Advocacy for women and girls in Liberia expands into 2011

WNN MDG Stories

(WNN) In 2003, fourteen years of civil war left Liberia in shambles. 175,000 civilians had died. Nearly a third of the population, or one million citizens were displaced as 300,000 fled the country.

Women were involved on all sides of the war from combat to slavery to rape. Physical violence often accompanied the rape. One six-county survey determined that roughly 7% of women had been raped during the war. Female minors were the ones who were frequently targeted.

The last civil war ended seven years ago. Still, rape and domestic violence continue to plague Liberia. In the past years some conditions have improved, but Liberia’s problems are far from over. Liberia’s president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has announced that she is running for a second term in 2011 in hopes that she can continue and expand her original ideas and campaigns in improving conditions for her country. In a statement from the 2006 International Symposium on Sexual Violence in Conflict and Beyond Sirleaf spoke out as an advocate saying:

“In studies conducted in many of the counties of Liberia in 2004, a large percentage of women and girls reported that they were victims of various forms of violence and abuse. International organization reports show that a large percentage of these women were raped.”

Traditional culture stigmatizes rape, so victims often choose to stay silent, hiding what they see as a shameful and incriminating experience from their family and townspeople.

Until recently, Liberian government courts had no systems in place to assist rape survivors. Traditional culture around rape was one of shame for women and acceptance for men. But times are slowly changing.

A free and fair election propelled Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia’s first female head of state, into power. Raised in Liberia and Harvard-educated, she began her long involvement with the Liberian government as its Assistant Minister of Finance during the 1970s. Later she went on to become an officer of the World Bank and Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations.

President Sirleaf went into exile after a military coup destabilized the country in 1980, but returned to Liberia to run for Senate five years later. This was the first of several less-than-voluntary round trips to and from her home: when Sirleaf was running for Senate, she was briefly imprisoned for speaking out against Liberia’s leader of the time, Samuel Doe.

She described her capture and her own close encounter with rape at a joint meeting of Congress in the U.S. saying, “In 1985, after challenging the military regime’s failure to register my political party, I was put in jail with several university students who also challenged the military rule. This House came to our rescue with a resolution threatening to cut off aid to the country unless all political prisoners were released. Months later, I was put in jail again, this time in a cell with 15 men. All of them were executed a few hours later. Only the intervention of a single soldier spared me from rape.”

This awareness of Liberian women’s rights is something the Association of Female Liberian Lawyers fights for every day. AFELL, the Association of Female Lawyers in Liberia, is on a mission to educate and represent women nationwide. Recently in June 2010, AFELL launched a new campaign to fight domestic violence in Liberia.

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