The West African country of Liberia is considered one of the world’s worst places to be a woman. In the aftermath of the country’s brutal civil war, women have limited access to medical care, jobs, and education. Rape is so common that many women don’t know it’s a crime. And most women raise their children…
Health and Education
Child and Teen Prostitution Flourishes in Monrovia Grow
Teenage sex workers say the government has failed to deliver on any of the promises they made after reports in several Liberian media houses last year revealed Liberian girls were forced into prostitution to survive. After the New Narratives story was published in Front Page Africa and aired on Sky FM President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf…
Liberian Teen Prostitutes Face Abuse
MONROVIA (Reuters Trustlaw) – When darkness falls on Monrovia and most of the Liberian capital’s half a million inhabitants return home to rest, an army of teenage girls as young as 13 sets out to work as underage prostitutes, charging as little as 5 Liberian dollars (3 U.S cents) to clients who often abuse them. “I…
As Bones Surface, Massacre Survivors Demand Collective Burial
During the Liberian civil war, tens of thousands of dead were buried in unmarked graves. Mass graves litter the country including the capital city Monrovia. As Fabine Kwiah reports some leaders are calling for these graves to be excavated and the bodies reburied. …
Liberian Government Neglects Mass Graves
It’s been seven years since the end of the civil war in Liberia, but there are still some gruesome reminders of the past. Mass graves haunt the capital. Former TRC Chairman Jerome Verdier is among several leading human rights advocates demanding the graves be opened and the dead be given proper burials. Tetee Gebro reports…
United Nations launches investigation into peacekeepers use of child and teen prostitutes after NN reporting exposes widespread practice
The UN Mission in Liberia has launched an investigation into the use of prostitutes by it’s 8000-strong force of peacekeepers in the country after NN fellows Clara Mallah and Tecee Boley reported on several young teenage girls who claimed to have slept with peacekeepers since they were as young as 9. The story entitled: “I…
“I Sleep with More than 20 Men a Night.” Teen Prostitution Grows in Monrovia
Rose is 15, and has been selling sex for money since the final chapter of the war in 2003, when she was eight. “I got on the street during World War III to prostitute. I am on the street to look for a living because I am from a poor background and I got no…
$5LD for Sex
By day, the infamous Anthony’s Provision Shop at the Lapazee, Airfield Community in Monrovia sells soap, creams and candies. By night, children use it to sell sex. “I have been on the street for so many years. Seven years on the street. I was just a baby. My parents are all dead and they left…
3 out of 8 Rape Victims Aged Under 12
Three-year-old Love walks uncomfortably into this clinic for victims of rape. A pretty little girl with braids, Love (not her real name) looks up nervously at her weeping mother. Love’s father is shaking with rage. “I just heard last night that some teenage boys had been tampering with her,” the father says to the clinician…
Birth Injury Maims Liberian Mothers
Across Liberia tens of thousands of women are quietly suffering from an injury that leaves them outcasts from friends and family. Fistula is an injury that occurs most often in childbirth when the woman does not have medical assistance. It is entirely preventable. It almost never happens in rich countries where all women have access…
War Is Over But Rape Goes on: Many Victims are Children
The fourteen years civil war in Liberia may be over. But the nation has yet another war to overcome – sexual violence against children. The most recent survey of rape survivors in Monrovia shows 3 out of every 8 are under 12. One in 10 is under 5. TC Boley reports from Duport Road. Click…
Unsafe Abortions add to Liberia’s Maternal Mortality toll
Unsafe abortion is one of the major contributing factors to maternal mortality in Liberia. That’s from the Director of the family health at the Ministry of Health. Dr Saye Baawo says unsafe abortions not only make many women infertile, they also result in death. In the first study of its kind in Liberia, the government…
A Decade Since UN Law on Women
Liberia is leading the way on the UN’s first ever law on women peace and security. The law, UN security council resolution 1325, was passed a decade ago and Liberia is the first country in Africa to complete a national action plan to implement the law. 1325 seeks to have women participate in every security…
UN’s First Female Police Unit Inspires Liberian Schoolgirls
Click to hear the whole story. [audio:http://newnarratives.podbean.com/mf/web/nxq42y/LadyMai1325IPKfinalpkgeOct2010.mp3] Students play outside the small, rectangular, building in Congo Town. It’s recess at the victory chapel school in Monrovia. Children are neatly dressed in their blue uniforms with orange and white stripes on their collars. It would be like any other school in the country if it wasn’t…
A Lack of Safe Homes Leaves Rape Victims with Perpetrators
Tears roll down 16-year-old Tete’s full cheeks as she retells her painful ordeal. When she was 11, Tete and three of her sisters, were raped by three uncles over and over again. Tete’s family was part of the Never Die cult that claimed every body in the family was free to have sex with anyone…
Abandoned Wives: Men Reject Circumcised Women
A bitter and lonely woman, 42-year-old Kebbeh weeps as she relives the event that destroyed her life. “I was circumcised against my will,” says Kebbeh, sitting in front of her little hut in a remote area of Mount Barclay. “I used to live in Monrovia with my husband and two beautiful daughters. (But then) I…
“Pregnant Again” Children Raise Children, Innocents Suffer
An 18-year-old girl sits on a small bed at the Redemption Hospital in New Kru Town, looking down at her tiny son, Max, who is so skinny that his big eyes pop out of his face and he seems like an elderly man. “He just started getting dry, and dry. I do not know what…
ONE LIMB AT A TIME: Begging Only Way of Life for Liberia’s Disabled
Armah Konneh is a war affected victim with one limb; he is one of the many disables who have created jobs for themselves. Konneh directs drivers who search for parking spaces for their cars on Randall Street. Says Konneh: “I have to come and hustle for my daily bread because I have three children in…