Monrovia – In the wake of the increase in incidences of rape across the country and strong protest by human rights advocates and civil society organizations for capital punishment for rapists, Her Voice Liberia, a women and human rights organization is calling for the strengthening of the justice system with specific focus on dealing with sexual and gender based violence and rape issues in order to address the growing wave of rape rather than subjecting perpetrators to capital punishment.
Her Voice says in order to fight sexual and gender-based violence particularly rape, the system needs to be strengthened beginning with empowering of the Liberian National Police to speedily and properly investigate reports of rape cases, charge the alleged perpetrators and send them to Court.
Her Voice is demanding the assignment of more judges and prosecutors at Criminal Court E and the establishment such specialized court in all the counties to ensure that as many rape and sexually related cases as possible are heard and decided simultaneously.
Her Voice also wants the rape law amended to have strict lifetime imprisonment sentence for adult perpetrators who rape children that are less than eleven years old. Although rape in general is cruel, the impact of rape on minors is so grave, and the sentence for adults who rape minors should be hasher.
Her Voice says in addition to empowering the police and ensuring that Courts speedily handle rape and sexual related offenses, there should One Stop Center in all the counties for nurses and other medical personnel to examine and provide medical reports on rape cases as quickly as possible.
The Human rights organization says a well-structured, strong and strengthened system can more effectively fight rape and other sexual related offenses than a capital punishment.
According to the group, Capital punishment is prohibited by several international protocols and conventions to which Liberia is a signatory, and execution of death penalties could send bad signals of the country to the international community.
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