By Atty. Kula Bonah Nyei Fofana
Presidential Press Secretary
Growing up as a young woman in refugee and internally displaced persons camps in Liberia and Sierra Leone, I learned early that silence can wound as deeply as violence especially when a nation’s history goes untold. In those camps, whispered stories carried the weight of loss. Families like mine survived not only bullets and bombs, but the slow erasure of memory.
For many Liberians who lived through the civil wars, reconciliation did not begin with peace accords alone. It began and must continue with truth.
Liberia’s fourteen years of conflict between 1989 and 2003 claimed an estimated 250,000 lives and left deep physical, psychological, and institutional scars. The 2009 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) attempted to document those wounds, giving voice to victims and survivors while recommending pathways toward justice, healing, and accountability. Yet for more than a decade, its final report remained largely unimplemented, gathering dust as survivors carried their trauma in silence.
That silence was not neutral.
For many victims, it became a second wound.
When President Joseph Nyuma Boakai Sr. assumed office on January 22, 2024, he inherited not only economic and governance challenges, but an unresolved moral debt to a generation shaped by war. In his first year, he took a decisive step by establishing the Office of the War and Economic Crimes Court and appointing officials to lay the institutional foundation for accountability. It marked the first serious, state-driven effort to act on the TRC’s long-ignored recommendations.
Having observed these developments from within the Executive Mansion, I can attest that this was not a symbolic gesture. It was a deliberate policy choice one that confronted a painful past many had found politically safer to avoid.
It was, however, in President Boakai’s second year that his reconciliation agenda assumed deeper national meaning.
In July 2025, President Boakai issued a public apology on behalf of the Liberian state to victims of the civil wars. Standing before a nation still learning how to mourn collectively, he declared:
“To every victim of our civil conflict, to every family broken, to every dream shattered, we say: We are sorry. We are sorry for the pain you endured. We are sorry for the failure of the state to protect you. And we are committed to ensuring that such darkness never again defines our nation.”
With those words, the President acknowledged not only the atrocities committed by combatants many of whom were themselves victims but also the profound harm caused by years of institutional silence.
For survivors of rape, mutilation, forced recruitment, and for families who never saw justice served, this apology was not merely ceremonial. It offered long-denied moral recognition: permission to grieve openly and affirmation that their pain had not been forgotten by the state.
President Boakai’s reconciliation efforts extended further. His administration initiated state processes to honor former Presidents William R. Tolbert Jr. and Samuel Kanyon Doe, both violently killed during periods of political upheaval. In early 2025, he established a national committee to oversee their dignified reburials an acknowledgment that national healing requires confronting all parts of our history, even those that remain deeply painful and divisive.
These actions were not hollow symbolism. In societies like ours, where ancestry, memory, and community bonds matter profoundly, how we treat the dead reflects how we heal the living. Restoring dignity to figures long denied it signals a critical shift: that violence will no longer be the final author of Liberia’s national story.
Yet reconciliation cannot end with apology and remembrance.
True reconciliation demands justice that is tangible, not rhetorical. The Office of the War and Economic Crimes Court must now be strengthened through legislation, adequate resources, and sustained political will. Apologies must be matched with accountability where evidence permits. Memorialization must be paired with education so future generations understand not only what happened, but why it must never happen again.
From my vantage point as Presidential Press Secretary, reconciliation stands out as the most consequential achievement of President Boakai’s second year not because it is politically convenient, but because it is morally necessary.
As a daughter of displacement, I know reconciliation cannot be rushed or superficial. It is forged through dialogue, accountability, and collective remembrance that refuses to erase the past. President Boakai’s actions spanning institutional reform, public apology, and national memorialization reflect a rare political courage: the willingness to govern not only for the present, but for a wounded past and a fragile future.
Liberia still has a long road to walk from apology to accountability, from memory to justice. But by confronting what was once unspeakable, the nation takes a critical step closer to becoming what it aspires to be: a country that honors every voice, acknowledges every wound, and resolves that never again will silence define us.
— Atty. Kula Bonah Nyei Fofana is a lawyer and student of transitional justice, with interests in public service, gender, governance, intersectionality, and amplifying local voices.
