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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
MONROVIA, Liberia — With President Charles Taylor’s war crimes trial in The Hague nearing an end after three years, many Liberians hope he will be brought home — to a hero’s welcome. Take Fasu Donzo, a lanky motorbike taxi driver. Now 31, he fought as a child soldier in Taylor’s army and was known as…
For every three women who give birth at the James N. Davies Memorial Hospital in Monrovia, another woman is treated for complications after an unsafe abortion. Since January, the maternity hospital in Jacob Town has treated 281 women who have either tried to abort the baby themselves or paid someone else to do it. “They…
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…
Teachers and parents in Congo Town in Monrovia say since the arrival of the female Indian peacekeepers in Liberia, children’s views of women are gradually beginning to change. The female peacekeepers came to the country in 2007. Their job is to guard the Foreign Affairs Ministry and the President’s residence. But, the UN Gender Advisor…
At least four rape cases are reported at health clinics in Monrovia every day, according to rape counselors. This rape epidemic means many girls are suffering physical and emotional trauma that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. But, one local organization called Touching Humanity in Need of Kindness, or THINK, is giving…
It has been more than a year since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its final report. Among the recommendations was the setting up of a war crimes court. Thousands of people died in the country’s 14 year civil war while human rights abuses were committed across Liberia. But is our country really ready for…
Children as young as ten are selling sex for as little as 5 Liberian Dollars, the equivalent of 3 US cents. They are using their bodies to pay for food, clothes and school fees – according to the NGO, Women’s Aid Incorporated. It says poverty is driving children onto the streets. Prostitution is illegal in…
Children are being rented to beg for blind people on the streets of Monrovia. That’s according to the Montserrado Super Intendent. Grace Kpan says although some of the kids may be related to the blind person, she fears in some cases the children may be rented. She says she is concerned about the number of…
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 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…
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…
Click to hear the whole story. [audio:http://newnarratives.podbean.com/mf/web/atxwwr/TeceeTRCFinalpackageNov2010.mp3] A symposium on Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in New York this month has once again stirred debate about recommendations in the TRC’s final report. The government has failed to implement most of them, chief among them the establishment of a war crimes tribunal to try more than…
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 conference in New York earlier this month has renewed debate about one key recommendation of Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Delegates, including TRC Chairman Jerome J. Verdier, said the time has come to prosecute 182 Liberians accused in the report of war crimes. But Front Page Africa interviews with Liberians in Monrovia found ordinary…
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…
It is break time at the Victory Chapel School in Congo Town. Children dressed in their royal blue uniforms with bright yellow and white trim fight to get under the shade of the only mango tree in the yard. It is the start of the dry season and the scorching sun will soon be almost…
