BUCHANAN, Grand Bassa – Forty years ago Atlantic Street was one of this port city’s busiest streets, humming with stores and chop shops. Today it is almost deserted. The encroaching shoreline has swallowed up structures and is threatening to take out the street itself. Bobby Gibson’s father used to run a popular store known as Gibson…
Eric Opa Doue
Buchanan Seaside Communities Beg For Rock Wall To Protect Them for the sea
Coastal erosion caused by climate-induced rises in sea levels and intense tropical storms have already destroyed the homes of hundreds of Liberian families and put critical fisheries at risk. Nine of the country’s fifteen counties sit along the sea coast putting 60 per cent of the population at threat and causing tens of millions of…
Victims Angry as Another Accused Liberian Warlord – Melvin Sogbandi – Dies Without Facing Justice
Death has taken another of the 100 alleged perpetrators that Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended face trial for their crimes during the Civil war.Melvin Sogbandi died in a Monrovia hospital in January at age 53. Sogbandi led “Strike Force Marine,” one of the deadliest divisions of Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia ….
Poor enforcement of Forestry Laws Paralyzes Forestry Industry
Across Liberia forestry operations are at a standstill as logging companies and small scale loggers square off over their right to operate.At the heart of the problem is poor implementation of regulations governing the industry. The logging companies are licensed by the national authorities, but local authorities are issuing permits to small scale loggers.Eric Opa…
Forestry Industry Paralysed by Poor Regulation
NEEZWEIN, River Cess — A power struggle is playing out here deep in the forest and the stakes for the local people are high. Logging companies with concession agreements that include thousands of dollars of benefits for local communities say their work is being hamstrung by informal loggers who disrupt their operations. Informal loggers say they…
Poor enforcement of Forestry Laws Paralyzes Forestry Industry
Across Liberia forestry operations are at a standstill as logging companies and small scale loggers square off over their right to operate. At the heart of the problem is poor implementation of regulations governing the industry. The logging companies are licensed by the national authorities, but local authorities are issuing permits to small scale loggers….
Forestry Industry Paralysed by Poor Regulation
NEEZWEIN, River Cess — A power struggle is playing out here deep in the forest and the stakes for the local people are high. Logging companies with concession agreements that include thousands of dollars of benefits for local communities say their work is being hamstrung by informal loggers who disrupt their operations. Informal loggers say they…
Port Authority Head in Dispute with River Cess Community over Customary Land
CEE TOWN, River Cess – For months, residents in this area of Gbarsaw Clan have watched with increasing alarm as hundreds of men with heavy machinery have cut down trees and hauled them away. In March, residents told The Bush Chicken that the land – more than 600 acres according to the local Community Land Development Management…
River Cess the Latest Flashpoint in Clashing Laws over Land
VONDEH TOWN, River Cess – The people of this area celebrated in 2019 when a forestry company began operations here. The five-year Social Agreement signed with the company, African Wood and Lumber, an Italian-owned company, was supposed to deliver the community US$5,000 each year in scholarship funds, US$15,000 in land rental fees, two feeder roads,…
War is Over, But for Rape Victims, Suffering Goes On
KPEWUDU TOWN, River Cess – The last 27 years have not been kind to Mechen Barchue. The single mother with two children to support lives in a thatched hut she constructed herself and sells charcoal to make ends meet. This story first appeared on The Bush Chicken as part of a collaboration for the West Africa Justice Reporting…