Summary

• The long-delayed trial over Saudi-donated rice intended for vulnerable and disaster-affected Liberians but was allegedly diverted to line officials’ pockets has begun in Monrovia.
• Some flood victims in River Cess said they know little about the case and are receiving few updates as the trial moves forward.
• Victims said justice should mean more than prosecution. They want missing public assets recovered and affected communities to benefit.

By Joyclyn Wea, gender correspondent with New Narratives

INTERNATIONAL TIMBER INDUSTRY VILLAGE, River Cess County — When Eric Kollor learned that former government officials were finally on trial over thousands of bags of Saudi-donated rice meant for vulnerable and disaster-affected Liberians, he was surprised. The case had been moving through the courts in Monrovia, but Kollor, one of the flood victims the assistance was supposed to help, did not know the trial had begun.

Kollor still remembers the 2024 flood that swept through International Timber Industry Village, widely known as ITI Village, damaging homes, the bridge, the police station and leaving families struggling. Residents were told government relief, including food and blankets, was coming. Kollor said none of it reached him.

“I want justice to be served well,” Kollor said.

 Advocates said the trial is testing more than whether former officials illegally handled thousands of bags of Saudi-donated rice. It is also testing whether Liberia’s accountability system can deliver something meaningful for disaster victims who said promised assistance never reached them.

 Saudi Arabia donated 29,000 bags of 25-kilogram rice to Liberia in 2023 for vulnerable and disaster-affected people in Margibi and River Cess counties. Prosecutors allege that 25,054 bags of rice, worth about US$425,918, were stolen, misapplied, or improperly distributed. For families in flood-hit communities such as ITI Village and nearby Glanyah Town, the bigger question is whether prosecution and recovery of public assets will ever translate into help for the people the rice was intended to serve.

More than a year after senior former officials were arrested over the handling of that donation, their trial is now underway in Criminal Court “C” in Monrovia. The defendants have pleaded not guilty and are presumed innocent unless proven guilty. The trial began August 17 after months of delays.

In Glanyah Town, Veronica Wesseh had heard about the case. But for her, putting former officials on trial is not enough. She wants the missing assistance recovered and affected families to benefit.

“Let them bring our food. We are waiting for it,” Wesseh said.

For residents of ITI Village and Glanyah, the case has reopened painful memories of a disaster that destroyed homes and left many families waiting for assistance. A previous New Narratives investigation found that the 2024 floods swallowed 27 homes in the two communities and left at least one person dead. Six months later, residents said much of the government assistance they had been promised had still not arrived.

Across Liberia, floods affected about 100,000 people in 2024, according to Liberia’s disaster authorities. River Cess, Bong and Grand Cape Mount were among the hardest-hit counties. Wesseh remembers days of heavy rain before floodwater entered Glanyah.
She said soldiers later brought small quantities of rice, gari, salt and other supplies to the community. But she said many residents did not receive the larger assistance they had been told was coming.
The disaster reflects a growing national challenge.

The World Bank has warned that worsening climate impacts could shrink Liberia’s economy by 15 percent and push another 1.3 million people into poverty by 2050 if the country does not strengthen its ability to adapt. That makes the handling of disaster relief especially important for communities likely to face more flooding in the years ahead.

The Assets Recovery and Property Retrieval Taskforce, which investigated the Saudi rice case, said affected communities were involved in parts of the investigation.

Joseph F. Daniels, public relations officer of the Taskforce, said investigators visited communities in River Cess, Margibi, Bomi and Sinoe and spoke with residents and community leaders. He said some residents remain in contact with investigators and may testify for the state as the trial unfolds.

But Daniels acknowledged that this does not mean every affected resident is receiving individual updates about what is happening in court. Before the trial began, he said, the Taskforce issued public statements and appeared on radio programs, mostly in Monrovia, to explain developments in the case. It also relies on journalists to help keep the wider public informed.

A court gag order now limits what the Taskforce can publicly say while the case is underway, Daniels said. He said broader public updates are expected after the trial ends. For now, that communication has not reached everyone.

Anthony Ben Jones, a former stipendiary magistrate and elder with relatives in Glanyah, said some residents are only now beginning to understand the details of the case. In ITI Village, Kollor learned that the trial had begun only during his interview with New Narratives.

For victims, that information gap adds another layer to a case already centered on whether public assistance reached the people for whom it was intended. 

The Task Force said its goal goes beyond securing convictions. Daniels said its responsibility is to investigate the alleged misuse of public assets and recover anything that can be retrieved.

But recovery does not automatically mean flood victims such as Kollor and Wesseh would receive the recovered rice, money or other assets. Daniels said decisions about who receives disaster assistance would fall to the National Disaster Management Agency, the government institution responsible for identifying disaster victims and distributing relief.

That leaves an important unanswered question for residents. There is no guarantee that prosecutors will recover the missing rice or its value. Even if assets are recovered, there is no guarantee they will be returned directly to the communities and families who say they went without assistance.

For victims far from the Monrovia courtroom, justice may be measured differently: by whether accountability eventually delivers something tangible to the people who were supposed to benefit in the first place.

This story was produced by New Narratives as part of the Investigating Liberia project. The funder had no say in the story’s content.

Summary

• Charlyne Brumskine is one of five judges selected for the prestigious role serving on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Community Court of Justice, which hears cases against regional governments, from 2026 to 2030.
• The lawyer, who brings more than 23 years of legal experience to the court, is the first Liberian woman to serve in that role.
• Brumskine says she wants more West Africans to understand and have access to the Court, including through proceedings outside its headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria.

By Joyclyn Wea, gender correspondent with New Narratives

When Charlyne Brumskine learned she had been selected to the coveted post as a judge on the Ecowas Community Court of Justice, her thoughts turned to her late father.

Charles Walker Brumskine, the prominent lawyer and three-time presidential candidate who died in 2019, had hoped to serve as vice president of the Economic Community of West African States Commission himself, his daughter said.

“My father did not get it. You can imagine how proud I feel to have been able to achieve that,” Brumskine said.

Brumskine is one of five judges selected to serve on the regional court from 2026 to 2030, alongside judges from Nigeria, The Gambia, Togo and Benin. The Court’s bench rotates among Economic Community of West African States member states every four years.

Brumskine is not the first Liberian to serve on the Court. Liberian judges Micah Wilkins Wright and Yussif D. Kaba previously served on the bench. But she is the first Liberian woman.

“Is a privilege that I do not take lightly,” Brumskine said. “I am continuing the legacy of Liberian women who came before me, those who plaited the mat on which I sit. But I am also a forebearer of those who will come after me. I am simply keeping the seat warm for them and providing a blueprint of how Liberian women must represent our country with dignity, excellence, and purpose.”

Based in Abuja, Nigeria, the Community Court of Justice is the judicial arm of the Economic Community of West African States. It interprets regional laws and treaties, settles disputes involving member states and Economic Community of West African States institutions, and hears human rights cases.

Its human rights jurisdiction gives the Court particular importance to ordinary citizens. Individuals can bring qualifying human rights complaints directly before it without first exhausting all remedies in their national courts.

One recent example saw a group of survivors of the 1990 St. Peter’s Lutheran Church massacre, in which up to 600 people were killed by Armed Forces of Liberia soldiers, sue the Liberian government, accusing successive administrations of failing to investigate and prosecute those responsible. But in October 2024, the court threw out the case, ruling it lacked jurisdiction because the violations fell before the court’s human rights mandate existed.

Brumskine said about 90 percent of the Court’s cases concern human rights, covering issues ranging from human trafficking and unlawful detention to freedom of expression and due process.

Liberians have used the Court in other cases. Kabineh Ja’neh, the former Supreme Court associate justice, challenged his impeachment there in 2020. The Court ruled in his favor, finding the government had violated his right to a fair hearing and ordering the government to pay him compensation and restore certain rights. Liberia later sought a review, but the Court rejected the application and ordered compliance with its original judgment.

In another recent case, the Court in July 2025 dismissed an application involving Abrahim Sheriff, raised in Guinea but claimed to be of Liberian origin, who brought a case against Liberia and Guinea at the Court, alleging both governments unlawfully arrested and detained him on unfounded claims of armed insurrection and mercenary activity, subjecting him to torture and enforced disappearance and confiscating $180,000. 

Those cases, Brumskine said, demonstrate the breadth of issues that can reach the regional bench. But she said she hopes that Liberians will not have to go there.

“I hope that our government, our judicial system, affords our citizens the opportunity to fundamental rights so that no one appears before me or before any of the justices from Liberia,” she said.

Despite several landmark human rights rulings, the Court faces mounting criticism over poor compliance by member states, with enforcement of its binding judgments remaining one of its toughest challenges since it began operations in 2001. That weakness was on display in the Lutheran Church massacre case, where the court’s narrow reading of its jurisdiction let the Liberian government avoid accountability.

The Court’s independence is also being tested by politically sensitive cases, including a suit by Ghana’s suspended and later dismissed Chief Justice, Gertrude Torkornoo, who is seeking $10 million in damages over her removal. Most recently, the court has been drawn into regional migration politics, hearing a case accusing Ghana of unlawfully detaining and deporting refugees transferred from the US under a secret deportation agreement — the first case filed under the 1979 ECOWAS Free Movement Protocol.

Brumskine comes to the Court with more than 23 years of legal experience. She has also been active in politics and was Alexander Cummings’ running mate in the 2023 presidential election.

During the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf administration, Brumskine worked with the Ministry of Justice on Liberia’s anti-human trafficking framework and with the Ministry of Commerce as Liberia negotiated accession to the World Trade Organization. During the George Weah administration, her law firm served as external counsel to the Central Bank of Liberia.

She is founder of CMB Law Group and has taught at the Louis Arthur Grimes School of Law and the Liberian School of Law. She is licensed to practice law in Liberia, New York and Washington, D.C., and has worked across private practice, public policy and international negotiations.

That background differs from Economic Community of West African States judges who often reach the regional bench after careers in national judiciaries. But previous service as a judge was not required. Candidates could qualify with at least 20 years of relevant professional experience as a judge, lawyer or legal academic.

The selection process was competitive.

The Liberian government submitted three nominees after being allocated a seat on the rotating bench. The three were interviewed in Sierra Leone in April by the ECOWAS Community Judicial Council, made up of chief justices from across the region. Jutonu Kollie, Ministry of Justice communications officer, did not respond to questions about the identities of the other two finalists by deadline.

Brumskine recalled sitting before nine regional chief justices who were sitting as the Economic Community of West African States Community Judicial Council, the body responsible for screening and recommending candidates for the court judgeship as part of her interview panel, wearing headphones as interpreters translated among English, French, and Portuguese speakers. The questions ranged from Economic Community of West African States treaties and human rights protocols to regional affairs and legal philosophy.

The Judicial Council ranked the three candidates and sent its recommendations to the Economic Community of West African States Council of Ministers before the Authority of Heads of State and Government gave final approval.

Brumskine said one of her priorities will be helping ordinary West Africans better understand a Court many do not know exists. She wants the Court to become more visible outside Abuja, including by holding activities and proceedings in member states.

“Let the Court come to Monrovia,” she said. “Let people come and see and hear and feel what the Community Court of Justice is. Let’s take it to Accra. Let’s take it to all the different countries in the region.”

She said she believes that access matters particularly for women and other citizens seeking remedies for human rights violations, including human trafficking, which has been growing in Liberia and where the government has done little to protect victims. She stressed that the court is for all West African citizens, not just the elite, to hold governments to account.

“A woman in Buchanan can take her case to the Economic Community of West African States Court of Justice if she meets certain criteria,” Brumskine said.

Her appointment means yet another Liberian woman has attained a prestigious post outside the country while women in the country continued to struggle for representation in leadership. Women hold just 10 of 103 seats in the Legislature. Brumskine said progress has been slow, but she sees her own responsibility as extending beyond occupying a regional seat.

Bowoulo Taylor Kelley, vice president of the Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia, said Brumskine’s appointment demonstrates what Liberian women can achieve when given the opportunity. “These barriers do not reflect a lack of talent,” Kelley said. “Rather, they reflect systems that must be deliberately opened and made fairer.”

At her Monrovia law firm, she said she is mentoring three young women lawyers to take on greater responsibilities eventually. “It’s my role to train. It’s my role to mentor so that when Charlyne Brumskine goes out, they are stepping up to take my place locally,” she said.

For Brumskine, however, the immediate task is the Court and the four years ahead.

“To be a judge, it is the pinnacle, it is the height, it’s the peak of our professional career,” she said. “And not just a judge in Liberia. To be a regional judge.”

Brumskine’s term begins in Mid-October 2026.

This story was produced in collaboration with New Narratives as part of the Investigating Liberia project. Funding was provided by a private donor and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The donors had no say in the story’s content.

Summary:

• Advocates said Davidetta Browne Lansanah, who stepped down after 12 successful years leading the National Elections Commission in March, showed the positive impact of women’s leadership in Liberia.
• Lansanah joins other examples of women leading with results, from former president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to women peacebuilders and those now serving in government.
• The question now, said advocates, is whether Liberians will turn those examples into a political opportunity for more women. Advocates said a bill before the Legislature that would require parties to put women up for 30 percent of seats is the test.
  When Davidetta Browne Lansanah stood down from her role at the helm of the National Elections Commission in March, after 12 years on the job, she carried with her a record that women’s rights advocates said should settle once and for all an old argument in Liberia: women can lead.

By Joyclyn Wea, gender correspondent with New Narratives

At the Commission, Lansanah worked through 2 presidential elections, disputed results, political pressure, and one of the closest presidential races in Liberia’s recent history when President Joseph Boakai defeated former President George Weah by fewer than 21,000 votes. Advocates said the fact that the country accepted the result and moved on peacefully was a testament to the people’s trust in Lansanah’s leadership.

In an interview with FrontPage Africa/New Narratives, Lansanah said that she should never have been in doubt.
“Females have quality,” Lansanah said. “Females can run any institution. I am a living demonstration of that.”
Lansanah submitted her resignation to President Boakai, choosing to leave one year early to rest because she had worked for 12 years without leave. She was replaced by Jonathan K. Weedor, who served over 16 years as a commissioner and acting co-chairman.
Lansanah was appointed to the Commission during the administration of former President Sirleaf and stayed on under former President Weah and President Boakai. She helped guide the Commission through difficult elections and public pressure. She said she did the work with discipline and commitment.

Advocates said Lansanah’s 12 years at the Commission left a strong legacy. They point to the 2023 election as a serious test not just for the Commission but of Lansanah’s leadership. Political tensions were high. But the process ended without the kind of crisis many Liberians feared.

“She has a record that will live on,” said Malcolm Joseph, chairman of the Elections Coordinating Committee, Liberia’s largest domestic election observer group. “In other countries, that kind of close election could have been resisted and led to something else.”
Lansanah said she is proud of the role she played. But she said her biggest achievement was not only the elections she helped manage. It was also the people she helped build inside the Commission.
She said the technical staff at the Commission is capable, hardworking, and ready to do more with the support they need.
“If you ignore them, you will fail,” she said.

On women’s leadership, Lansanah said the issue is simple: Liberia cannot continue to say women are capable while leaving the political system almost entirely in the hands of men. Her own career, she said, should help answer the question of whether women can handle serious public responsibility.

Her departure comes at a time when Liberia is again debating how much space should be reserved for women in politics. The most recent elections delivered a Legislature where less than 11 percent were women. Electors had few women to vote for because they were nominated for few of the seats.

The House of Representatives has passed an electoral reform bill with one provision that would require political parties to include at least 30 percent women on their candidate lists for legislative elections. It’s modeled on laws in other countries in Africa that have seen significantly higher representation by women. Most countries with fast-growing economies have high representation of women in the legislatures.

But the bill is not yet law. It has been in the Senate since May. It was not passed before the Legislative break as legislators continue to debate elements of the bill.

For many women’s rights advocates, the debate is not only about fairness. It is also about results.

Liberia has already seen women lead at the highest level. Former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became the first woman elected president in Africa. Women also played a major role in pushing for peace during Liberia’s civil war. To date, President Boakai has appointed 8 women to his 20-member cabinet. At a women’s town hall meeting in July 2024, he praised women’s leadership, saying the women he had appointed were “capable and they are performing.” He added, “This is why we need more and more women.”

Experts said Sirleaf’s presidency also gave an example of what women’s leadership could deliver after war. Though critics cite her reluctance to prosecute corrupt officials and failure to implement Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommendations, her administration secured major debt relief, rebuilt relations with international partners, restored some basic services, and kept the country on a path of peace after years of conflict. In 2011, the international community celebrated her achievements when she shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee and Yemen’s Tawakkol Karman for their work for women’s rights and women’s role in peacebuilding.

But advocates said appointments are not enough.

Cabinet ministers serve at the will of the president. Lawmakers, on the other hand, are elected by the people. They write laws, approve budgets, and represent communities. That is where women remain badly underrepresented.

In the 73-member House of Representatives, only eight lawmakers are women. In the Senate, women hold only three of the 30 seats. That means men still control most of the decisions by the Legislature.

The numbers from the last election show how hard it is for women to even get on the ballot.

In 2023, only 152 of 1,030 candidates for the House of Representatives were women, according to the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa. Only seven women ran for the Senate out of 100 candidates. Only two political parties met the 30 percent target for women candidates.

That is why Lansanah said she spent years calling for a stronger law.

Liberia’s election law already tells political parties to “endeavor to ensure” that at least 30 percent of their candidates are women. But there is no punishment for parties that fail to do so. Women’s groups said that language has allowed parties to promise support for women while still leaving them off their tickets.

The new bill passed by the House is meant to change that. It said political parties should submit candidate lists with at least 30 percent women. Supporters said it could help increase the number of women in the Legislature and give voters more choices.

But the bill has also caused concern.

Women’s groups said the current version still leaves an escape route for political parties. Under the bill, the Electoral Commission may accept a party’s list if the party shows “good cause” that, despite its “best efforts,” it could not meet the 30 percent requirement.

To many advocates, that sounds too much like the old law. They want the Senate to remove the “good cause” and “best efforts” language and require parties that fall short to correct their lists or face consequences.

“That’s not enforceable,” said Representative Ellen Attoh-Wreh, chair of the Women’s Legislative Caucus of Liberia. “If parties can simply convince the Commission they tried, then the quota becomes optional.”

Lansanah said she plans to rest, finish law school, and find another way to serve Liberia. But she said she is not leaving the fight for women’s leadership.

Her message to the country is the same one she carried out of the Commission: Liberia has already seen what women can do when they are trusted with power.

Now, she said, it is time to make room for more of them.

This story was produced in collaboration with New Narratives as part of the Investigating Liberia project. Funding was provided by a private donor and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The donors had no say in the story’s content.

Summary

• A nationwide consultation found that women across Liberia share the same concerns: affordable healthcare, better roads, support for farming, and access to finance.
• Women said leaders have known about these problems for years, but their priorities remain largely absent from policies and legislative action.
• Organizers said they will now push lawmakers and government agencies to act on recommendations developed from the consultation.

By Joyclyn Wea, gender correspondent with New Narratives

Liberian women said they are tired of explaining their problems. After years of consultations, meetings, and promises, many of the 160 respondents to a new nationwide consultation across Liberia’s 15 counties said the country’s leaders already know what they need: affordable healthcare, better roads, support for farming, and access to finance.

“We have had so many dialogues,” agriculture entrepreneur Nyamah Dunbar told lawmakers, government officials, and development partners gathered in Monrovia last month for the launch of the consultation findings. Echoing her sisters in the survey, she declared: “I am ready for action.”

Attendees at the dialogue organized by women’s rights organization Sisters’ Aid Liberia said the findings revealed a troubling gap between what women said they need and what political leaders focus on.

The “consultation revealed a glaring disconnect between political messaging and the everyday realities of our women,” Amelia Sieh, a program officer with Sisters’ Aid Liberia, told the meeting.

The finding is significant because women make up more than half of Liberia’s electorate and play a major role in the country’s economy. According to the World Bank, women account for about 80 percent of Liberia’s agricultural labor force and produce most of Liberia’s food crops.

Yet participants said their priorities remain insufficiently reflected in party platforms, policy commitments, and legislative actions.

Women said they continue to walk long distances to reach health facilities. Some communities lack essential medicines and trained healthcare workers. Others struggle with poor roads that make it difficult to reach clinics, schools, and markets. For many women, these challenges are connected.

A woman who cannot access healthcare may be unable to work. A farmer who cannot move crops to market loses income. A trader who cannot access financing may never expand her business.

The result, participants said, is a cycle that keeps many women trapped in poverty.

Health advocates warned that the consequences can be deadly.

Naomi Tulay Solanke, executive director of Community Healthcare Initiative, which provides sexual and reproductive health services and health education to women and girls, said many women lack access to basic health information, qualified healthcare providers, and quality services.

Lack of access to emergency care during childbirth was killing three women a day. World Bank data estimates that 628 women die for every 100,000 live births in Liberia, one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.

“No woman should die while giving birth,” Solanki told the gathering.

Women farmers described a similar pattern of neglect.

Dunbar said women have long been the backbone of Liberia’s agricultural sector, but continue to face barriers in accessing financing, equipment, and business opportunities. She argued that many institutions still view farmers as poor and dependent rather than as entrepreneurs capable of growing successful businesses.

Cross-border traders reported difficulties obtaining loans and dealing with high interest rates, saying these barriers limit the growth of women-owned businesses.

Government officials attending the dialogue acknowledged many of the concerns.

Agriculture Minister Alexander Nuetah said the government is working to improve feeder roads and expand support to farmers. Other officials highlighted efforts aimed at improving services for women.

But for many of the women at the event, the question was not whether leaders understand the problems.

It was whether they would finally act on them. That is what organizers said they hope to achieve next.

Amelia Sieh said Sisters’ Aid Liberia plans to engage legislative committees responsible for health, agriculture, public works, gender, and trade to push for action on recommendations developed during the dialogue.

Advocates said that for women like Dunbar, success will not be measured by another consultation or conference.

It will be measured by whether the priorities women have raised across Liberia’s 15 counties finally begin to appear in the policies, budgets, and laws that shape their lives.

This story was produced in collaboration with New Narratives as part of the Investigating Liberia project. Funding was provided by a private donor and the Swedish International Development Agency Development Cooperation Agency. The donors had no say in the story’s content.

Summary:

• Five years after Liberian organizations united to push for sexual and reproductive health rights, advocates say they have changed public debate, trained thousands of young people and won support from some religious leaders.
• But the coalition’s biggest goal remains unfinished. The Public Health Bill, including controversial abortion provisions, has been stalled in the Senate since 2022.
• With donor funding ending, advocates say sustaining the movement now depends on Liberian institutions carrying the work forward.

By Joyclyn Wea, gender correspondent with New Narratives

Five years ago, organizations working on sexual and reproductive health across Liberia reached the same conclusion: acting alone was not enough. With funding from the Swedish government, they formed the Amplifying Rights Network, a coalition that has since trained community leaders, mobilized thousands of citizens, and helped move women’s reproductive health into national debate.

Partners in the coalition are celebrating those gains this week as the project comes to a close. But as cuts to reproductive health and education funding by major donors cast a cloud over the celebrations, activists admit some of the project’s biggest goals remain out of reach. The coalition has yet to secure long-term local ownership of the movement or win passage of the reforms it has spent years advocating for. Its defining goal, passage of the Public Health Bill that would expand access to legal abortion under limited circumstances, remains stalled in the Senate, leaving many women facing the same risks the coalition was created to address.

“When you serve the Liberian people in the government, let your community also feel the impact of the work you do,” said Kutaka Devine Togbah, director of the Human Rights Protection Division at the Ministry of Justice.

The project started as Liberia continued to face some of the region’s most difficult reproductive health and rights challenges. Out of every 100,000 births, 628 mothers die, or 2 to 3 every day – one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world. Nearly one-third of women who want contraception still cannot get it, while adolescent pregnancy remains among the highest in West Africa.

A Ministry of Health and Clinton Health Access Initiative study found that more than 14,500 women sought treatment for abortion-related complications in 2021 alone, and roughly one in ten died or nearly died. These realities helped convince civil society organizations that coordinated advocacy was urgently needed.

Five years later, advocates argue the coalition has changed more than public awareness.Dwede Tarpeh, national program officer for democracy and human rights at the Embassy of Sweden, said the coalition’s impact should be measured by the people it empowered, not the projects it completed.

“There are thousands, literally thousands of young people who have more knowledge and agency than they did three years ago, and that is because of you,” Tarpeh said. 

H. is one example of the impact. She was 17 when she became pregnant. She had no idea how pregnancy happened. In her community, discussions about sex were considered taboo.

Too afraid to tell her mother, she confided in a friend instead. Together, they visited an older woman in their community, who told them to grind a glass bottle into powder and drink it to end the pregnancy.

“I nearly died,” she recalled in a recent interview. (New Narratives is withholding her name because of stigma.) Drinking ground glass is one of several extremely dangerous methods of abortion that are widely practiced in the country, and a contributor to thousands of women seeking emergency medical treatment as a result. “For more than one week, I suffered terrible pain.”

H. survived after being taken to a hospital. Today she studies social work at Bong University and is looking forward to pursuing a career and having children when she is ready.

Ida Nowai Kaiser, executive director of the Rural Women’s Rights and Care Foundation, said that teaching rural girls about sexuality education and access, the biggest change over the past five years has been learning that difficult conversations become easier when organizations stand together.

She said she remembers planning a “Safe Abortion Day” awareness program in Bong County, rural Liberia, when local health officials allegedly urged her organization to cancel the event.

“If it were only our organization, we would have stopped,” Kaiser said.

Instead, nine other coalition members stood beside them and pushed through with the event, demonstrating what Kaiser terms as power in coming together.

The Network organized Liberia’s first national conference focused entirely on sexual and reproductive health rights, bringing together about 1,700 participants across two conferences. It engaged more than 100 religious and traditional leaders, mobilized roughly 3,700 people nationwide to advocate for the Public Health Bill, introduced Braille materials and sign-language interpretation at its 2025 conference, and helped develop guidance for journalists covering reproductive health issues.

Those efforts, supporters said, helped shift conversations that were once considered politically untouchable.

The Network’s supporters said its biggest achievement was helping ordinary Liberians, especially young people, gain the confidence and knowledge to make informed decisions about their health and rights.

Yet the coalition’s defining campaign goal remains unresolved.

The coalition has spent years supporting the passage of the revised Public Health Bill, legislation that would modernize Liberia’s public health law and expand access to reproductive health services. One provision extending legal abortion has become the bill’s biggest obstacle.

The House of Representatives approved the legislation in 2022, but it has failed to win passage in the Senate ever since.

Last month saw the biggest sign that the coalition may have contributed to a national change on reproductive health when the Inter-Religious Council publicly urged lawmakers to pass the Public Health Bill, marking a significant change after years of organized religious opposition.

Dabah M. Varpilah, chairperson of the Liberian Senate Committee on Health, did not respond to a request for comment on whether she now has a two-thirds majority needed to pass the bill. But some advocates said it may well be enough legislators to back the bill. Advocates said that the move reflects changing attitudes.

The coalition now faces another challenge.

With the Swedish government withdrawing its embassy from Liberia, members are now looking to government institutions, the United Nations, and other international donors to sustain the work.

Togbah said the need remains urgent.

The day before Rights Networks’ anniversary celebration, he said, he saw two pregnant teenage girls in his own neighborhood.

“Were these pregnancies by choice or by error?” Togbah wondered.

This story was produced in collaboration with New Narratives as part of the Investigating Liberia project. Funding was provided by a private donor and the Swedish International Development Agency Development Cooperation Agency. The donors had no say in the story’s content.

Summary:

• In April, Ghana became the third African nation to reject a U.S. Trump administration health deal.
• Across Africa, similar deals are facing scrutiny over complaints about data sovereignty, specimen sharing, co-financing, weak consultation, and who benefits from innovations developed from African data or biological samples.
• Liberia signed a five-year, US$124 million health MOU in 2025. At a recent civil society panel, Liberian advocates said the urgent questions are who controls citizens’ health information, how long it can be shared, and whether Liberia has the laws to protect it.

By Joyclyn Wea, gender correspondent with New Narratives

Ghana has become the third African country to reject a proposed U.S. health agreement, with government officials saying the deal would have given U.S. entities broad access to sensitive national health data, including metadata and analytical tools, without sufficient safeguards or prior approval.

The deal included provisions that would have allowed U.S. entities access to Ghana’s sensitive health data without necessary safeguards, Arnold Kavaarpuo, executive director of Ghana’s Data Protection Commission, told the Associated Press. The government said the move was also designed to build the Ghanaian government’s ownership of the health sector and reduce reliance on donors.

Ghana’s move followed Zimbabwe and Zambia, which have also rejected the deal. Zimbabwe objected to U.S. requests for long-term access to sensitive health data, virus samples, and epidemiological information. In Zambia, the proposed compact has faced delays and public pushback over data, specimen sharing, and reports that health assistance was linked to cooperation in the copper and cobalt sectors. In Kenya, the High Court suspended the agreement after a consumer rights lobby cited health-data safety concerns, and the deal has since drawn public protests over a planned US Ebola facility.

Under the Trump administration’s America First Global Health Strategy, the US has struck such health deals with more than 30 countries, most of them in Africa. The new model, which began in late 2025, replaces the agreements previously run through the now-dismantled US Agency for International Development (USAID). The deals offer billions of dollars to some of the African countries hit hardest by Washington’s aid cuts, supposedly to shore up public health systems and fight disease outbreaks.

In December, Liberia signed a five-year health cooperation Memorandum of Understanding with the Trump administration, promising up to US$125 million in U.S. assistance, while Liberia is expected to increase domestic health spending by nearly US$51 million.

The deal will replace the old USAID-managed programs with direct government-to-government compacts. The MOU covers HIV/AIDS, malaria, maternal and child health, and global health security.

The U.S. government says the model promotes national ownership and reduces aid dependency by asking partner countries to finance more of their health systems.

But critics say it moves risk onto poorer countries faster than budgets can absorb. Experts say Liberia will face a 63 percent reduction in annual U.S. health support compared with 2024 levels. Two former USAID officials with experience in West Africa, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by the Trump administration, told FrontPage Africa/New Narratives that government-to-government funding in West Africa has never worked.

The previous U.S. government-to-government health program in Liberia — which ran from around 2011 and covered eight counties — operated under a reimbursement model. The Liberian government could only receive funds after proving it had met specific health targets, verified by an independent third party at a cost of roughly one to two million dollars per year.

A 2024 State Department review found that Liberia failed to meet eligibility criteria related to addressing corruption, which placed the entire program under review before USAID was shut down.

The new Health Compact does not include a comparable verification mechanism. One former USAID official said she has been unable to get a clear answer on how funds will be tracked. “I don’t think they care about the oversight,” she said. “I think they’re just going to give them the money and ask for some good results they can share.”The full MOU and annexes, including any provisions on data access, sharing of biological material, or implementation benchmarks, have not been released. That makes it difficult for civil society and affected communities to assess what Liberia agreed to and what safeguards exist.

But from what has been leaked, advocates in Liberia have flagged a range of issues.

The first is data. At a recent civil society panel, Owens Lavall, CEO of Easy Tech Solutions, a Liberian technological company, said health information is “very, very sensitive” because it can reveal HIV status, pregnancy, contraception, reproductive health, outbreaks, and other conditions that can expose people to stigma or discrimination if misused. “We do not just want anybody to have access to our data.”

He also questioned why any data-sharing arrangement linked to a five-year compact should last much longer than the agreement itself. “Why will a five-year agreement say we will share our data for over 20 years – up to 25 years? Is this in the interest of Liberia?”

Africa Center for Disease Control officials have warned that African countries must retain ownership and control over data that could help produce vaccines, diagnostics, or treatments, and that they should have priority for any treatments developed with the materials.

“Data is money,” said Dwede Tarpeh, gender and human rights program coordinator at the Swedish Embassy in Liberia. She warned that African populations could help develop products that Liberians may later be unable to afford.

The second concern is funding. The America First model requires countries to increase domestic health financing while U.S. support declines. Liberia has no financing obligation in the first year but could shoulder about 90 percent by year five. The concern is that the pace of transition is too fast. Panelists asked whether costs would shift to patients, depending on public clinics.

The Ministry has not explained how Liberia plans to meet those rising co-financing obligations, or whether maternal health, HIV, malaria, and community health programs could face gaps during the transition.

The third concern is process. “Civil society was not consulted,” said Joyce Laykah Kilikpo, of the nonprofit Public Health Initiative of Liberia.

The Ministry of Health has issued a Request for Expressions of Interest from organizations seeking to implement parts of the compact, but advocates say it does not answer who will deliver which services, under what conditions, at what cost, and with what safeguards.

They said that without the full agreement and annexes, the public cannot know whether the compact protects personal data, limits access to biological samples, guarantees benefit sharing, or allows renegotiation if implementation creates problems. The Ministry has not publicly explained whether Liberia’s agreement contains data-sharing provisions like those Ghana rejected, whether the U.S. requested access to pathogen samples or disease surveillance systems, or whether implementation disagreements have emerged.

It has also not explained how Liberia plans to meet rising co-financing obligations if U.S. assistance declines, or whether maternal health, HIV, malaria, and community health programs could face gaps during the transition.

The Liberian organizations that spoke with New Narratives stopped short of calling for cancellation. But they said Ghana’s decision should force Liberia to slow down, publish the details, and answer basic questions before implementation becomes irreversible. Dolo said Liberia should not proceed without safeguards: public release of the full MOU and annexes; legislative and legal review; passage of a Personal Data Protection Act; clear limits on data access; and sovereignty clauses keeping Liberian health data under Liberian law.

“Liberia should learn from Ghana, Kenya, and other countries that have pushed back on similar agreements,” said Lela Dolo, head of Help a Mother and Newborn Initiative, a Liberian nonprofit.

New Narratives sent written questions to the Ministry of Health in May about implementation disagreements, health data safeguards, and whether Ghana’s rejection should prompt a review. The Ministry did not respond by publication time.

Kilikpo said it was “not too late” to bring civil society into implementation, though the window was narrowing.

This story was produced in collaboration with New Narratives as part of the Investigating Liberia project. Funding was provided by a private donor and the Swedish International Development Agency Development Cooperation Agency. The donors had no say in the story’s content.

Summary:

• Liberia’s Inter-Religious Council, the umbrella body representing the country’s major Christian and Muslim institutions, is urging lawmakers to pass a stalled health bill that would expand access to abortion in certain cases, breaking with years of opposition to the measure by religious leaders.
• Supporters say the bill is needed to reduce deaths and injuries from unsafe abortions and make it easier for doctors to save women facing life-threatening pregnancy complications.
• The Catholic Bishops’ Conference, the official body representing Catholic bishops nationwide, has rejected the Council’s position, setting up a renewed battle in the Senate over one of Liberia’s most controversial health laws.

By Joyclyn Wea, gender correspondent with New Narratives

In a major boost to efforts to pass a health bill that would expand access to abortion in Liberia, the Inter-Religious Council, the umbrella body representing the country’s major Christian and Muslim institutions, has called on lawmakers to pass the legislation, breaking with years of religious opposition that has helped stall the bill in the Senate.

“The health, safety, and dignity of individuals within families constitute a core component of family strengthening,” the Council said in a statement released last week.

The Council’s intervention is significant because religious opposition has been one of the strongest barriers to passage of the Public Health Bill, a sweeping reform measure intended to modernize Liberia’s decades-old public health system. While the bill contains provisions on disease surveillance, emergency preparedness, vaccinations, environmental health, and occupational safety, public debate has focused on provisions that would expand access to abortion under defined circumstances.

Supporters of the bill were surprised and grateful for the Council’s change of heart.

“That’s what I wanted,” said Joseph Somwarbi, a pharmacist and former legislator who said he lost his seat because he supported the bill. “And if people have understood that and find it necessary that our women and girl children should live, then there’s no better time than now.”  

They said Council support could be what is needed to get it passed.

“Every time we delay this bill, women remain at risk, especially women in rural Liberia,” said Amelia Siaffa, acting executive director of Sister Aid Liberia, a women’s rights organization that advocates for sexual and reproductive health and gender equality.

The bill has been stalled in the Senate since 2022 without enough votes to pass it, despite repeated efforts by health advocates who argued it would reduce the country’s exceptionally high maternal and infant deaths and injuries linked to life-threatening pregnancy complications and unsafe abortions.

But the Council’s position immediately drew opposition from one of Liberia’s most influential religious groups.

In a statement, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Liberia, the official body representing Catholic bishops nationwide, said it was “not in agreement” with the Council’s endorsement of the bill and reaffirmed its opposition to abortion provisions contained in the legislation.

Citing what they said were Biblical teachings and Catholic doctrine that human life begins at conception, the Conference said they “unequivocally reject the concept of justified abortion” contained in the proposed law.

The Bishop’s statement was signed by Archbishop Gabriel Blamo Jubwe of Monrovia, Bishop Anthony Borwah of Gbarnga, and Bishop Andrew Jagaye Karnley of Cape Palmas.

The dispute emerged after the Inter-Religious Council publicly distanced itself from the “Strengthening Families Conference,” an annual regional gathering led by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a 19th-century American church whose beliefs diverge from mainstream Christian denominations on key doctrines and opposes elected abortion. The Church, whose followers are widely known as “Mormons”, has been growing rapidly in Liberia in recent years thanks to aggressive recruitment activities.

The Council said it had not been consulted about the conference and criticized what it described as approaches that fail to adequately address challenges affecting Liberian families, including maternal mortality, teenage pregnancy, gender-based violence, poverty, and limited access to healthcare and education.

Conference organizers, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, did not respond to emails and follow-ups until the deadline.Supporters of the Public Health Bill said the Council’s intervention represents a potentially important political breakthrough. Religious opposition played a major role in slowing the bill’s progress before the 2023 elections, when some lawmakers worried that support for the legislation could hurt their reelection prospects.

Under Liberia’s current law, abortion is permitted only in limited circumstances, including rape, incest, serious fetal abnormalities, or when a pregnancy threatens a woman’s health. Even then, obtaining approval can be difficult because the law requires authorization from two doctors – a significant obstacle in many rural areas where doctors are scarce. Advocates say many of Liberia’s poor young women do not know they are even pregnant until far into the pregnancy, and they would not have the money or knowledge needed to approach doctors for an abortion.

The proposed legislation would allow abortion up to 14 weeks of pregnancy if performed by a doctor.

Supporters argue that the amendment is not intended to create abortion on demand but to reduce deaths and injuries caused by unsafe abortions and allow doctors to respond more quickly when pregnancies that have gone wrong threaten a woman’s life.

Liberia faces a serious maternal health crisis. World Bank data shows 628 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, one of the highest rates in the world. A 2021 study by Liberia’s Ministry of Health and the Clinton Health Access Initiative found that more than 14,500 women sought treatment for abortion-related complications in a single year. One in 10 suffer die of severe injuries.

For D., a young Liberian woman who still lives with chronic pain after seeking help from an untrained provider as a teenager, those statistics are deeply personal.

She was 15, pregnant, and terrified her parents would find out.

“The man put me on a long bed,” she recalled in an interview earlier this year. (FrontPage Africa/New Narratives is using only her initial to protect her from stigma.) “Then he had plenty of iron in a pan. Then he used that. He put it inside me.”

Doctors later told her the procedure had damaged her body. Today, she fears she may never have children.

Advocates say stories like hers explain why reform has become such an urgent issue.Somwarbi also argued that the current law places women facing life-threatening pregnancies at unnecessary risk.

Somwarbi said the amendment would allow doctors to act more quickly in emergencies, rather than forcing patients to navigate approval processes that can delay care. He argued that requirements for multiple doctor approvals are often impossible to meet in rural Liberia and contribute to unsafe abortions.

He said this issue is so important that he was willing to lose his seat to defend the bill.

“People were afraid simply because they felt that it was going to hinder their election, for which I am a victim,” said Somwarbi. “For me, I felt that the life of another person is more important than elections.”

This story was produced in collaboration with New Narratives as part of the Investigating Liberia project. Funding was provided by a private donor and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The donors had no say in the story’s content.

Summary:

• In River Cess and other rural areas, some girls use baby diapers, cloth, tissue, or other unsafe materials during their periods. Some stay home because they fear leaking, smelling, or being laughed at in school.
• Sanitary pads carry a 30 percent tax: 20 percent import duty and 10 percent Goods and Services Tax. Rep. Thomas Goshua has introduced a bill to remove those taxes and treat pads as essential health products, but the bill is still in committee.
• Groups like ActionAid Liberia want lawmakers to pass the bill, but they also say girls need free or low-cost pads in schools, clean toilets, water, soap, and menstrual health education. Ghana has already gone further by funding free pads for schoolgirls.

CESTOS CITY, River Cess County — W. knows what to do when her period comes, and there is no money for pads. She buys baby diapers. We are calling all the girls in the story by their initials to prevent them from further stigma and shame.

By Joyclyn Wea, gender correspondent with New Narratives

A pack of four costs L$100, about 50 U.S. cents. She cuts each diaper in two and uses the halves as sanitary pads. If she does not have money for that, she uses clothes.

“The diapers are not like pads,” W said. “Sometimes they leak. Cloth can smell. But I don’t have a choice.”

Her choice is at the center of a policy fight now before Liberia’s Legislature. A bill introduced by Grand Bassa County Representative Thomas A. Goshua seeks to reduce the cost of menstrual products by removing taxes. Advocates say girls are missing school while lawmakers sit on the bill. ActionAid Liberia, the local chapter of the global women’s rights organization, said more than three in five girls in rural and semi-urban communities lack basic menstrual hygiene materials. A study supported by the United Nations Population Fund in Lofa County found that nearly half of adolescent girls missed school during their periods, losing an average of 2.5 school days each month.

Even girls who find pads may have nowhere safe to change them. A 2025 education-sector analysis found that about 1,790 Liberian schools have no toilets, affecting more than 356,000 students, about half of them girls. For a menstruating girl, the school day can become a calculation of risk: Will there be water? Will the boys see? Will the pad leak before she gets home?

The sanitation gap goes beyond toilets. A UNICEF 2025 Liberia country document also said only 27 percent of schools have basic sanitation services, and about 69 percent have basic handwashing facilities, leaving many girls without the privacy, water, and soap they need to manage their periods safely at school.

Those lost days become weeks of lost learning each year. Advocates said repeated absence can push girls toward dropping out, early pregnancy, child marriage, and deeper poverty.

Liberia currently taxes sanitary pads as ordinary goods, adding a 20 percent import duty and 10 percent Goods and Services Tax, a combined 30 percent that advocates said keeps pads out of reach for poor women and girls. The bill would reclassify menstrual hygiene products as essential health commodities.

Goshua has said he introduced the bill to reduce the financial burden on women and girls and to treat menstrual hygiene products as essential goods, not taxable commodities. Public reporting says the bill was submitted in the House on March 20 and sent to the committees on Health, Commerce, and Gender for review. Nearly three months later, advocates said it has not returned to plenary for debate or a vote.

That committee delay is what advocates said is the hold-up. The bill would remove the 20 percent import duty and 10 percent Goods and Services Tax on sanitary products and reclassify them as essential health items. Supporters say the measure would lower the price of pads and help girls stay in school. But until the committees act, the proposal remains only a bill.

Other countries in Africa have gone further. Ghana has funded a free-pad program for schoolgirls. In Liberia, advocates say a tax exemption is a good start, but not enough.

“Tax relief is necessary,” ActionAid Liberia said. “It is not sufficient.”

No money, no pad

At Cestos High School, W, 20, is in the ninth grade, older than many of her classmates but still determined to finish. Each month, her period threatens that goal. When she cannot afford sanitary pads, she buys baby diapers and cuts them in half. If even that is out of reach, she turns to an even more unhygienic measure.

“Sometimes I used clothes,” W said.

The alternatives are uncomfortable and unreliable. Diapers are not made for menstruation, and cloth can leak or smell. For W, the fear is not only physical discomfort but the possibility of staining her uniform, being noticed by classmates, or missing school altogether.

She is not alone. M, another Cestos High student, said girls around her make the same calculations every month. Some ask relatives or boyfriends for money. Others sell small items — biscuits, scratch cards, or whatever they can — to buy pads. When that fails, they cut diapers or stay home.

Girls said they use cloth, tissue, socks, or cut diapers when money runs short. ActionAid Liberia has warned that unsafe materials can expose girls to infections, reproductive health complications, and emotional stress.

The shame can be just as damaging. Girls said a bloodstain on a uniform can bring jokes and insults from boys. Grace Togar, a teacher at Cestos High School, told UNFPA in earlier reporting that girls often left school when their periods started because they had no pads.

“Back then, you did not want your period to start on campus because you did not have pads,” Togar said. “Most girls were absent during their period.”

Small fixes, bigger gaps

Disposable pads are made of plastic and can harm the environment when they are burned or discarded. They are not made locally and must be imported. Advocates said reusable pads are one small answer to a much larger gap.

Marcia Johnson, a youth leader with Girls Get Equal, has trained girls in Todee, a semi-rural district in Montserrado County, to sew reusable cloth pads. With support from Plan International Liberia, she said that about $US5 in materials can produce up to 10 washable pads that last two to three months. Her team has also trained women in Monrovia Central Prison, where she said the need is urgent.

“Women in the prison compounds, they will not fund your pad every month,” Johnson said. “You will see women bleeding, using cloth, and things that are not safe.”

The project gives women and girls another option, but advocates said reusable pads cannot replace government action on taxes, school distribution, water, toilets, and menstrual health education.

The Ministry of Education has acknowledged that hygiene affects learning. In January 2026, the government announced a school health and hygiene initiative for 10,000 vulnerable students, including menstrual hygiene support for girls. UNFPA, UNICEF, and the government have also supported school pad banks under the Nurture, Empower, and Protect Program.

Advocates welcome those efforts but said they are too small for the scale of the problem. They want lawmakers to pass Goshua’s bill, include pads in public health and school-supply distribution, and invest in WASH facilities — water, sanitation, and hygiene — so girls can manage their periods safely at school.

The Ghana example

Ghana shows what political will can do, advocates said. In 2023, Ghanaian civil society groups launched the #DontTaxMyPad campaign. More than 500 organizations pushed the government to treat menstrual products as necessities, not luxuries. Ghana removed taxes on sanitary pads and waived import duties on raw materials for local pad manufacturing.

In the 2025 national budget, Ghana allocated GH₵292.4 million — about US$24.8 million — to distribute free sanitary pads to schoolgirls. President John Dramani Mahama later launched the national distribution program targeting girls from primary school through senior high school.

“No girl in Ghana should miss school because of her menstrual period,” Mahama said at the launch.

Liberia’s budget is smaller, and its manufacturing base is different. But advocates said the lesson is the same: removing taxes and supporting school distribution can turn period poverty from a private shame into a public problem government can solve.

For now, girls in River Cess are still managing the cost themselves. W does not talk about tax policy. She talks about what happens when her period comes, and the money is not there. She buys diapers. She cuts them in two. She uses cloth when she must.

It is a private solution to a public failure. Every month the bill waits, girls bleed through another lesson.

This story was produced in collaboration with New Narratives as part of the Investigating Liberia project. Funding was provided by a private donor and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The donors had no say in the story’s content.

Summary

• A brutal public assault on a woman— and the flood of online reactions that followed — exposed how violence against women now spreads far beyond the street, amplified through phones, social media, into national shaming.
• A European Union-backed initiative is training male influencers, journalists, youth leaders, and activists from four countries to challenge harmful ideas about masculinity and become allies in tackling sexual and gender-based violence and supporting women’s leadership.
• Experts say for Liberia’s younger generation, raised on TikTok, Facebook, and WhatsApp, social media has become both a weapon and a window: fueling misogyny and harassment, while also exposing young men to cultures where women hold power and equality looks different.

By Joyclyn Wea, gender correspondent with New Narratives

The video lasted less than two minutes.

A young woman walking through Red Light Market in Monrovia was suddenly surrounded by a group of men who tore the clothes from her body. Her offense, they claimed, was, ironically, dressing indecently. Someone filmed the attack. Within hours, the footage spread across Facebook and WhatsApp, turning a public assault into public shaming on a national scale.

The Liberia National Police arrested eleven suspects. But by then, the woman’s humiliation had already traveled across thousands of phones and comment sections.

For many Liberian women, the violence itself was horrifying. The reaction online was worse. Some people condemned the attack. Others laughed, reposted the video, or argued that the woman deserved it.

Experts say the incident, and the flood of online reactions that followed, exposed something deeper about modern Liberia: violence against women no longer happens only in private. It now lives online too, amplified by social media, shared by strangers, and debated in comment sections that turn cruelty into entertainment.

It is against that backdrop that a new initiative is asking a difficult question: What role do men have in helping to change the culture that enables rampant sexual and gender-based violence?

Last week, the Organization for Women and Children, with support from the European Union and in partnership with the African Women Leaders Network-Liberia Chapter, brought together male influencers from Montserrado, Sinoe, Maryland, and Grand Kru counties for training on positive masculinity, gender equality, and support for women’s leadership.

The participants included journalists, youth leaders, activists, and social media personalities — men chosen not simply because of who they are, but because of who listens to them. In the social media age, influence increasingly lives online. And for a younger generation raised on social media, it is shaping how men think about women, power, relationships, and masculinity itself.

“You can empower women, educate them, and give them economic opportunities,” said Thumba Fokwa Jedidiah-Johnson, founder and national coordinator of He For She Crusaders Liberia, a male-led advocacy organization that works to change traditional patriarchal male attitudes and was one of the facilitators of the training. “But if the man at home has not changed, those efforts hit a wall.”

A different kind of gender conversation

The scale of the problem in Liberia is striking. According to the 2019-20 Liberia Demographic and Health Survey, three in every five women aged 15 to 49 have experienced physical violence, and one-third experienced physical violence in the 12 months before the survey. The United Nations Population Fund says fewer than half of women who experience violence seek help, in part because abuse is often treated as a private family matter.

That inequality extends into politics and the economy. Liberia made history in 2006 as the first African country to elect a female president, yet women hold only about 11 percent of seats in the National Legislature. The cost of exclusion goes beyond politics: World Bank research estimates that long-run GDP per capita would be almost 20 percent higher on average if gender employment gaps were closed.

For years, efforts to tackle sexual and gender-based violence in Liberia focused mainly on women and girls — helping survivors report abuse, encouraging girls to build confidence, or supporting women seeking leadership positions. But organizers behind this initiative say lasting change will depend on men — especially younger men raised on social media, where they are exposed both to misogyny and to cultures where women enjoy greater equality.

The project wants to co-opt male influencers, journalists, and youth leaders to help reshape attitudes toward women before online hostility and deeply rooted traditions harden into another generation of violence and discrimination.

“You cannot have a conversation about the perpetrator without the perpetrator being in the room,” said Williette Arthur, project officer of the Organization for Women and Children. “If we are teaching women and girls about leadership and confidence, we must also teach men that women are partners, not threats.”

“My silence of injustice today is my approval of injustice tomorrow,” Johnson said.

The program grew out of research conducted in southeastern Liberia, where organizers found strong resistance to women’s political participation and leadership. Surveys and focus group discussions revealed that many men still viewed leadership as primarily male territory. In many communities, women still face resistance when seeking leadership roles or speaking publicly about issues such as gender violence, reproductive rights, and equality.

The debate is especially urgent in Liberia, where online abuse is increasingly shaping politics and public life. Female candidates and outspoken women are routinely targeted with insults, smear campaigns, and moral attacks designed to push them out of public spaces.

But participants said the issue goes far beyond politics. It also shapes relationships, homes, schools, and online behavior. And it has profoundly negative impacts on men and boys as well.

“Men don’t cry.”

Jerome Wlalee, executive director of Healing Bridge Liberia, which works with young people on mental health, described growing up in a society where boys were taught to suppress emotion.

“People told me men should not cry,” he said. “But I have emotions too.”

Wlalee said many Liberian boys grow up believing that masculinity means dominance, emotional silence, and control over women. Those ideas, he argued, can later fuel violence and abusive behavior.

“Society says men should not express emotion,” he said. “So many men grow up angry because they are taught to suppress everything.”

He said early intervention matters. “What you don’t learn from an early age is very hard to unlearn later.”

Liberia’s social norms around gender were shaped over generations, and many participants said older men often resist conversations that challenge traditional ideas of male authority. Organizers say that resistance is especially strong in deeply traditional communities, including parts of southeastern Liberia, where leadership has long been seen as a male space. But they say younger Liberians may be more open to change because they are growing up differently from their parents — connected through social media to broader debates about women’s rights, leadership, and equality. Social media has exposed young Liberians to women they might never have encountered otherwise — politicians, journalists, business leaders, and activists from Liberia and around the world.

Albert Zogba of the Sinoe County Women’s Platform said that exposure matters because it allows women to tell their own stories rather than having others define them. “Women can now showcase what they have. Women can now tell their story themselves to the outside world as to their values and what they have to offer,” Zogba said.

The internet can teach — and destroy

But social media is not changing attitudes in only one direction. The same platforms exposing young Liberians to new ideas about equality are also fueling harassment, misogyny, and public shaming. That exposure has helped some young men imagine women differently — not only as mothers, wives, or supporters, but as leaders. But the same online world also reinforces the very attitudes organizers are trying to change. On Facebook and TikTok, women who enter politics or speak about issues like female genital cutting, child marriage or sexual violence are often attacked for their appearance, morality, or private lives. Social media, then, has become both a classroom and a battlefield.

Last November, former Miss Liberia Wokie Dolo faced a wave of online abuse after publicly supporting a proposed ban on female genital cutting and child marriage. Commenters accused her of betraying Liberian culture and promoting Western ideas. Years earlier, when Dolo ran for political office, opponents circulated a photo of her smoking a cigar online, using it to question her morality and fitness for leadership. The attacks showed how women are often judged not only on their policies or public work, but on whether they fit narrow ideas of female behavior.

For many women in public life, online harassment has become part of the political landscape.

“Social media can educate people, but it can also destroy people,” said Zogba, whose platform supports women in politics. “Strength is not about controlling women. Strength is about partnership.”

Still, some participants said social media can also become part of the solution. Solomon Garpue, a social media influencer known online as “Tutu Girl,” said he uses his platforms to post skits and awareness videos supporting women and speaking against gender-based violence.

“It’s a big platform for advocacy,” he said. “People can learn there if they are willing to learn.”

Redefining strength

The idea behind “positive masculinity” is not to strip men of power or identity, participants said. It is to redefine what strength looks like. “If we should address gender-based violence, we must work with the men because the men are the primary makers of the problem,” Johnson said.

Organizers say the training is only a starting point. The male influencers, journalists, and youth leaders who took part are expected to become ambassadors for positive masculinity, using their platforms, community spaces, and public influence to challenge harmful attitudes, promote behavioral change, and encourage other men to support women’s safety and leadership. Whether that message can travel as quickly as the abuse women face online remains the real test.

This story was produced in collaboration with New Narratives as part of the Investigating Liberia project. Funding was provided by a private donor and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The donors had no say in the story’s content.

• As domestic violence continues to devastate victims across the country, many children are left traumatized and orphaned when the crime takes both parents out of the home. In most cases, no government services are provided, and children are left destitute.
• Liberia’s Ministry of Gender has no data on how many children are left behind when domestic violence ends in death and imprisonment. The county coordinator for Montserrado knew about both cases in this story and had not followed up on either one.  
• Liberia recorded 3,381 sexual and gender-based violence cases in 2024, a 20 percent rise from the year before. No agency is counting how many children are left behind.  

By Joyclyn Wea, gender correspondent with New Narratives

MISSION-THIRD, Montserrado County – Esther was 39 years old when she died in her friend’s arms here late last year. Family and neighbors say she had survived years of abuse by her husband. But no help ever came.

Her husband is now detained and facing a murder charge. Though her murder made the front page of newspapers, her six children, including a newborn baby, were left alone to survive with no mother or father.

Esther’s elderly father was in no position to take them so Kolu Sengbeh, her best friend, took them in. But Sengbeh already had six children of her own. In the weeks that followed, Kolu tried to keep Esther’s two-month-old baby girl, still breastfeeding, alive, giving her milk and paying for medical care. But the infant grew weaker and, after a month she died.

“Nobody came to me to say they wanted to take the baby,” Sengbeh said. “She stayed with me until she died.”

The baby’s death was not a crime scene. But it was a second death resulting from devastation that domestic violence brought to this family. Experts say with if Liberia had a better functioning system to care for these victims, the entire tragedy should not have occurred. As it is, when a spouse kills their partner, the arrest becomes the headlines, but the children are left with a second tragedy.

Domestic violence continues to plague families across the country. In the first two quarters of 2025 alone, there were 339 domestic violence cases. The GBV unit also counted 1,033 physical violence cases in 2025. None of those numbers includes a count of children left behind. Experts say the low presence of police in rural areas, stigma, and family pressure mean that the real number is likely far higher.

“Globally, 140 women and girls are killed every day by an intimate partner or family member, or one woman every ten minutes.”

…2023 report by UN Women and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

In theory, children in Esther’s situation should not be in this situation. Isaac George, who leads the Sexual and Gender-Based Crimes Unit at the Ministry of Justice, said children caught in these situations should be treated as “survivor victims,” especially when they were present during the violence. When a mother is killed and a father is jailed, he said, the first option is family placement. If no family can take the children, the government looks for safe homes run by the Ministry of Gender. Safe homes are meant to be short-term—about three months. When children stay longer, schooling becomes difficult because safe home locations are kept secret. The ministry sometimes helps with school fees or emergency needs, but George said, this is not routine policy support.  

The Ministry of Gender told New Narratives/FrontPage Africa that Liberia has 12 safe homes: three in Montserrado and one each in Grand Cape Mount, Maryland, Grand Kru, Grand Bassa, Nimba, Bong, Lofa, Grand Gedeh, and Margibi but those in Grand Gedeh, Grand Bassa, Margibi, Grand Kru, and Maryland are not operating and one in Montserrado was destroyed by fire last year. The ministry said children are typically referred or brought to safe homes from SGBV One-Stop centers, police stations, or directly from communities when authorities are called to intervene. But Bennietta Jarto, director of the ministry’s GBV unit, said the ministry has no data on how many children are left behind when domestic violence ends in death and imprisonment.  

Esther’s case suggests the system is not working in rural Montserrado at least. Though the husband was arrested, Sengbeh said no one approached her for emergency help or safe care after Esther died.  

Jarto said the Montserrado County coordinator knew about both cases documented in this story and had not followed up on either one when queried about it.

A friendship that became a lifeline

Sengbeh said her bond with Esther was both family and friendship: the pair were childhood friends who happened to marry into the same family. They supported each other as mothers raising large families in poverty in a rural town. Before she died, Esther sometimes teased her: “Kolu, these children are for you.” She meant it as a joke. Now it is Sengbeh’s life.

Sengbeh, who survives on small farming and charcoal burning, said some of the children are in school and some are not, including Esther’s five-year-old who witnessed the murder. Before Esther’s children arrived, Sengbeh said she was already paying school fees for her six children—about $L6,000 (about $US33) per child at a nearby community school.

The five-year-old is not in school. She still cries when other children remind her that her father is in jail for killing her mother. No counselor has visited. Sengbeh said the child has grown quieter and falls sick often.

“So I really worry about her,” Sengbeh said. “I want somebody to hear me and help with that little girl. She tells me, ‘Mama, I want to go back to school.’”  

Esther’s elderly father, Yarlo Gbarnah, said he is also devastated. He is barely able to grow enough rice to feed himself and can’t help Sengbeh. “I don’t even want to go see the house, and I don’t see my daughter.”

The boy who hauls water for his siblings

About forty kilometers away, in the heart of Monrovia, a 12-year-old boy is living the same reality. The address is different, but the devastation is the same.

He said the violence began in the middle of the night at his home in Bassa Town, on Du Port Road. He woke up and saw blood rolling toward the door. When he walked closer, he saw his mother on the floor, badly hurt. He started shouting. Neighbors came running. His stepfather ran. People chased him. Police took him away.  

The boy and his two sisters—ages 9 and 4—were left to fend for themselves until their grandmother, Ma Korpu, was able to get to the house days later from her home in Lofa County. The grandmother said two government women came to the house weeks later, wrote down names, and promised to call back. No one ever did.

Unable to pay rent, the family moved to a rundown building in another part of Du Port Road, where a caretaker offered them temporary shelter. The caretaker left for a family engagement in Lofa County. The family does not know when he will return, and they have to find somewhere else to stay.

The boy had been in third grade. Now he is out of school.

“No money,” he said. “We hardly eat.”

The family are doing whatever they can to make money. Ma Korpu picks breadnut to sell; the girls sell cold water packets late into the evening; the boy hauls water for neighbors. Each bucket earns them $L20 (US11 cents). He makes many trips a day and watches sadly as other children go to school.

Ma Korpu said life has become “suffering” since her daughter was killed. Some days, grief and injustice take her appetite: “When I think about it sometimes, my heart can be burning,” she said in Liberian English. And they are hungry. “We buy two cups of rice, cook and eat, that’s how we just here.”

Her anger is tied to how distant the justice process still feels. “They say case business there, but they (the court) nah call us yet.”  

What the government says it does—and what families say isn’t happening

The Justice Ministry’s Isaac George confirmed both cases are pending trial. Domestic violence incidents that result in murder are handled through the Montserrado County Attorney and prosecuted in Criminal Court “A,” beyond the GBV unit’s mandate. George said prosecutors are now preparing indictments for the grand jury, which will determine whether there is probable cause to proceed. If so, the cases will be placed on the court’s docket and trial dates will be scheduled.

As with other cases covered by FrontPage Africa/New Narratives, the cases have imposed extra financial costs on the families even though George said domestic violence victims should never be asked for fees. Esther’s brother, Ezekiel Gbarnah, said a court officer asked him to pay to transport the accused from Monrovia City Court to South Beach. Siatta Paul Hidden, clan chief of Mehn Clans, Todee District, said she had earlier paid $L10,000 to transport the accused from the village to the police station in Nyahn, and that additional money was provided as compensation to the community watch forum that helped carry out the arrest.  

Such demands are common. FrontPage Africa/New Narratives has followed the case of a 57-year-old grandmother who said she was asked for money at every step to move her case through the justice system, including jailing the accused offender. Another Monrovia-based mother reported the rape of her 8-year-old daughter and said she was repeatedly asked to pay fees before the suspect could be jailed and tried.

How it is supposed to work—and how it falls apart

Jarto said a new Gender-Based Violence Information Management System is planned under “Spotlight 2.0.”, a $US13.6 million EU-funded program that is expected to strengthen how cases are recorded and shared across the system. The system is meant to function as a secure national database: when a survivor reports abuse at a clinic, police station, one-stop center, or safe home, trained staff enter basic case details and the services provided, helping the government see where cases cluster, where services are missing, and whether survivors—including children—are being followed up.

But advocates say they have cause for skepticism. Spotlight 2.0 is a new phase of an earlier EU-UN initiative that had similar goals. An independent audit by the European Court of Auditors found the original Spotlight Initiative had limited impact—delivering some outputs while struggling to show lasting results or enforcement.

The new Spotlight 2.0 Liberia program is planned to run from 2025 to 2029 and is intended to improve coordination, services, and data systems with the Ministry of Gender in a central role.

In Mission-Third, Esther’s children still ask about school; the children cry for their parents and Sengbeh struggles alone. In Monrovia, the 12-year-old measures his days in buckets of water —each one another hour away from a classroom. For now, both families have been lost in a system that leaves children to pay the price for a tragedy they had no part in.

This story was produced in collaboration with New Narratives as part of the Investigating Liberia project. Funding was provided by a private donor and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The donors had no say in the story’s content.