Abstract

Liberia is a country located in West Africa, it has experienced two protracted civil wars, one from 1989 to 1996 and the second from 1999 to 2003. With the end of the first civil war, Charles Taylor emerged as the President of the country. His coming to power nevertheless came with lots of quagmire. However, after the first civil war, many peace building processes have been carried out to arrest the situation of incessant violence in the country, these processes to a relative extent was making progress in addressing the issues among the warring parties, but was interrupted by undue intervention. It is against this backdrop that the
study therefore seeks to examine the International Criminal Court and post conflict peace building process in Liberia; 2003-2013. To achieve this, the study focused more on ascertaining whether the International Criminal Court intervention was favourable to peace building in Liberia within the year under review. The study adopted qualitative descriptive method of data collection and analysis. The Human Needs theory was also employed to aid the focus of the study. The study nonetheless adopted the One Group Pre Test Post Test design as the guiding blueprint to the work. In the course of the research work, we found that the ICC intervention was not favourable to the post conflict peace building in Liberia. We also found out that the ICC was not a credible factor for peace building in Liberia. Hence, the study recommends that for there to be an enduring peace in Liberia, the government should put in more efforts to putting an end to structural violence by adopting home grown programs and strengthening the independence the judiciary, thereby satisfying the human needs of the Liberians.

CHAPTER ONE
Introduction

1.1 Background To The Study
Peace is a relative condition of friendly security climate that allows individuals and group relations to progressive order and stability. Peace does not mean absence of conflict or war. It reflects that security friendly system that frees individuals and groups of people from fear and dangers of losing such inalienable human rights as life, liberty and property. In view of the above assertion, peace is the prime value of human existence.
Thus for David (2006), he described peace as “public goal” because it guarantees security for all rather than fear of terror of mutual (assured) destruction. Conflict on the other hand is an integral aspect of social existence and social progress. By conflict, we refer to contradiction arising from differences in interests, ideals, ideologies, perception and tendencies. These contradictions exist at all levels of the society, group, institutions and nations as well as in interpersonal, inter-group, inter-institutional and international relation.
Nnoli (1998) sees conflict as so ubiquitous in social life that it has been isolated by some as the basic unit to understand social existence. Marxism for example agrees that to understand society is to understand social conflict. It is difficult to conceive of history outside the resolution of conflict. What is often regarded as social problems are inevitably contradiction, which impedes social progress. Their resolution helps to push society forward towards increased humanity. The resolution of conflict within the individual makes him or her better person, the game holds true for groups, institutions, nations and international relations.
Conflict is so related to the loss of peace, that it is tempting to define peace by eliminating conflict (Ofuebe, 2001).
This however, is likely to lead to very unpleasant results given that conflicts are central to life. Indeed, Ofuebe (2001) contended that life without conflict is no life at all, and  that the peace which is achieved merely by eliminating conflict is the peace of the grave yards. He further conceived conflict as “the pursuit of incompatible interests and goals by different groups” noting that armed conflicts are “the resort to the use of force and armed violence in the pursuit of incompatible and particular interests and goals”. The worst forms
of armed conflict include mass murder and genocide against unarmed civilians. Therefore, conflict resolution scholars argue that conflict has an ontological basis in human needs, and it is the denial which causes violent conflict, or cause re-solvable differences to degenerate into armed conflicts.
The conception of conflict ,its management and resolution have led to terms such as peace making ,conflict prevention, third party intervention and the focus on mediation and negotiations, peace enforcement, and peace building. Indeed, the tremendous increase in human multiplication, as well as the characteristic self centered nature of man has brought about conflicts of all kinds in the international political system today. The following conflicts, among other ones, have occurred since 1914 to date, namely World war 1, World
war 11, the Israel-Palestinian crisis, the Iraq- Iran crisis, Saudi Arabia – Kuwait ,the U.S.S.R invasion of Afghanistan, the Cuban missile crisis, the Ethiopian- Italian crisis, the Israeli versus Arab nations crisis, the Spain –Moroccan war, the Rwandan-Burundi crisis, Nigeria Cameroon border crisis, Tanzanian –Ugandan crisis, Ethiopian Eritrea crisis war, Somalia ,Angolan, Sudan, sierra Leonean and the Liberian armed conflict (which is our particular area of study).

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