last year following his arrest in Nigeria and his handover to a Special Court for Sierra Leone. He had gone into exile in 2003 in a deal ending Liberia’s civil war. About 120000 people were killed in Sierra Leone’s conflict with rebels mutilating thousands more — cutting off arms legs ears or noses. Taylor is accused of arming training and controlling RUF rebels blamed for many of the mutilations and of being involved in the “blood diamonds” trade. His defence case is due to open on July 13 according to the court in The Hague.
Related from Zjkjw: Liberia: Ellen Impressed With Chinese-Built Schools

Sierra Leone’s international image on the upsurge
Patriotic Vanguard
After working for just two months in New York as one of Sierra Leone’s diplomats assigned to the United Nations I can say with conviction that our country is making glorious strides to extricate herself from the shadows of her gloomy and dishonourable past. It is not only because the country has fared beyond expectation in her peace-building and national reconstruction efforts. Sierra Leone is also playing key and very influential roles in bilateral multilateral development and multistakeholder diplomacy and is a member of many committees in the global organization. ur nation is doing an astounding job in the hallowed task to reform the UN Security Council with her commanding role as the Chair of the African Union Committee of 10 a distinguished group that has been given the lofty role to work with other nations including African states to negotiate for more seats for Africa especially in the permanent category and for veto rights.

PEI pitches in to get war victim new hands
Calgary Herald
The women are members of a group called Friends of Mohamed who are working to raise $80000 to buy myoelectric hands to replace the prosthetic hooks Mara now wears after rebels in Sierra Leone chopped off his hands. Photograph by: Heather Taweel Charlottetown GuardianCHARLTTETWN ? People across Prince Edward Island are pitching in to purchase expensive high-tech hands for a resident who was victim to butchery in his Sierra Leone homeland and supporters say the fundraising is off to a strong start. Now a permanent resident of Canada Mohamed Mara 27 of Charlottetown had his hands cut off by rebels during the civil war in Sierra Leone. His parents and siblings were massacred but he managed to escape and eventually relocate to Canada four years ago as a refugee. Mara who has been living with cable-operated hooks told The Charlottetown Guardian earlier this month that he is eager to be equipped with the far more manoeuvrable myoelectric prosthesis. "I will feel like a complete human being” he said. Myoelectric hands look more natural than cable operated devices.

Sierra Leone Refugee All-Stars feeling at home in New rleans
The Times-Picayune – NLA.com
open(urlwinnameoptions) newwin. The reggae-infused West African ensemble was formed at a refugee camp in Guinea during the Sierra Leone civil war in the early 1990s. In the midst of a harrowing war and devastating exile the musicians sought refuge in music. “When the war forced us to run away from our country.

Mike McGovern
Boston Review
php’>Development in Dangerous Places a forum on global poverty and intervention. In 2004 I wrote a report for the International Crisis Group entitled “Liberia and Sierra Leone: Rebuilding Failed States. ” It argued that international actors should guarantee security in order to set the scene for post-conflict development and that both security and development might require intrusive mechanisms to ensure economic transparency during the first fragile post-conflict years even when the oversight involved might abrogate state sovereignty. ther scholars and practitioners were working along similar lines and the notion of “shared sovereignty” that resulted seems to have influenced Paul Collier’s thinking. Why then do I disagree in the strongest possible terms with Collier’s position?First as an anthropologist I find Collier’s conception of the ways that socio-cultural difference geography and politics interact deeply flawed. Many postcolonial countries “came unnatural into the world” but I know of no empirical basis for the claim that heterogeneous countries lack “the social unity needed for cooperation.