Charles Taylor, the former President of Liberia, has been convicted by an international tribunal in the Hague for aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone. Ten years after the cessation of violence there, Sierra Leone, now a democracy, is still a dismembered place: its youth has been wasted, its resources ravaged.  Nevertheless, though there remains much to do for Sierra Leone, and much it has to do for itself, its call for justice has been answered, even if in part, hazily.

Whether the guilty verdict delivered against Taylor furthers the cause of justice against war crimes in Sudan, Darfur as elsewhere, remains to be seen.