For the last year, Charles Taylor, the former President of Liberia has sat in the International Criminal Court at the Hague, on trial for crimes against humanity—namely murder, rape, mutilation, terrorism, enslavement, and conscription of child soldiers. Taylor presided over a brutal civil war for more than a decade, one that killed over 270,000 people and displaced over 500,000 more. If the murder wasn’t enough, Taylor’s war also slaughtered Liberia’s economy. Since the outset of hostilities in 1980, Liberia’s GDP plummeted 91%, the most drastic decline of any country since World War II. Natural resource exports were embargoed to keep profits from funding violence; manufacturing and agriculture ground to a halt; looting soldiers destroyed roads, schools, hospitals, and government building