President Joseph Boakai offered a state apology to Liberians Saturday over the brutal violence and lingering trauma caused by the country’s two civil wars, as the nation grapples with how to remember its troubled past.

The president made the formal gesture during a reconciliation ceremony held in the capital, Monrovia.

He spoke just days after attending official funeral memorials for former presidents Samuel Doe — tortured and murdered in 1990 at the beginning of the civil wars — and William Tolbert, assassinated in 1980 when Doe staged a government coup.

The ceremonies were also part of the ongoing national reconciliation effort.

Liberia’s two back-to-back wars devastated the small West African country from 1989 until 2003, claiming around 250,000 lives and resulting in massacres, mutilation, rape and the widespread use of child soldiers.

“On this historic occasion, I offer a formal apology on behalf of the state,” Bokai told those gathered for the event Saturday.

“To every victim of our civil conflict, to every family broken, to every dream shattered, we say: we are sorry.”

“The state could have done better but was used as agency”, Boakai said, adding: “We must do everything we can to make sure that it never fails you again.”

Despite international and domestic demand, Liberia has yet to try anyone for crimes committed during the bloody conflicts.

A 2009 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) recommended the establishment of a war crimes tribunal.

But the call went mostly unheeded, particularly in the name of peacekeeping. A number of accused warlords remained influential in the country’s politics.

In May 2024 Boakai took one step towards initiating the tribunal by signing an order setting up the Office of War and Economic Crimes Court. It is tasked with creating the eventual war crimes court.

On Saturday Boakai called for “implementing key recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

“There is hardly a Liberian family that has not been touched by the pain, the violence, and the injustice that have haunted our nation”, he added.