Seven Years After War, is Liberia Ready for a War Crimes Trial?

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…

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…

Is Liberia Ready for War Crime Tribunal? Liberian people are divided

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…

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…

India’s Female Peacekeepers Inspire Liberian Girls

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…

Chronic Malnutrition Blamed on Mothers

Mercy Freeman sits on a small hospital cot in one of Liberia’s emergency hospitals, looking down at her frail son, whose dark eye sockets have sunk into his bony face. “He just started getting thin and thin[ner]. I do not know what is happening, that is why I brought him to the hospital,” the 18-year-old…

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…