The Political Economy of Transitional Justice: Evaluating Corporate Accountability for Resource Extraction Crimes during the Liberian Civil War

Global Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies | Vol. 14, No. 9, September 2023 | pp. 73–81

DOI: 10.46882/2023/GJPCS/140901

Article Type: Original Research Paper

Title: The Political Economy of Transitional Justice: Evaluating Corporate Accountability for Resource Extraction Crimes during the Liberian Civil War

Authors: Maria Camila Gomez¹, Ziad H. Al-Rifai²

Authors’ Affiliations: ¹Department of Political Science, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia; ²Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon

Abstract:
Transitional justice initiatives heavily prioritize cataloging civil and political rights abuses, while routinely overlooking corporate complicity in systemic state repression and economic crimes. This paper evaluates the structural limitations of post-conflict reconstruction models concerning the prosecution of private commercial extraction entities that actively supported institutionalized violence during the Liberian conflict. Utilizing comprehensive legal archival datasets, corporate timber registries, and human rights databases from 2003 to 2022, we measure the long-term socioeconomic impacts of omitting economic restitution from early peace agreements. The quantitative analysis reveals that commercial networks that profited from resource extraction avoided financial and legal restitution, leaving structural economic inequities completely unaddressed. Our statistical models demonstrate that regions with high historical corporate timber capture report a 40% increase in localized social protests and labor disputes over resource distribution. The study concludes that traditional transitional justice frameworks fail to foster deep national reconciliation when they ignore economic violations. We argue that modern democratic stability requires integrating binding corporate accountability frameworks directly into transitional justice mechanisms.

Keywords: Political Economy; Transitional Justice; Corporate Complicity; Resource Extraction; Structural Inequality; Economic Violations

Manuscript Timeline: Received: August 20, 2021; Revised: November 15, 2021; Accepted: February 05, 2022; Published: September 12, 2023

Citation: Gomez, M. C., & Al-Rifai, Z. H. (2023). The Political Economy of Transitional Justice: Evaluating Corporate Accountability for Resource Extraction Crimes during the Liberian Civil War. Global Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies, 14(9), 73–81. DOI: 10.46882/2023/GJPCS/140901

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