Detailed Implementation Timeline: Abidjan Peace Agreement

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Detailed Implementation Timeline: Abidjan Peace Agreement

Implementations

Detailed Implementation Timeline – 1996

None of the specific provisions mentioned in the timeline were implemented within the specified timeframe this year. The DDR process was abandoned before it began. The Demobilization and Resettlement Committee was never operational and no Assembly Zones were established. The mercenaries from the defense firm Executive Outcomes left the country on their own in February of 1997 rather than being confined to barracks under the supervision of the Joint Monitoring Group and the Neutral Monitoring Group as stipulated in the accord. The Neutral Monitoring Group (NMG) was not created. The RUF/SL were not transformed into a political party and a National Electoral Commission was never established.

Detailed Implementation Timeline – 1997

None of the specific provisions mentioned in the timeline were implemented as the peace process quickly broke down into renewed violence. In January 1997, two months after the peace accord was signed, the SLPP government and Kamajors launched attacks against RUF units in northern Kailahun.1 In May of 1997, Major Johnny Paul Koroma and his soldiers formed an alliance with RUF troops and toppled Sierra Leone’s government. President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah fled into Guinea.2

  1. David Keen, Conflict and Collusion in Sierra Leone (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005),193-197.
  2. “Sierra Leone coup leader claims power,” The Independent (London), May 26, 1997, 13.

Detailed Implementation Timeline – 1998

In 1998, the former government ousted the RUF/AFRC government. RUF and the former government returned to full scale civil war in 1998.1

Coding for this case ceased on December 31, 1998.

  1. “Uppsala Conflict Data Program,” Uppsala University Department of Peace and Conflict Research, accessed June 3, 2011, www.ucdp.uu.se/database.