Author: Evelyn Kpadeh Seagbeh

PARIS, France – The 4,400 miles between France and Liberia closed on Friday when present day news from Liberia made it into the appeal hearing here of convicted war criminal Kunti Kamara. Court President (chief judge) Jean Marc Lavergne used the testimony of Alain Werner, director of the Switzerland-based justice advocates Civitas Maxima, to ask about this week’s passage of a bill to establish a war and economics crimes court through the Liberian legislature.

The former head of the Environmental Protection Agency and other environmental specialists have lauded world leaders for their breakthrough decision to establish a fund for countries like Liberia that have been hit hard by climate change, but they warned that much work must be done to secure needed funds.

OMEGA COMMUNITY, Paynesville – Rebecca Clarke lifts her bare feet to show sores and rashes that cover them, causing her constant pain. The sores started as flooding picked up in her community here in the last two years. A local health provider told her she must let her feet dry but that’s become impossible, according to residents, as dirty water floods the community day after day.

With weeks to elections, all 20 presidential candidates have been talking about food. As global economic forces have driven food prices up a staggering four in every five Liberians are struggling just to feed themselves according to the World Bank. Voters have high expectations that the next president will deliver change.

MONROVIA – As Liberia commemorates 20 years since the end of the civil conflict that left devastated the country and left 250,000 people dead, a survey of first-time voters conducted in two of the country’s biggest counties found overwhelming support for a court. Nine out of 10 of the participants surveyed – all of whom had been born after the war ended in 2003 – said the establishment of a war and economic crimes court was “very important” to their future and the future of the nation.

Organized by Nicolais School of Business, Wagner College based in New York, Ibn Zohr University is hosting the fourth edition of the Current Business Issues in African Countries (CBIAC) this year. The start of Thursday’s conference brought together about 209 people from 10 countries, across Africa and the United States.

MONROVIA, Liberia—”X-9,” as the Finnish Appeals Court co-named him, sounded regretful, when he reflected on what he claimed was the ruining of his life by the Sierra Leonean man facing prosecution for mass murder, rape, torture, and other horrific crimes in Liberia during the country’s second civil war between 1997-2003.

MONROVIA – January’s news that authorities had seized a container of machine guns and other weapons at Monrovia’s port sent shock waves through the country. The first known illegal importation of guns since the end of the civil war in 2003 came as violent crime has ticked up, adding to a growing sense of insecurity for many Liberians as October’s presidential election approaches.

MONROVIA, Liberia—A witness, claiming to be a former Liberian army soldier, has accused the Sierra Leonean man facing charges for alleged gross human rights violations in Liberia of ordering massacre at Waterside in Monrovia.

MONROVIA, Liberia—As with the trial before a Finnish district court, acquittal hearings for Gibril Massaquoi, the Sierra Leonean accused of grave human rights violations in Liberia, bribery allegations begun to dog his acquittal hearings.