Free Transitional Justice in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth versus Justice by Naomi Roht-Arriaza

the greatest responsibility,” something spelled out explicitly in Article 1 of its Statute. During establishment of the Court, theSecurity Council had stressed that it would be preferable for juvenile offenders to be dealt with by the TRC, perhaps suggesting that the Council understood the relationship between the two bodies as involving some sort of identification of distinct spheres of interest. [45] But in pursuing the testimony of alleged offenders being held in custody by the Special Court, the Commission demonstrated that it considered even the “big fish” to fall within its own terms of reference. Indeed, it could not be otherwise, given that the TRC was tasked with preparing an historical record of the conflict, something that necessarily involved a consideration of the role of the principal participants.
    Observers in the field continue to report that people in Sierra Leone are confused about the distinctions between the two bodies. This ispresented as a problem, for which the solution proposed is further campaigns of sensitization. Yet confusion about the mandates and functions of these two bodies would seem to be not only inevitable but quite natural and understandable. After all, most European law students have trouble explaining the distinctions between the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice. The average citizen of the United States would be challenged to distinguish between the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the Attorney‐General. Who can really expect uneducated, illiterate peasants in the countryside of Sierra Leone to do better? Perhaps the “confusion” about the two bodies is proof of success, not failure. To the extent that the people of Sierra Leone understand that the two bodies exist, and that they have some shared objectives, such as accountability for human rights violations, then the message has been delivered and “sensitization” achieved.
    The TRC accomplished its mandate, although it suffered terribly from poor funding and administrative weaknesses. In particular, it was able to prompt the cooperation of many perpetrators, who testified in public or private to their deeds. In this respect, it was probably no better or worse than the many other truth commissions have been. To be sure, there is nothing simple about convincing those who have committed atrocities to admit to their crimes. Moreover, the Sierra Leone TRC did not have the carrot of amnesty that the South African TRC had used as an incentive for perpetrator admissions.
    The willingness or reluctance of perpetrators to participate in accountability processes – be they truth commissions or courts – may have far less to do with promises of amnesty or threats of prosecution than many may think. Just as criminals often confess, despite “Miranda” warnings about the right to silence, not to mention stern admonition from their lawyers, some perpetrators of serious human rights violations may feel the need to unburden themselves, to “tock dee troot” as they say in Krio, Sierra Leone's lingua franca. At the other extreme, there are those who are incapable of admitting to what they have done, even when promised immunity from prosecution. And this suggests that truth‐telling may or may not work, regardless of the threat ofcriminal trial.
     
Conclusion
     
    Sierra Leone has provided the evolving discipline of transitional justice with a laboratory in which to examine how the two bodies, special “internationalized” courts and truth commissions, relate to each other. As experience has now shown, much of the speculation about potential problems and relationships has proven to have been somewhat wide ofthe mark. The relevance of this work to other post‐conflict justice situations cannot be underestimated. Virtually everywhere, the two concepts have their promoters, although they are often presented in the alternative. Sierra Leone has demonstrated that the relationship of the two