Sierra Leone re-elected Ernest Bai Koroma president against eight other candidates in a calm, orderly vote held on Nov. 17 with results announced Nov. 23, after ballots were counted. The election marks an important step for the country to continue its healing after suffering an 11-year civil war. Koroma, who garnered 58.7 percent of the vote, is … Read more
The International Criminal Court‘s judgment against the warlord Thomas Lubanga for conscripting child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo has confirmed that “a permanent international criminal court is on the job,” Stephen Rapp, ambassador at large for the US State Department, said at Columbia University Law School this month. The Lubanga guilty verdict in … Read more
Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president, displayed a talent for troublemaking from a young age. Convicted on April 26 by a United Nations-backed tribunal for numerous counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Taylor appears to have kept up his bad behavior for most of his 64 years. As a boy in rural Liberia, … Read more
