Summary

• A coalition of African civil society leaders are pushing donors to give African organizations and communities more control over development money as traditional foreign aid shrinks. They are also looking to Africans to raise more funds themselves and restrain corrupt money flowing out of the continent.
• A growing number of African organizations are rejecting funding agreements that they say do not match their needs. 
• Leaders say shifting control to African institutions will only work if those institutions are also accountable to the communities the money is meant to help.

By Tetee Gebro, gender and health correspondent with New Narratives

ACCRA, Ghana — When a donor offered money to an organization working in Kenya, it came with an opportunity to expand its work into more communities. For a small organization that needed funding, it might have seemed like an easy decision. It wasn’t.

The donor wanted the organization to expand quickly. The organization said the communities it was already working with needed deeper support before it moved elsewhere. So they made a tough decision.

“They respectfully denied the funding,” said Nafissatou Sene, senior manager of Portfolio Services at African Collaborative, an organization that raises money and funds for African groups working in health, education, gender justice, agriculture and livelihoods.

Sene declined to identify the Kenyan organization because she did not have permission to name it. She said its budget was small and it needed money, making the decision especially difficult, but in the end it decided it had no choice.

“We’re not going to take anything just because it comes our way,” Sene said of the organization’s position.

That kind of decision-making is what Nana Asantewa Afadzinu, executive director of the West Africa Civil Society Institute, said has too often been missing from development in Africa.

“For too long we’ve had development done to us,” Afadzinu said. “We’ve not been in the driving seats of deciding what the solutions should be to our own problems and resourcing them.”

The story has become an example of the kind of power a grouping of African civil society organizations gathered here for the first-ever meeting of African civil society leaders, say they want: the ability to decide what their communities need and insist that donors adjust their requirements to match the communities’ priorities rather than their own.

The three-day conference “Africa at the Centre: Leading Change, Shifting Power” brought together more than 200 civil society leaders, funders, policymakers and development experts from 30 countries, including Liberia. Organizers said decades of development assistance have left foreign donors with too much control over which African problems receive money, how projects are designed and how success is measured. They say this has led to failed projects, lack of accountability, talent diverted from entrepreneurship and job creation, dependency and corruption.  

Now, as traditional foreign aid from rich countries shrinks, they are pushing for African organizations and communities to have greater control over development spending by demanding donors listen. But they are also looking to raise more funds from Africans and African governments, and to limit the amount of money that flows out of the continent in corruption and debt payments.

But some at the conference said their proposed solution raises another difficult question: if foreign donors give up power, who in Africa gets it? African governments and civil society organizations have their own problems with corruption, weak accountability and failure to listen to communities. Moving control of development money from foreign institutions to African ones will not necessarily put that power in the hands of the people the money is supposed to help.

One Liberian at the conference, Edwin Mends-Cole, said he knows how difficult the first part of that equation can be. Mends-Cole, executive director of Youth Climate Change Initiative Liberia, said small civil society organizations often depend on donor projects to survive. Funding opportunities can be so scarce that organizations adapt what they do to what donors are willing to finance.

“It is hard to say realistically ‘I will not accept,’” Mends-Cole said.

Liberia’s dependence on foreign assistance extends far beyond civil society. World Bank data shows the country received about $563 million in net official development assistance and official aid in 2023, equivalent to two thirds of the national budget. A separate World Bank assessment found official development assistance averaged about 12 percent of Liberia’s gross domestic product between 2022 and 2024.

The limited income of the national government has meant major public services have been left to donors. Donor aid funds at least 50 percent of Liberia’s health sector, for example. But stories of corruption and mismanagement abound, and the government is no closer to standing on its own.

Mends-Cole agrees that donors need to better listen. He said he has seen what can happen when a local organization is able to challenge the way a donor wants to solve a problem.

In 2023, his organization worked on a project under the United Nations Development Programme’s Small Grants Programme to protect biodiversity and mangroves in the Mesurado wetlands. Mends-Cole said the proposed approach focused on educating communities about the need to stop destroying mangroves.

But some people were cutting the mangroves because they depended on them to make a living. Telling them about environmental protection without giving them another way to earn money would not stop the cutting, Mends-Cole said.

“We are on the ground,” he recalled telling the funder. “This approach will not work.” After discussions, he said, the project was changed to include alternative livelihoods.

Mends-Cole said local organizations demanding more power from donors must therefore be prepared to give communities more power too. Before designing a project, he said, organizations should first ask people what problem they need solved. They must be transparent and report to communities on how the funds are spent and results obtained, as well as donors. 

West African Civil Society Institute’s Afadzinu said changing the system does not mean simply replacing foreign money. It also means changing who decides how that money is used. She said she wanted to see donors provide more flexible and core funding that allows African organizations to strengthen themselves instead of moving from one donor-designed project to another.

“Don’t help us to continuously depend on you,” Afadzinu said. “Help us to become stronger.”

African countries and organizations must also raise more of their own money, she said, including through local philanthropy, diaspora support, businesses and social enterprises.

Sene said African organizations may already have more power in their relationship with donors than they realize. One organization refusing money may have little influence, she said. Many organizations taking the same position could force donors to listen.

“We cannot give grants or funds to people who refuse to take it from us,” Sene said. “If everybody said no, what are we going to do with the money?”

She acknowledged that completely ending African civil society’s dependence on foreign funding is not realistic in the near future. The immediate goal, she said, should be changing the relationship.

At least one international funder at the Accra gathering is already onboard.  

Tendisai Chigwedere of the U.S.-based William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which was a financial backer of the Convening, said philanthropy has historically held enormous influence because it controlled the money. She said Hewlett is listening to local organizations, giving them more control with long-term partnerships and flexible funding. The Hewlett Foundation said it awarded $631 million in grants in 2024, with nearly three-quarters provided as flexible funding.

“We don’t want you to be boxed into a project,” Chigwedere said. “Allowing you to have general operating support helps you build the institution, build the vision, and work on the agenda… to do the things you need to do.”

Changing how existing donors give money is only one proposal being discussed.

Wanjiru Kanyiha, network coordinator of the Global Public Investment Network, is pushing a model in which African countries would contribute to a common pool according to their ability and participate in deciding how the money is spent. The idea is summed up in three phrases: all contribute, all benefit, all decide.

Under such a system, Kanyiha said, a poorer country such as Liberia would not be expected to contribute as much as a wealthy country but would still have a voice in decisions and could receive more than it contributed based on need.

The model remains a proposal. It has not yet proved that it can replace or significantly reshape the current aid system. Supporters hope to have governments working around one or two pilots by the end of 2028. 

After three days in Accra, the West African Civil Society Institute said it will temporarily steward the work after the meeting, coordinate follow-up and help participants continue developing ideas that emerged from the gathering.

In a post-convening reflection, Charles Vandyck, the Institute’s head of capacity development, acknowledged that transferring power from international organizations to African institutions alone would not transform development.

“Redistributing power is not about reversing hierarchies,” Vandyck wrote. “It is about building systems where power is shared, accountability is mutual, and agency is respected.”

This story was a collaboration with New Narratives.

Summary:

• 200 civil society leaders, funders, policymakers and others from almost 30 countries will gather in Ghana this week to design a new African-led approach to development.  
• They say the existing model, designed by non-Africans in capitals of Europe and America, has failed to understand the communities where they work, fueling dependence, and failing to deliver lasting impact.
• The debate has particular significance for Liberia, where critics say billions of dollars of development aid has fueled corruption and dependency and had limited impact.

By Tetee Gebro, gender and health correspondent with New Narratives

In the four years to 2023 the European Union spent $16 million to boost the systems that would keep Liberians safe from gender-based violence. But in 2026 FrontPage Africa/New Narratives found a completely broken legal system in which victims had little chance of accessing justice. The head of the sexual and gender-based violence unit conceded just two perpetrators had been convicted in six years.

The outcome came as little surprise to a growing movement of people in the development sector. They have condemned an aid system designed largely in Western capitals and where the people who understand a problem best are rarely the people trusted to define it.

A major conference in Accra this week will bring together more than 200 African civil society organizations, including from Liberia, with plans to change that. Organizers say the answer is not simply more foreign aid. They want Africans themselves—from governments to communities—to have greater power to determine development priorities and how money is used.

“Let’s shift away from those of us who want to control communities to a situation where communities are in the driving seat,” said Charles Kojo Vandyck, of the West Africa Civil Society Institute, organizers of the Africa at the Center convening, in an interview.

The idea for the Convening grew out of a WACSI project called RINGO — Reimagining the INGO — launched in 2021. More than 95 civil society leaders, funders and organizations were given one instruction: stop writing reports about what is broken and build something that works instead.

Jimm Chick Fomunjong and Gideon Ahenkorah of the West Africa Civil Society Institute, WACSI, described the assumption buried inside that system in a soon to be released opinion piece.

“The form is only the smallest expression of a much larger architecture: who controls resources, who sets the terms on which they move, and who gets to decide what counts as a legitimate priority,” the pair write. “The scale of what these prototypes are responding to is difficult to overstate, and African institutions have spent years documenting it themselves.

Africa received $74 billion in official aid in 2023. In the same year, according to the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, the continent lost an estimated $90 billion to illicit financial flows, largely through trade mis-invoicing and tax avoidance. It paid a further $103 billion servicing external debt in 2024. 

At the International Monetary Fund, where decisions of consequence require an 85 percent majority, the 46 nations of sub-Saharan Africa, a region with a combined economy larger than India’s, shared just two seats on the 24 member executive board until 2024. A third was added only after a decade of advocacy. Africa’s collective vote today stands at roughly 5 per cent. None of these figures, taken together, simply describe a system that malfunctioned. They point instead to an architecture in which the rules governing money, risk and decision-making have too often been set elsewhere, with African countries carrying consequences without possessing an equivalent share of power over the system itself.” 

Organizers want the Accra gathering to advance three broad goals: an African-led development financing system, development in which communities are in the driving seat, and stronger institutions that work for Africa. The conference will also showcase practical approaches already being tested rather than simply producing speeches about problems in the existing system.

One model already being tested is what the organization calls a “reverse call for proposals.” Traditionally, donors determine what they want to fund, issue a call for proposals and African organizations compete for the money. Under the reverse model, communities identify their own development priorities, develop proposals and then invite donors to apply to support them.

The approach has already been tested in the Nyankanga community in Zambia. Working with the Zambian Governance Foundation, community members identified their own development priorities and issued a proposal. Potential partners applied and the community assessed the applications and selected Plan International Zambia.

When Plan arrived with its normal due-diligence requirements, Vandyck said the community turned the process around. Community members first asked Plan to provide its annual reports, explain where it had previously invested in Zambia and demonstrate that it would remain committed to the community.

“You do not send the call, we send the call,” the community told Plan, according to Vandyck.

The amount involved, about $17,000, was small. But Fomunjong and Ahenkorah wrote that the reversal it represents is much bigger than the dollar figure suggests. The Zambian Governance Foundation has since repeated the process in nine more communities. Groups in Malawi and Ghana are testing early versions of the same approach.

Critics of existing aid model say Liberia has more to gain from a new approach than most

In Liberia the failure of the existing development model has been acute. Critics say billions of dollars spent in the country since 2003 has little to show for it with half the population in poverty and extreme poverty rising.

Wonderful Logan is on the frontline. In 2022 she heard good news that free mosquito nets were being handed out across Liberia. The Ministry of Health had received millions in funding from the $5 billion annual donor pool known as the Global Fund to supply nets to people in five counties. So she waited for her net.

“I didn’t receive any,” Logan said. “I got children, I got grandchildren.”

She ended up spending her own money to buy a net instead. Since then, she has watched some of the nets that were supposed to protect families end up somewhere else entirely — used for fishing, draped over chicken coops, or cut into pieces and sold in the market.

“I don’t really see mosquito nets in people’s houses,” Logan said. “I see it in the marketplaces.”

Nets, medicines and other supplies that are meant to be free are routinely stolen and reappear in markets to be bought by the very people they were intended for. Even if they are not stolen, Logan says most of her friends don’t believe the nets work to prevent malaria. Some believe misinformation that they constrain their spirits from leaving their bodies while they sleep.It’s difficult to trust data showing malaria incidence has decreased in Liberia. The 2022 Malaria Indicator Survey found that half the population had access to an insecticide-treated net in their household. Half of children under five and 53 percent of pregnant women — the people malaria threatens most — slept under a net the night before the survey.

But a 2022 investigation by its Office of the Inspector General found systemic fraud. Investigators found problems with 91 percent of expenditures reviewed, totaling $1.1 million – citing fraudulent vehicle contracts, inflated bills and almost no internal controls. For 75 percent of field activities checked, they couldn’t confirm programs had even happened. The Malaria Indicator Survey was one of the activities undertaken with Fund money.

It is exactly the kind of failure Charles Kojo Vandyck, WACSI’s head of capacity building, says has to end on both sides. Secretive decision making without clear explanations, reporting and community buy-in leaves communities powerless to hold leaders accountable.

“There’s very little attention on when the funds are disbursed and where the funds actually go,” Vandyck said.

Vandyck says that African ownership and greater transparency with populations will ensure greater accountability. He said citizens and civil society organizations must follow public money and hold governments accountable for how it is actually spent. The Africa at the Centre gathering comes at a pivotal moment. Foreign aid is being cut while African governments and civil society organizations are increasingly questioning a decades-old development model. Ghana turned down a new health funding agreement with the US Trump administration this year after officials decided the data-sharing terms it demanded cost more than the funding was worth. Zimbabwe had already rejected a similar deal. Kenya’s version of the same fight is now in its own courts.

Organizers of the Accra conference, running from September 1 to 3, say the gathering will produce a formal commitment to build what they call an African-owned architecture for development — one with African priorities, African resources and African agency at its center.

This story was a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the Investigating Liberia project.

Summary

• A woman died in May after botched surgery at Stockton Creek Health Center in Caldwell, where a man posing as a doctor but with no medical qualifications operated on her.
• The Liberia Medical and Dental Council, the government agency tasked with overseeing medical practitioners in the country, said it had asked the man to provide a medical license in 2022 but did not stop him practicing when he did not supply it.  
• Former solicitor general Tiawan Gongloe and Joseph Somwarbi, former chair of House committee on health, said the case shows that the government agency has been “derelict” in its duty, leaving all Liberians at risk.

By Tetee Gebro, health and gender correspondent with New Narratives

CALDWELL, Monrovia — Saybah Kollie collapsed on a Sunday morning in early April, two days after her son’s second birthday.

Her husband, Blama Kamara, and the community chairman rushed her to the closest clinic. Over the next few weeks, Saybah’s family said, she suffered at the hands of a fake doctor who claimed he was qualified to operate and heal her, but who was in fact, a fraud preying on desperate families like hers.

“The only thing I wanted was to see her survive,” says Kamara. The supposed doctor, Mohamed Ali Bah, warned him Saybah would die if he waited. “He said I should not take a risk with her life. So I trusted him.”

Forty-seven days later, Saybah was dead.

Saybah had become the latest in an unknown number of people to die in Liberia at the hands of fake medical personnel. The Liberian Medical and Dental Council, tasked with licensing health practitioners and facilities in the country, does not keep track of how many people die or suffer injuries as a result of medical treatments by unlicensed individuals, but regular posts on social media show Saybah’s case is not isolated.

With a barely functioning health care system with just one doctor for every 10,0000 people (the World Health Organization recommends one for every 1,000) and half the population living in poverty, Liberia has become an easy place for dishonest people to take advantage of their fellow citizens.

But experts say the problem is compounded by the complete failure of the Liberian Medical and Dental Council to check licenses and shut down those impersonating as doctors. That is leaving Liberians across the country vulnerable.

“This showed that the LMDC’s oversight and regulatory enforcement capacity is very weak, especially in this case where they are saying that the individual… has been practicing without a license for years while they [the Council] are being paid with taxpayers’ money,” said Joseph Somwarbi, former chair of the House of Representatives Committee on Health.

Surgery Ordered Based Only on “Pressing the Stomach”

When Saybah first arrived at Stockton Creek, the family was introduced to “Doctor Bah”. Her sister, Janga Kollie, who came later, was worried from the start.

“They didn’t run any tests,” Janga said. “If they do a test, at least they will tell us something. But the man only used his hand to press her stomach, and he said she had a fibroid.”

A fibroid is a non-cancerous growth in the womb that is more common in African women. To identify fibroids and rule out other causes, doctors would use an ultrasound machine or test her blood in a laboratory. Pressing someone’s stomach with your hand is a guess.

Before Saybah could even be examined, Kamara was asked to pay US$20. “Doctor” Bah said Saybah had lost so much blood she needed seven pints replaced at a cost of US$50 a pint. Within a week the bill for the accommodation and treatment reached US$330.

Saybah seemed to improve so Kamara took her home. But then she collapsed again.

This time Bah said she needed surgery. He claimed he was a surgeon at JFK Hospital and a professor at a major medical school in Monrovia. Kamara asked whether the clinic had an ultrasound machine — a device doctors use to see inside the body without surgery. “He said he had everything,” Kamara recalled. “He said this place is almost like a hospital.” He convinced Kamara. “Bah really got sweet mouth,” said Janga. Saybah’s brother was called to sign a form agreeing to the surgery. The operation happened quickly — Kamara only learned it was finished when he arrived that evening and found her in recovery.

The Bleeding That Would Not Stop

After the surgery, the bleeding got worse. Every day and night the clinic called saying she needed more blood — more than fifteen pints in total, US$750, paid straight to Bah in cash. “He said it will not stop right away. It will take time,” said Janga.

But Saybah grew weaker and afraid. She began begging to be moved to another hospital. Bah refused, telling her he could treat her. Finally Saybah’s ex-husband, calling from abroad, insisted the family take her to 14 Military Hospital. Bah refused to write a referral note. Instead, he handed the family a blank paper. “Since you people want to carry the girl, if you carry her, my hand is not inside. You people just make paper,” Janga recalled him saying. At 14 Military Hospital, doctors, clearly worried, asked where Saybah’s surgery had been done. They asked her directly — “Is he a licensed doctor?” They told the family they did not have the right kind of doctor for what had been done and referred her to JFK. At JFK, doctors called Bah and asked what tests he had run before operating. According to Janga, the call cut off. She tried calling back. Bah did not answer.

A Deadly Disease, Discovered Too Late

JFK doctors revealed a diagnosis the family had never heard: cervical cancer. Dr. Avee Kamah told the family Saybah came to them too late.  “She said they tried their best,” Janga said. But it was up to God to save her.  

A day later, Saybah died. The death certificate said her cancer caused her kidneys to fail and her blood to become severely depleted. Fluid built up in her lungs and toxins built up in her brain — this combination killed her.

James-Emmanuel D. Cole Jr., JFK’s communications director, confirmed in a statement that Saybah was received as a serious medical emergency following a referral from 14 Military Hospital, and that she died despite the efforts of the clinical team.

The hospital declined to say whether its doctors believed the original surgery at Stockton Creek contributed to her death or whether JFK reported concerns about Stockton Creek to the Medical and Dental Council or any other authority.

But Cole wrote that the hospital would cooperate fully with any competent regulatory, investigative, or judicial authority that requested access to Saybah’s records. He also noted that cases involving severe complications “may be reviewed by the relevant authorities, including the Liberia Medical and Dental Council.”

“There Was A Foul Play Somewhere”

After Saybah’s funeral, Bah called Kamara to give his sympathies. Kamara hung up on him. But Bah called again, after a reporter working on this story visited his clinic, to ask Kamara why he was speaking to journalists. Kamara ended the call again.

After numerous requests Bah agreed to an interview with FrontPage Africa/New Narratives. He refused to allow his comments to go on the record. But he did deny that Saybah had been treated at his clinic.

Kamara has Saybah’s patient card from Stockton Creek, dated April 5, 2026. He and Janga said they visited her there. They said more than ten people, including members of Saybah’s church, can confirm she was treated there.

“That statement alone makes me know there was a foul play,” Kamara said. “Why are you refusing that Saybah was at your hospital and you did the operation? For that I can’t keep silent. If I keep silent I will not be fair to Saybah.”

The Liberia Medical and Dental Council repeatedly misses opportunities to stop fake doctor

But experts say Bah is not the only one complicit in Saybah’s suffering. The Liberia Medical and Dental Council, tasked by government with regular medical practitioners in the country, repeatedly failed to do its job.

The Council’s credential committee first asked Bah to supply his license in 2022 according to Joseph Colmah, the LMDC’s Medical and Research Director. Bah never did and the Council did nothing to stop him practicing.

In 2024, Stockton Creek, having got away with not complying with the Council’s requests for two years, became bold. They asked the Council for permission to upgrade from a basic clinic to a full health center — a higher level of facility with stricter requirements for staff, equipment, and record-keeping. Even though Bah had never supplied a medical license, the Council began to process the application. It told the clinic to pause all patient care until inspectors could confirm it met the standard. But the inspectors never returned and the clinic kept seeing patients for another two years.

It was only this May— one week after Saybah died and the family began posting on Facebook – that the Council shut the clinic down, four years and an unknown number of deaths and injuries, after the Council was first alerted to Bah’s deception. In a press release the Council said it “remains committed to ensuring quality, safe, and professional healthcare delivery throughout the country and will continue its nationwide regulatory assessment across Liberia’s fifteen counties over the next one month.”

The Council did not report the case to the police.

But when a reporter visited the clinic three weeks later, in June, asking for medical help, the clinic was still operating. The reporter was given treatment and charged L$1000 and saw a man identified as “Dr. Bah” on the premises.

In July, after questions from this reporter, the Council published a list of 532 licensed doctors in Liberia, for the first time. (New Narratives has published the list at this link.) The registry includes an active license for “Dr. Bah Mohammed Aliou,” license number NL/636, valid from January 17, 2026 to January 16, 2027. A source familiar with the matter told New Narratives that the person listed is the same Mohammed Ali Bah at Stockton Creek. The Council did not respond to questions asking whether the two names refer to the same person.

Liberia Medical and Dental Council denies responsibility for policing fake doctors

In a surprising revelation, Colmah said it was not the Council’s role to check whether Bah had continued to practice without accreditation. He said the Council can only pursue charges against someone for falsely calling themselves a doctor with written proof — like a prescription or medical record signed using the title “doctor.” Patient testimony that they were treated by someone using that title is not enough.

Colmah said the Council has no power to physically lock a building — only a court can do that. The Council can only post a notice and ask the facility to stop. Colmah claimed the Council had posted a notice on the facility in 2024. “But as you might be aware, maybe renovation, someone may get to it.”

But experts said that Colmah’s statement was wrong.

Joseph Somwarbi, pharmacologist, former representative for Nimba county and chair of the House of Representatives Committee on Health, said it is the Council’s duty to ensure that all medical clinics, health centers, and hospitals are licensed and demand that all licensed practitioners and facilities place their licenses in visible locations. And they must work with the Liberia National Police to shut down illegal operations and refer unlicensed practitioners for criminal prosecution.

He said those at the Council found responsible for failure to act should be replaced.

Tiawan Gongloe, former solicitor general, agreed. He demanded the Liberian National Police explore criminal charges Bah. “What he did is almost like shooting somebody with a gun, because he is not authorized to practice medicine.”

Gongloe said the Council also bears responsibility and the family could bring a lawsuit.

“The LMDC takes some responsibility by not closing [the clinic]. They were derelict in their action.” Gongloe urged the Council to act now. “LMDC should stop him. He is a menace. Every second that that man is operating, Liberians are at risk.”

Kamara is now the sole carer for their two young children who cry for their mother. He strains to understand how authorities could have left his family so unprotected.

“If a man like that is not a doctor, and his place is still operating at a time like this,” Kamara said, “My mouth is full. I don’t know.”

Nemenlah Cyrus Harmon contributed reporting. This investigation 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

• Families describe raising children with severe disabilities with little to no support, amid stigma that claims their children are cursed.
• A pediatric neurologist says nine in every ten cerebral palsy cases seen at JFK Hospital result from oxygen deprivation during labor —  largely preventable when birth occurs in a medical facility.
• The National Commission on Disabilities estimates roughly one million Liberians live with disabilities, but it only has funds to help 5,000 people.
• An American missionary family with their only special needs child has inspired a peer support group that shares lifechanging knowledge and hope.

By Tetee Gebro, gender and health correspondent with New Narratives

MOUNT BARCLAY, Montserrado County — Victoria remembers the moment when her joy at delivering a baby girl turned to fear. The baby came early, at Victoria’s home. She did not cry. The midwife turned her upside down, trying everything to get a sound out of her.

The girl is now ten. She cannot walk. She cannot talk. She cannot feed herself and requires 24/7 care. FrontPage Africa is withholding the family’s last names to protect them from stigma. Stigma is something these families know well. People in Victoria’s community told her that her daughter was a dragon.

For a time Victoria believed them. Even pastors told her a snake had been sent on her daughter. She tried fasting, praying, spiritual interventions — all of it.

“Many days, I used to cry over her,” Victoria said. “When you see someone who gave birth at the same time as you and that person’s child is walking around, and your own child is just sitting, it brings tears. It can really hurt.”

What Victoria now knows is that her daughter is not cursed. She has a condition – cerebral palsy – likely caused during birth. She has a set of things a caregiver can do to help. She now knows that her daughter is one of an estimated one million Liberians living with a range of medical disabilities that can happen to anyone. Noone records how many are born with these conditions in Liberia but global rates suggest it is likely more than 1000 children are born in Liberia each year with severe disabilities.

Life for these families is upended. With no external support carers are often forced to quit jobs; they’re abandoned by spouses and given none of the training that could improve the child’s life. Severe stigma can leave families isolated. Some children are abandoned.

Disabilities in general receive little attention in Liberia’s extremely cash strapped public health system. According to the National Commission on Disabilities, the sole government program for disabilities is a pilot program that aims to reach just 5,000 people over five years — with financial assistance earmarked for just 20 school-age children in its first year.

A family upended in an instant, then a lifetime of struggle

Cerebral palsy has left Victoria’s daughter’s muscles stiff and tight. She has tremors and involuntary jerking of her hands and feet. For a time, Victoria wrapped her daughter’s curving foot in bandages trying to fix it. Nobody told her the curving was not in the foot at all — it was a nerve problem rooted in the brain that could be treated by stretching and strengthening exercises, surgery or medications.

Victoria is on her own providing care for her daughter. Her father has never accepted his daughter’s condition. When he visits he does not play with her. Victoria had to abandon her training to be a nurse. She carries the girl to the bathroom, bathes her, feeds and dresses her — work made physically harder now Victoria is pregnant again, with a new husband.  

Tragically most cerebral palsy in Liberia can be prevented when the birth takes place in a hospital. Dr. Charles Oguni has run JFK Hospital’s pediatric neurology clinic long enough to know how most of these stories begin. A mother goes into labor. The labor is long. The facility where she is delivering does not recognize the danger — or recognizes it and sends her home anyway.

“’Go home,’ they tell her. ‘It is not your time.’ She comes back the next day. ‘Go home. It is not your time.’”

By the third day, the placenta — the organ through which oxygen and nutrients pass from mother to child — has begun to separate. Blood supplying oxygen to the baby’s brain is reduced. The brain begins to sustain damage. By the time the baby is born, the first thing anyone notices is that it does not cry. Nine in every ten cerebral palsy cases Dr. Oguni sees at JFK trace back to this moment.

Last month alone, 77 babies were brought to JFK’s emergency room showing signs of oxygen deprivation, he said. Of the fifteen admitted, six died. Four in every ten babies who arrive at JFK with oxygen deprivation do not survive. The ones who do are often left with cerebral palsy.

“When I was a student in obstetrics. I was told that the sun should not sit twice on a woman in labor,” Dr. Oguni said. “But you hear some mothers telling you they labored for two days, three days. Why would a facility keep them for that long before sending them to JFK? It is so improper.”

He described a patient he saw two days before this interview. A mother had labored at home for twenty-four hours. She then went to a facility and labored for another full day before being referred to JFK — by which time the damage was done.

“For quite some hours, I feel this depression deep within me. Because these conditions could have been prevented,” Dr. Oguni said. “The way to manage cerebral palsy is not to have it.”

Other conditions that limit children’s development are impossible to avoid. Down syndrome is  is a genetic condition —present in the child’s chromosomes from the moment of conception. Children with Down syndrome may have intellectual disabilities, heart problems, and thyroid issues, but many can learn, attend school, and live fulfilling lives with the right support. Severe autism is another disorder. It is not well understood but genetics are the strongest known factor. It can cause difficulties with communication, social interaction, and behavior, often alongside intellectual disability, minimal or no verbal language, and a need for, round-the-clock support.

What all conditions share in Liberia is this: families receive a diagnosis if they can make it JFK. JFK does what it can to support them. But financial constraints mean that help is limited.

Dr. Oguni said JFK explains diagnoses to every parent. The hospital has a rehabilitation center offering physiotherapy and speech therapy, free of charge for children under 14. It has an endocrinology clinic for Down syndrome cases up to 16 years.

But the medications needed to manage the disorders are a different story: muscle relaxants, nerve-stimulating drugs that can help reactivate damaged brain pathways; medications that must be taken every day for their lifetimes but must be bought from abroad — because families could not afford them and suppliers stopped importing them.

Liberia has no pediatric cardiac surgeon, meaning Down syndrome children who need heart surgery must seek care outside the country. The country has only one pediatric endocrinologist for the entire population. The neurology clinic sees more than 200 cerebral palsy cases every month — about one third of them new patients, some coming for the first time after years of managing alone because no one ever directed them to the clinic.

And when families stop coming — worn down by transport costs, by years of watching a child whose condition is not visibly improving — said they simply disappear.”They tell me they cannot come back because they are just spending money on transport and their child’s condition is not changing,” Dr. Oguni said. “You will not blame them.”

Janet and her husband did not even know there was anything wrong with their son until he was two years old. It took an aunt to flag that the child still could not sit, could not speak and that something was seriously wrong. JFK eventually diagnosed the child with cerebral palsy, a condition so foreign to Janet that she does not remember the name to this day.

Luckily for Janet and her son, the father has stayed. The boy, now 5, requires constant support. But the family’s lack of knowledge about the condition has had profound impacts. Jason’s father questioned whether the condition had come from Janet’s side of the family, causing problems in their marriage. (Cerebral palsy is not genetic). Janet has avoided having another child.

“I got scared. Even now when people ask me if I will have another child, I say no. What if I go back and see the same thing again?”

Doctors say because the condition is caused by injury or pregnancy complications, a second child is no more likely to have it than any other child.

A failing healthcare system leaves families with few choices

In more developed countries these families have extensive support. In Rwanda, which is leading healthcare system reform on the continent, families have expanding national support and community-based programs. Public schools are training teachers in inclusive education, allowing children with learning and physical disabilities to study alongside their peers. Specialized centers offer tailored education plans, speech and physical therapy, and counseling to help parents navigate daily challenges. While resource challenges remain, experts say Rwanda’s model demonstrates how targeted investment and community health networks can help remove social stigma and give every child a chance to succeed.

In Liberia, outside of JFK, the government provides nothing. Mohamed Saka, program manager for the Disabilities Commission said the organization received just US$210,000 from government this fiscal year—up from US$200,000 the year before—but estimated it would need at least US$5 million to address even half of the country’s disability-related needs. He said the Commission does not currently have the technical capacity to provide services for children with conditions such as cerebral palsy and Down syndrome and is seeking partnerships with organizations with that experience.

FrontPage Africa/New Narratives contacted XX, the spokesman for the Ministry of Education, with questions about government support for families of children with complex needs. He did not respond before publication.

An American Missionary Family Shares Knowledge and Hope

An American missionary family with their own experience of cerebral palsy is doing their best to help. Amanda Brook and her husband had worked in the country since 2017. After their youngest daughter suffered a severe brain injury during birth in a US hospital, causing cerebral palsy, they fought to help improve her quality of life. As soon as she was healthy enough, they returned, determined to find a way to do the work they loved while raising a special needs child.

Soon they met Felecia Gibson who was raising a grandson with disabilities. Brook and Gibson spent hours sharing their experiences. Word quickly spread through the community that there was “a white baby like ours,” and families began arriving at Brooks’ home.

Those informal conversations grew into “King’s Kids”, a support group that brings together caregivers for practical training, emotional support and fellowship. Brooks said she chose the name because she wanted families to hear a different message from the one many had grown up with: that their children were not witches, dragons or cursed, but children created in the image of God and worthy of love and dignity.

King’s Kids teaches mothers how to position their children to avoid pressure sores. It shows them feeding techniques for children who have difficulty swallowing, and exercises that can help maintain muscle function and improve comfort. It creates a space where mothers who have been told their children are dragons and witches and snakes can sit together and say — my child is not cursed. My child is here. My child is loved.

The group has been life-changing for families. For many, the first King’s Kids session was the first time anyone had ever explained their child’s condition to them at all.

“I did not know the name,” said Felecia Gibson. “I did not know what caused it. I did not know what I could do. When they told me, I cried. Not because it was bad news. Because finally someone was telling me something true.”

Janet recalled a Bible passage read at a King’s Kids meeting — about a blind man whose disciples asked whether his condition was punishment for sin.

“Jesus said no,” Janet said. “It happened that God’s glory would be shown. From that day, I came home and I read that passage over and over again. And God encouraged me.”

She posts her son’s photographs on social media now. The couple takes him outside. They tell him they love him every day. “Before I used to look at him like I was being cursed. Now I feel like God has blessed me.”

And they have been inspired. Victoria’s mother-in-law founded her own informal school in a church building — currently capped at fourth grade — specifically so her granddaughter would have somewhere to go.

“She is not a witch,” Victoria said. “She never was. She is my child. And she deserves to be here.”

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 57-year-old grandmother in Todee District says she was raped in January. Seven months later, her case has not been heard, no government official has visited her, and the family of the accused has approached her with money and gifts, asking her to drop the case.
• The head of the SGBV unit at the Ministry of Justice concedes a lack of funds has meant his office has secured just two convictions in six years.
• The vice president of the Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia calls the failure to deliver justice for victims “a national emergency.”

By Tetee Gebro, gender and health correspondent with New Narratives

TODEE DISTRICT, Montserrado County — The first time they came, they brought L$18,000  (US$100). The second time the family brought a lapa, a traditional cloth.

When the family, whose 24-year-old son had been accused by multiple witnesses of raping the 57-year-old grandmother in broad daylight in front of her small grandson,  arrived with the cloth, the woman says she understood exactly what it meant.

“The boy ma bring the lapa; That the cloth her son take from on me,” she said in Liberian English. “That the cloth she come put back on me.”

She understood what the money was for too. “They are begging so I can agree so they can free their son.”

Most victims in Liberia eventually accept the money. Though the grandmother says she badly wants justice, she is beginning to think she has no choice but to do the same.

The woman’s quest for justice, documented by FrontPage Africa/New Narratives since January when she and witnesses say the crime took place, has shown the extraordinary obstacles that any victim of sexual and gender-based violence in Liberia must overcome, particularly those from rural areas. She and her community have had to raise hundreds of dollars – including to transport and detain the accused. The case was delayed when the case files, in the paper-based system, were lost. Finally the case has stalled because neither the woman nor the court have the funds to bring her to the courtroom in Monrovia.

The case has been a window into the dysfunctional justice system which has seen just two convictions in six years, says Isaac George, head of the Sexual and Gender Based Violence unit at the Ministry of Justice.

George said his unit has about 300 reported cases on his books right now. The unit has no functional forensic DNA laboratory to test semen samples and no vehicle for field visits. The only evidence they have in most rape cases rests largely on physical examinations at One Stop rape centers, which defense lawyers routinely challenge in court as opinion rather than scientific proof.

After the grandmother’s case made national news, George spoke to her by phone and told her she would have to find someone to bring her to Monrovia.  

“We do not have the means of going to Todee,” George said. “We do not have the means of shuttling from here to Todee and back. No. I blame the system. It is a systemic problem within our justice sector.”

And now, with two terms of court gone, the accused rapist, a 24-year-old identified in court records as Mohammed Bah, is eligible for bail because his case has not been heard in a timely manner. Like an 8-year-old victim whose case New Narratives exposed in February, the grandmother may soon have to live with the alleged perpetrator back in her community.

“If she doesn’t show up after two terms of court, we have no choice but to release him,” George said. “That is it.”

“Women are no longer safe,” said Bowoulo Taylor Kelly, vice president of the Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia. She said the pattern in this case has become routine. And defense lawyers are now learning to game the system.

“It is a new form — the defense moving in and saying failure to proceed — and then you see rape suspects walking freely and going back and committing more rape,” Taylor Kelly said. “And then we still have this perpetual cycle of SGBV going on because people see that they are not being dealt with within the full extent of the law.”

“This should not be happening in a civilized society. It has become a national emergency,” says Bowoulo Taylor Kelly, vice president of the Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia.

$22 Million EU-Funded Spotlight Project Fails to Deliver Justice

Many experts hoped things would have been better by now. The European Union’s Spotlight Initiative arrived in Liberia in 2017 as part of a 5-year $22 million partnership with the United Nations, promising to help women and girls live free from violence. (It was part of a bigger project in 8 countries in Africa). It could point to real breakthroughs: traditional leaders signed an unprecedented statement in 2019 banning female genital mutilation and closing the “bush schools” where the practice is carried out, and the country built new systems to track gender-based violence cases. But a 2023 audit by the European Court of Auditors found that the promise on paper rarely reached the women it was meant to protect. Because no law actually criminalized FGM, victims still struggled to access justice, and auditors who visited the country were told the practice continued in the very counties that had signed up to the ban. The Domestic Violence Act, approved in 2019, remained hobbled by practical and cultural obstacles — and the initiative had no way of monitoring whether any of these laws were being enforced at all.

For rural women, the gap between commitment and protection is starkest in the justice system itself. The audit found that reported cases of violence against women in Liberia fell, rather than rose, over the life of the program — from a baseline of 2,105 down to 920 — a drop that auditors said signaled the difficulty of reaching and being believed by an under-resourced system, where police and court records are often too incomplete to even classify a complaint as gender-based violence.

Attitudes appeared to harden: Liberia was one of only two African countries where the share of people who believed a man was justified in beating his wife worsened over the period measured. And with the four-year program judged far too short to shift entrenched social norms — surveyed EU officials estimated real change takes around sixteen years — much of the work risked unravelling once the money was gone, since most of the activities auditors examined in Liberia were found unlikely to be sustainable.

New Narratives’ reporting shows that the auditors warnings have come true.

A new $13 million “Spotlight 2.0.” kicked off in 2025 and runs until 2029. A Gender-Based Violence Information Management System is planned that is supposed 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 are being followed up. It is intended to improve coordination, services, and data systems with the Ministry of Gender in a central role.

Activists say the case should be a wakeup call to the government to accelerate that work. Taylor Kelly says said the SGBV unit must receive the vehicles, equipment, and budget to reach survivors where they are. She said community-level legal aid and referral systems must exist so a woman in Todee does not have to navigate a city she has never visited to access justice.

“The state cannot take a responsibility and just put it on one group of people. You will have to lead,” she said.

“Let us go to court“

After three visits from the family, the grandmother is still holding out. She knows what the money and gifts buy: her silence, his freedom, the end of a case that has already cost her more than anyone has acknowledged.

She knows her photograph went on social media after the rape. She knows what her community saw. She knows what they said about her. When the family came with their apologies and their cloth and their money, she felt all of it at once — the violation, the public humiliation, and now the quiet pressure to make it disappear.

“All that I passed through,” she said. “My picture go all on Facebook. You supposed to know that your son bring big disgrace on me. All that one — his family coming to beg.”

She still holds a belief, after months of silence from the state, that what happened to her should be said out loud in a room where people have to listen.

“Let us go to court,” she says. “Let us talk the thing that happened to me so people can understand.”

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 57-year-old grandmother in Todee District says she was raped in January. Seven months later, her case has not been heard, no government official has visited her, and the family of the accused has approached her with money and gifts, asking her to drop the case.
• The head of the SGBV unit at the Ministry of Justice concedes a lack of funds has meant his office has secured just two convictions in six years.
• The vice president of the Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia calls the failure to deliver justice for victims “a national emergency.”

By Tetee Gebro, gender and health correspondent with New Narratives

TODEE DISTRICT, Montserrado County — The first time they came, they brought L$18,000  (US$100). The second time the family brought a lapa, a traditional cloth.

When the family, whose 24-year-old son had been accused by multiple witnesses of raping the 57-year-old grandmother in broad daylight in front of her small grandson,  arrived with the cloth, the woman says she understood exactly what it meant.

“The boy ma bring the lapa; That the cloth her son take from on me,” she said in Liberian English. “That the cloth she come put back on me.”

She understood what the money was for too. “They are begging so I can agree so they can free their son.”

Most victims in Liberia eventually accept the money. Though the grandmother says she badly wants justice, she is beginning to think she has no choice but to do the same.

The woman’s quest for justice, documented by FrontPage Africa/New Narratives since January when she and witnesses say the crime took place, has shown the extraordinary obstacles that any victim of sexual and gender-based violence in Liberia must overcome, particularly those from rural areas. She and her community have had to raise hundreds of dollars – including to transport and detain the accused. The case was delayed when the case files, in the paper-based system, were lost. Finally the case has stalled because neither the woman nor the court have the funds to bring her to the courtroom in Monrovia.

The case has been a window into the dysfunctional justice system which has seen just two convictions in six years, says Isaac George, head of the Sexual and Gender Based Violence unit at the Ministry of Justice.

George said his unit has about 300 reported cases on his books right now. The unit has no functional forensic DNA laboratory to test semen samples and no vehicle for field visits. The only evidence they have in most rape cases rests largely on physical examinations at One Stop rape centers, which defense lawyers routinely challenge in court as opinion rather than scientific proof.

After the grandmother’s case made national news, George spoke to her by phone and told her she would have to find someone to bring her to Monrovia.  

“We do not have the means of going to Todee,” George said. “We do not have the means of shuttling from here to Todee and back. No. I blame the system. It is a systemic problem within our justice sector.”

And now, with two terms of court gone, the accused rapist, a 24-year-old identified in court records as Mohammed Bah, is eligible for bail because his case has not been heard in a timely manner. Like an 8-year-old victim whose case New Narratives exposed in February, the grandmother may soon have to live with the alleged perpetrator back in her community.

“If she doesn’t show up after two terms of court, we have no choice but to release him,” George said. “That is it.”

“Women are no longer safe,” said Bowoulo Taylor Kelly, vice president of the Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia. She said the pattern in this case has become routine. And defense lawyers are now learning to game the system.

“It is a new form — the defense moving in and saying failure to proceed — and then you see rape suspects walking freely and going back and committing more rape,” Taylor Kelly said. “And then we still have this perpetual cycle of SGBV going on because people see that they are not being dealt with within the full extent of the law.”

“This should not be happening in a civilized society. It has become a national emergency,” says Bowoulo Taylor Kelly, vice president of the Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia.

$22 Million EU-Funded Spotlight Project Fails to Deliver Justice

Many experts hoped things would have been better by now. The European Union’s Spotlight Initiative arrived in Liberia in 2017 as part of a 5-year $22 million partnership with the United Nations, promising to help women and girls live free from violence. (It was part of a bigger project in 8 countries in Africa). It could point to real breakthroughs: traditional leaders signed an unprecedented statement in 2019 banning female genital mutilation and closing the “bush schools” where the practice is carried out, and the country built new systems to track gender-based violence cases. But a 2023 audit by the European Court of Auditors found that the promise on paper rarely reached the women it was meant to protect. Because no law actually criminalized FGM, victims still struggled to access justice, and auditors who visited the country were told the practice continued in the very counties that had signed up to the ban. The Domestic Violence Act, approved in 2019, remained hobbled by practical and cultural obstacles — and the initiative had no way of monitoring whether any of these laws were being enforced at all.

For rural women, the gap between commitment and protection is starkest in the justice system itself. The audit found that reported cases of violence against women in Liberia fell, rather than rose, over the life of the program — from a baseline of 2,105 down to 920 — a drop that auditors said signaled the difficulty of reaching and being believed by an under-resourced system, where police and court records are often too incomplete to even classify a complaint as gender-based violence.

Attitudes appeared to harden: Liberia was one of only two African countries where the share of people who believed a man was justified in beating his wife worsened over the period measured. And with the four-year program judged far too short to shift entrenched social norms — surveyed EU officials estimated real change takes around sixteen years — much of the work risked unravelling once the money was gone, since most of the activities auditors examined in Liberia were found unlikely to be sustainable.

New Narratives’ reporting shows that the auditors warnings have come true.

A new $13 million “Spotlight 2.0.” kicked off in 2025 and runs until 2029. A Gender-Based Violence Information Management System is planned that is supposed 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 are being followed up. It is intended to improve coordination, services, and data systems with the Ministry of Gender in a central role.

Activists say the case should be a wakeup call to the government to accelerate that work. Taylor Kelly says said the SGBV unit must receive the vehicles, equipment, and budget to reach survivors where they are. She said community-level legal aid and referral systems must exist so a woman in Todee does not have to navigate a city she has never visited to access justice.

“The state cannot take a responsibility and just put it on one group of people. You will have to lead,” she said.

“Let us go to court“

After three visits from the family, the grandmother is still holding out. She knows what the money and gifts buy: her silence, his freedom, the end of a case that has already cost her more than anyone has acknowledged.

She knows her photograph went on social media after the rape. She knows what her community saw. She knows what they said about her. When the family came with their apologies and their cloth and their money, she felt all of it at once — the violation, the public humiliation, and now the quiet pressure to make it disappear.

“All that I passed through,” she said. “My picture go all on Facebook. You supposed to know that your son bring big disgrace on me. All that one — his family coming to beg.”

She still holds a belief, after months of silence from the state, that what happened to her should be said out loud in a room where people have to listen.

“Let us go to court,” she says. “Let us talk the thing that happened to me so people can understand.”

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 measles outbreak struck a remote town in January, sickening several families before anyone understood what was spreading through the community.
• Families treated sick children with herbs and home remedies, including alcohol, because clinics were far, locked, or had no medicine. One four-year-old boy died. Another lost his hearing.
• Liberia faces a vaccine financing gap of more than US$1 million a year as World Bank support ends in 2026. Health advocates warn what happened in Kiangia Town could happen anywhere if that gap is not filled.

By Tetee Gebro and Joyclyn Wea, gender and health correspondents with New Narratives

KIANGIA TOWN, Todee District — The measles came to this town in January.

Nobody announced it. Nobody warned families here. It moved quietly from home to home, the way measles does — through the air, between children playing; spreading before anyone understood what was happening.

By the time people in Kiangia Town realized an outbreak was unfolding, several families were already fighting it. There were no medications at the nearest clinic. In some cases there was no clinic open at all. So parents and grandparents turned to what they could find — traditional remedies of leaves, beans, honey and alcohol that experts say would do nothing at all.

Some children survived. Samuel did not. He was four years old.

Health advocates say Samuel’s death was avoidable; what happened in Kiangia Town is a warning of what could happen across the country as donor money for vaccines dries up.

Measles is one of the most contagious diseases in the world. One infected person can spread it to as many as eighteen others in an unvaccinated community. It is especially dangerous for children. It is one of the leading causes of childhood blindness in West Africa. Children who develop brain inflammation — one of measles’ most serious complications — have a one-in-four chance of permanent damage, including deafness, seizures, or intellectual disability. Measles kills about one percent of those it infects in Liberia — and in the poorest, most remote districts, that figure can reach ten percent.

To stop it from spreading, health experts say at least ninety-five percent of a community must be vaccinated. Below that level, the disease moves quickly — and in communities like Kiangia Town, it moves without resistance. 

Measles vaccination coverage in Liberia currently stands at 82 percent — a significant recovery after it dropped to just 58 percent during the COVID pandemic in 2021, but still well below the 95 percent threshold needed to stop the disease from spreading. And now, the money that has helped protect Liberian children against measles is running out.

Liberia has relied on foreign partners to pay for vaccines. Between 2020 and 2024, the Global Vaccine Alliance, known as GAVI, gave US$13 million to the country’s immunization program. Liberia’s government gave US$2 million in co-financing— about 15 percent of the cost, below the 20 percent share Gavi expects. But the money did not come from the government’s coffers. Instead, the World Bank provided loans to the government to pay its share.

Now the World Bank is ending the loans. Starting this year, the government must find more than US$1 million annually to pay for vaccines. Advocates are worried. In 2021 and 2023, the Weah administration disbursed nothing at all toward vaccine co-financing.

But in Liberia, even when money is allocated it doesn’t reach people. A June 2025 report by Public Health Initiative Liberia found that lawmakers approved US$79 million for primary health care over those years, but only US$28 million was actually spent. More than US$51 million never reached the clinics and communities it was meant for. The money had been approved. It just never arrived. 

“When funding is not available on time, it results in stock-outs,” said Joyce L. Kilikpo, executive director of Public Health Initiative Liberia. “Children come to the facility, but the vaccines are not there. These are not just numbers. These are children who will be left unprotected. Some of them will be permanently damaged. Some of them will die — and none of that has to happen.”

With no warning and no medicine, families were left to fight the outbreak alone

Even an early warning of the outbreak may have saved Samuel’s life. His grandmother Rebecca, brought him and his three-year-old sister home to Kiangia Town from their home with their mother in Fendell, not knowing measles was already moving through the community.

One night at church Rebecca felt feverish. The children were restless and clingy. By the next morning, their skin was hot. She gave them boiled herbs Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The fever did not break. Their skin kept getting hotter. By Wednesday, she heard the word measles for the first time along with more advice for traditional cures.

“They say maybe that the thing what is passing around in the town, look for beans leave and boil it,” she said. She mixed the leaves with honey and fermented cane juice that had become alcoholic.

But the children were getting worse. The little girl’s palms were covered in bumps. Her eyes turned red and her feet blue. Neither child could sleep. During the day they would not eat. When Rebecca and her sister, who was helping her, forced food into them they vomited it back.

By Thursday, neither child could open their eyes. By Friday, Rebecca found Samuel unable to move. The people around her told her not to worry. The sun was hot, they said. She rubbed chalk on him. His tiny body began stiffening.

Her sister grabbed him and they ran. The first clinic they reached was locked. At Plemu Clinic, the health worker said he could not treat him. “The way the boy looking, I can’t touch him,” Rebecca recalled him saying. “You carry him to the next clinic.”

By the time they arrived at Gballey Kamarah Memorial Clinic, Samuel was gone.

When asked why she waited so many days before going to the clinic? Rebecca’s answer was simple and devastating. “No money.” 

Plemu Clinic did not respond to requests for comment before publication.

Samuel’s mother was in Fendell. His father and the father of his sister had disappeared during the pregnancies. Rebecca’s own husband died in 2020. She survived by doing daily labor when she can find it — earning the equivalent of US$2.50 a day.Also in Kiangia Town Marcia Morris was fighting the same battle, with three children sick.

Their bodies burned with fever. Their eyes became red and swollen. One child vomited whenever he tried to eat.

Morris took them to the nearest clinic. But there is no cure for measles. Health workers can only manage the fever with paracetamol, and the World Health Organization recommends vitamin A supplements to reduce the severity and risk of death. At the clinic Morris reached, there was nothing.

Morris’s children survived but her oldest son, 13, lost a significant amount of his eyesight. Days passed before health workers arrived from Monrovia. By then, the outbreak had already done what outbreaks do when they meet communities without vaccines. It had taken what it came for and moved on.

About 45 minutes drive away in Garnos Town, Fatu Jarbateh’s body began to ache and she thought it was from hard work in the field beating palm and digging cassava. When the headache came and her body began to feel heavy, she waited.

Then her skin got hot. Red bumps spread across her body. Her eyes turned red. Soon her baby became sick too and she became scared. “We walk for two hour before we reach to the clinic,” she said. “No bike.”

At the Gballey Kamarah Memorial Clinic the pair were diagnosed with measles. Fatu could not say what the clinic gave them and the clinic refused to speak to FrontPage Africa/New Narratives directing all questions to the Ministry of Health. But Fatu said staff told her both she and the child might have died had they come later.

Fatu does not know anything about World Bank loans or co-financing agreements. But when asked what she thought about international partners cutting the funding that helps pay for vaccines in Liberia, her answer was clear.

“We will just die,” she said. “All of us.”

A New U.S. Health Compact That Does Not Buy Vaccines

There will be no help coming from anywhere else. The cuts come amid a massive pullback in aid. The United States’ Trump administration has made major cuts to global bodies including a more than US$1 billion from Gavi. The United Kingdom, another major donor, has cut its foreign aid budget by 40 percent. Gavi warns the cuts could leave 75 million children unvaccinated over the next five years and cause more than 1.2 million deaths.

Liberia’s health sector is also making a painful adjustment to a new five-year health agreement with the United States, worth $124 million, slashing U.S. health aid to Liberia by more than 60 percent according to the Center for Global Development. In recent years U.S. aid made up more than half of the roughly $200 million bilateral aid given annually to Liberia.

The full text of the agreement was never officially released and became publicly available only through a leak. Health advocates said they found no provision covering the cost of routine childhood vaccines.

Advocates are calling on the Liberian government to treat vaccine financing as a fixed obligation. They want the $1 million annual co-financing required by Gavi built into the national budget and released on time. They are calling for a joint monitoring committee made up of health ministry officials, finance officials, and civil society to track vaccine spending quarterly and publish the results. And they want the government to negotiate a clear transition plan with Gavi before donor support disappears entirely.

Rep. Julie Fartoma Wiah of Lofa County has been raising the alarm for more than a year, calling for a Legislative Caucus on immunization and primary health care. New Narratives contacted Rep. Wiah directly via WhatsApp to ask whether legislators have responded to her calls. She agreed to an interview date but then did not make herself available or respond to calls or messages.

Adolphus Clarke, program manager of the Expanded Programme on Immunization at the Ministry of Health, set two interview dates over a two week period. He did not make himself available for either.

New Narratives also contacted Dr. Sia Wata Camanor, interim director-general of the National Public Health Institute of Liberia, with questions about the outbreak in Kiangia Town, vaccination coverage in Todee District, and NPHIL’s preparedness for future outbreaks as donor funding declines. Dr. Camanor asked that the questions be sent in writing. New Narratives complied but Dr. Camanor did not respond before publication.

Back in Kiangia Town, the outbreak is over. Life has returned to what it was before January — but Rebecca’s grief is still overwhelming. Rebecca asks why the government could not have warned her to keep her grandchildren away from an outbreak that could take their lives.

“Before I came here my children were alright,” she said, wishing she could go back in time. “In the morning I will bathe them and they will just lay out here sleeping.”

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:

• Sexual health advocates say just one in 10 Liberian students receive formal sex education, leaving many young people at risk of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. 
• One in three Liberian girls become pregnant before 19, one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the world. High teen pregnancy is strongly linked to high rates of poverty.
• Many Liberian parents avoid talking about sex, leaving young people to learn from unreliable sources.

By Tetee Gebro, gender correspondent with New Narratives

BENSONVILLE, Montserrado — Benetta was 17 when she first became pregnant. No one had ever explained sex, contraception, or how pregnancy happens to her. People in her community started talking and urged her to visit a clinic. A nurse told her she would be a mother in a few months.

“The thing surprised me I na even know,” she said speaking in Liberian English at her home here. “Until I was in my five months.”

Now 27 and a mother of two, Benetta says that moment set off a chain of consequences she is still living with. She gave up on returning to school and has found herself trapped in the same life her mother had – growing food and struggling to survive extreme poverty. (Last names are being withheld to protect women and children from stigma.)

Across Liberia, nine in every 10 young people are growing up without basic information about sex and their bodies, according to the United Nations Population Fund. Interviews with girls, parents, students, and health workers detailed a pattern of silence — where families avoid difficult conversations, schools provide little education, and young people are left to learn from friends or guesswork.

“Sex is still a huge taboo,” said Aminata Kamara Sneh, country focal person for the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education. “Young people depend on their peers, and the information they get is often wrong.”

National data from the 2020 Liberia Demographic and Health Survey showed one in three girls under 19 in Liberia are already mothers or pregnant, one of the highest rates in the world. Teenage pregnancy is both a cause and a consequence of poverty — cutting short girls’ education, limiting their economic prospects, and perpetuating cycles of deprivation.

Countries with high teenage pregnancy rates face compounding development costs — overburdened health systems, reduced female labor force participation, and slower economic growth — as each generation of girls forced out of school by early motherhood passes the same vulnerabilities on to the next.

Experts say that makes the lack of sex education a problem for all Liberians. Low levels of sex education contribute to teenage pregnancy, unsafe abortions, sexually transmitted infections, and school dropouts — problems that place additional pressure on Liberia’s struggling health system and trap many young people in poverty. Many young people’s first sexual experiences are forced, which Kamara Sneh linked in part to the lack of places where the idea of consent is openly taught.

Without information, she said, “the majority of young people are making decisions about relationships, pregnancy, and disease without understanding the risks — and the consequences are affecting the entire country.”

Girls unprepared for motherhood often means their children are trapped in poverty

Benetta grew up here in Tolbert Camp, 30 miles from the capital Monrovia, where survival depended on hard labor in nearby farms and forests. “Every other day if you not go in the bush you will not make it,” she said.

When she first got her period, Benetta’s mother gave her sanitary pads but did not explain what was happening to her body. Now, she wonders how different her life could have been if she had prepared. “If somebody was going to tell me… I was going to prevent myself,” she said.

Just as Benetta’s mother struggled to provide opportunities for her to escape poverty, she is struggling to do the same for her children. Benetta didn’t know how to care for babies. She never knew her own father and relied heavily on her mother for help until she died suddenly from high blood pressure three years ago, when the oldest child was six years.

Benetta said the second time she became pregnant, she knew the risks. She was using a three-month contraceptive injection to avoid another pregnancy. But the man she was with insisted she stop, saying he wanted a child and making it a condition for staying in the relationship. With no financial support, limited access to contraceptives, and hoping he would remain and provide for the family, she agreed. When she became pregnant, he left.

Benetta was alone, with nothing but a little money here and there from the father of her first child. Food was often scarce — some nights, she said, the family survived on gari. Getting clothes and basic supplies for her babies was a constant struggle.

At one point, overwhelmed and frightened, she considered ending the second pregnancy. “The tension was too much,” she said. “I wanted to take it out.” But the pregnancy was already too advanced and there are no safe or legal options for girls in rural communities to end pregnancies.

Today, she farms cassava and corn to get by. She wants to continue her education but says she has had to make sacrifices.

“I can’t send my children to school and send myself.”

Teenage mothers like Benetta find it almost impossible to escape poverty, said Lelia Precious-Dolo, executive director of Help a Mother and Newborn Initiative, a Liberian nonprofit. Some are abandoned by families when they become pregnant. Many cannot afford childcare and so cannot return to school. Health facilities, even when they are reachable, often do not have the contraceptives they need. Stigma from teachers and communities can further isolate them, making help harder to seek, even where services exist. 

“You will see a 17-year-old girl having two or three children,” Dolo said. “Because she has the first one, nobody corrects her or supports her. She must depend on a man. She goes back again.” 

For many young people, that silence starts at home. David Kpandeh, a father in Johnsonville, said his children were born before he was ready because no one taught him how babies were made.

Now, raising teenage daughters of his own, he wants a different life for them. He can see they are exposed to misinformation on social media so he talks openly with his daughters about sex, condoms, and early pregnancy.

“Our children are very small and they go to school with big phones,” he said. “They can see a lot of things.”

But not all parents agree. Some in the community here said it was not parents’ job to educate children on the subject that they found uncomfortable.

“I don’t like it,” said James Kamara, another parent in the community. “If they want to learn, that’s their business.”

Experts say that is a dangerous position, leaving children powerless to make good choices. The consequences are visible in homes and clinics across the country.

At nearby Johnsonville Community clinic girls as young as 14 come pregnant. The clinic records about 30 to 40 teenage pregnancies each month.

“A lot of our patients are not informed about sex,” said Larwuo Walker, a midwife. “A lot of them get into it with no knowledge.”

Like Benetta, Mamia grew up here in Tolbert Camp. Now 21, she also dropped out of school after becoming pregnant at 17. Mamia says her mother warned her to stay away from boys but didn’t give her the information she needed. “She’s supposed to set me down and advise me about it,” Mamia said. Now she blames the lack of communication for changing the direction of her life.“I was going to finish my education.”

Instead of being in school with dreams of being a nurse, she watches her children and farms with her parents. “I’m supposed to be out of high school,” she said. “But now I’m in the bush hauling palm before I can get a living.”

The consequences reach beyond Mamia herself. One of her children died after being sick since birth. With neither of the children’s fathers supporting her financially, little money for treatment, and little understanding of how to properly care for a constantly sick child she was powerless. The family relied mostly on herbs and home remedies as the child’s health failed.

Her mother, Bendu, said she regrets what happened.“I wanted her to finish school first.” She said she was a strict parent and thought she could protect her daughter from pregnancy simply by keeping her at home. Now she admits that was a mistake. “Some children can be afraid… but some will still do it.” 

For many young women in Liberia, silence is not protection — it is the problem. Comprehensive sex education has been on the policy agenda for years — the Ministry of Education began integrating reproductive health into the national curriculum in 2018, with funding from international donors — but implementation has lagged, particularly outside urban centres. Legal barriers compound the access gap: parental consent requirements still prevent adolescents from obtaining contraceptives, and entrenched gender norms continue to limit uptake of available services.

The Boakai administration, in office since January 2024, has signalled ambition on gender but sex education has not been a visible priority. 

After initially agreeing to an interview, Maxim Bleeten, director of communications for the education ministry, did not respond to calls or text messages seeking comment. But in an interview with Frontpage Africa/New Narratives in June 2025, Jarso Maley Jallah, education minister, said expanding sex education was important and on her agenda. But with reduced international funding for schools, and a limited national budget, the ministry is still struggling to get enough paid teachers in schools to teach anything.  

The United Nations Population Fund launched a five-year initiative with Irish support, targeting adolescent girls across Grand Gedeh, Montserrado, and Rivercess counties, and a Swedish-funded network of local organizations led by the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education has delivered sex education in schools and communities in other counties for four years. Together, they have carried the load that government has yet to pick up. But some of that support looks set to end with the Swedish embassies plans to close its embassy by August 31.

As donor support dries up and government fails to fill the gap, many experts warn that the gap between policy and classroom is not abstract — it is women like Benetta and Mamia, their children and another lost generation.

The story was a 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:

• Liberia has handed management of its national identification system to Austrian firm OSD, relying on private capital to fund an enrollment process the government says it cannot afford.
• Key details of the deal remain secret — including how OSD was selected and the findings of a presidential committee report on last year’s failed rollout, which has not been released five months after submission.

• Civil society groups warn the concession puts the biometric data of 5.3 million Liberians at risk, with no data protection law in place to govern how a foreign company handles citizens’ personal information.

By Tetee Gebro and Joyclyn Wea with New Narratives

Nearly a year after public anger forced the government to suspend the chaotic rollout of the national digital identification registration, Liberia is preparing to hire a private company to help restart the enrolment and operate the system.

The system will digitize the data of the Liberian population, with the goal of making banking and a range of other services faster and more secure, supercharging technical innovation, and bringing the country up to the standard of most countries in the world. 

The head of the National Registry, Andrew Peters, said the government has hired the Austrian company OSD, which will bring capital and expertise that the government does not have. The company website claims to have over 200 years of experience. Digital modernization of Liberia’s public services is part of a broader World Bank-funded governance and digital services project called the GREAT Project. But the World Bank told FrontPage Africa/New Narratives its funding is not being used in the new agreement with OSD.

But the plan has been mired in secrecy that is angering transparency activists. The government has not said how the company was selected, or what the deal entails. A presidential committee report that was supposed to guide the process has also not been released to the public. The original rollout was halted in August last year when it became clear that Technobrain, the Kenyan company that set up the database, was still owed $1.7 million and would not give the government full access until that was paid. It is not clear whether that payment was made.

Peters confirmed that the steering committee tasked with reviewing what went wrong with the original rollout, and recommending a path forward, submitted its report to President Joseph Boakai in November. Five months later the report remains secret.

“We’ll get to the public,” Peters said. “We want to reach a reasonable position, and I will be able to speak to the press.”

The original contract is now being made into a concession – a much larger deal that would bring in a private company to help enroll all 5.3 million Liberians. The original contract with Kenyan company Technobrain targeted only one to two million people because the government could not afford to enroll the entire population under that model, said Peters. The estimated cost of enrolling everyone is as much as $US40 million and may go higher – too big a stretch for a government with competing crises and an annual budget of just $1.2 billion.

“The envelope of the government is so small,” he said. “The government would not be able to commit, in a one-year budget, over $US40 million to the National Identification Registry alone.”

Under the proposed concession, OSD would finance the process and recover its investment over time. The system is modeled on Ghana’s national identification system, which was developed through a public-private partnership with Identity Management Systems Ltd., a subsidiary of the Ghana-based Margins Group.

Peters said an inter-ministerial concession committee, including the ministries of finance and justice, the Liberia Revenue Authority, the Land Transport Authority, is handling the final stages of the concession process. It was due to report back to President Boakai by the end of last month. Peters said negotiations had largely concluded and that the committee’s report should already be on the president’s desk.

Then the concession will have to go to the Legislature for approval, a notoriously difficult process that is widely known to have required payments to lawmakers on many occasions. Peters said he did not expect lawmakers to oppose the agreement, saying the legislators themselves have repeatedly pushed for a more affordable and accessible identification system.

Transparency Activists Call for Full Disclosure of Concession and Data Protection Plans

Peters’ assurance has not allayed the concerns of transparency activists. Harold Aidoo, head of Integrity Watch Liberia, said such public-private partnerships can help governments deliver large projects they cannot afford on their own. But he questioned the secrecy around the selection of the company.

“Who is this company? What is their track record? These are things the public should know,” Aidoo said.

Peters insisted that the concession process with OSD is being conducted in accordance with Liberia’s procurement laws. The Public Procurement and Concessions Act says government contracts and concession deals must be handled through a process that is fair, open, and competitive.

The bigger concern, say activists, is the protection of the personal data of Liberians who sign up to the system. “Because we’re talking about citizens’ information, there must be strong safeguards and transparency,” said Aidoo.

That is a major problem for Liberia. The country has no comprehensive law protecting people’s personal data. That means there are no rules governing how the government, companies, or other organizations collect, store, or share information of ordinary Liberians — and no government agency to protect them. The country’s constitution offers a basic right to privacy, and a 2019 technology policy sets out some principles for handling data, but neither carries the force of a dedicated law.

The government, with support from the European Union, has drafted a Personal Data Protection and Privacy Act and held public consultations on it in late 2024. But the bill has not yet been passed by the Legislature — meaning for now, Liberians remain largely unprotected.

Transparency advocates said the government’s move to a private concession could put citizens’ fingerprints, photos, and personal records in foreign hands. They worry how much say the company will have in deciding how much people will pay to register, and whether a system that already failed under debt, poor access, and public anger will be rebuilt in the public interest.

“We don’t know what a company is going to do with our personal data behind our backs,” said Lawrence Yealue, chairman of the National Civil Society Council of Liberia.

He warned that a lack of transparency in selecting the company could further undermine public trust in a system that has already left them disillusioned.

But Registry chief Peters rejected concerns that the company would control Liberians’ personal data. He said all biometric information collected under the system – including the fingerprints, photographs and records already gathered – are physically stored in the country and are controlled by the registry.

“The data belongs to the government,” Peters said.

He said the concession agreement will not allow OSD to own or control Liberians’ data. He said Liberian staff would eventually be trained to manage the system independently.

“We’ll never negotiate any deal that will hire private investors to have access to our data,” Peter said.

How Liberia Got Here

Liberia’s national identification crisis began with a promise to modernize government services. In April 2025, President Boakai issued an executive order making biometric identification enrollment compulsory for Liberian citizens and foreign residents. The order tied the identification card to key services, including banking, telecommunications, healthcare, education, and immigration.

But the system was not ready. New Narratives and FrontPage Africa reported that the rollout quickly became chaotic, with long queues, poor communication, limited registration centers, and people being denied services before they could even get the card. The government first extended the deadline by 76 days, then suspended the rollout indefinitely after public anger grew.

Rick Scott, a 54-year-old businessman told New Narratives at the time, that he arrived at a National Identification Registry center in Red Light before dawn. By evening, he went home empty-handed, for the fourth time in a week. Like hundreds of others, he had left work, paid his $5 registration fee, and joined long lines.

“I leave my job in the morning and come to find an identification card because it’s a government mandate,” Scott said. “We are all fighting to get an ID card, and then the process is just going slowly. Some of us are not feeling well, but we are forced to come here.”

The problems were worse outside Monrovia. Peters acknowledged that many counties had only one enrollment center. A person traveling from Foya to Voinjama, for example, could pay transport to enroll, return home, and then pay again when called back to receive the card.

In March 2026 New Narratives/FrontPage Africa reported that the program was stalled by an unpaid $1.7 million debt to Techno Brain, the Kenyan company that built the biometric database, leaving millions unenrolled and many cards expired. President Boakai appointed the task force under the leadership of Kofi Woods, the national security advisor, to report on the breakdown. Techno Brain required payment in order to release the database.

Peters said he expects enrollment to restart in the “not too distant from now, the Registry will be back on its footing” with a target of enrolling the entire population within 18 months of the deal being signed.

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.

Part 3 in a series documenting the journey of a 57-year-old alleged rape victim from rural Montserra to obtain justice.

Summary:

• A 57-year-old rape survivor whose struggle to get justice after she said she was raped in broad daylight has been documented by FrontPage Africa/New Narratives, is still waiting for a court date four months later.
• Court officials said the case file, which was missing, has now been found and the case may go to court next term, starting this month. But experts warn delays could see the accused rapist freed on bail.
• The case has angered women’s rights advocates who have condemned the failure of law enforcement and courts to keep victims safe.  

By Tetee Gebro, gender correspondent with New Narratives

TODEE, Montserrado County — On a recent morning, the 57-year-old grandmother at the center of a rape case that has outraged anti-gender-based violence advocates, returned to the gold field where her life changed four months ago.

Her body and mind have not recovered from what she said was a violent assault by a passing motorcyclist that took place here, in front of her young grandson, as she returned from a morning’s work panning for gold. An elderly man was unable to stop the attacker. It was only the arrival of another cyclist that the perpetrator stopped.

“I came on this side this morning,” she said quietly. “But all my body hurting me.”

After the rape the woman faced a second ordeal as police and court officials demanded fees for every step of the process to report the rape. She was even asked to pay the costs of keeping the alleged perpetrator in jail. Since then, she has heard nothing.

“No, nobody call me yet,” she said. “I have no idea what will happen.”

Experts say her case highlights serious problems in Liberia’s justice system, where missing files, illegal fees and delays prevent almost all rape cases from reaching court. FrontPage Africa has been tracking the progress of the woman’s case to highlight the challenges victims of gender-based violence face in getting justice.  

Gender Ministry data showed more than 2,700 rape cases were reported in Liberia in 2024, with Montserrado County recording the highest number. Advocates say the real number of cases is likely higher, as many victims never report it.

But dysfunctional record keeping has made it impossible to know how many cases make it to court or how many convictions are secured. The justice and gender ministries referred this reporter to each other for the data. Isaac George, head of the Gender Ministry’s Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Unit, said the office is being renovated, the files are unretrievable and the only person who might have the numbers on a computer was out sick.

Officials Concede in Liberia’s Paper-Based Records System, Files Get Lost

FrontPage Africa/New Narratives has been documenting the quest of the 57-year-old woman since her attack in January in an effort to document the struggles rape victims, especially those in rural areas, face to get justice.

The woman, whom FPA is not identifying to protect her from retaliation, first told her story in February — describing how she and her community paid money at nearly every stage just to move the case forward, even though George told this reporter that rape victims should not pay any fees.

Four months later, her case has still not reached court. Dysfunctional record keeping has also played a role in this case. For weeks, officials could not even find the case file.

Last week, after multiple requests from this reporter, George, said the file had been found and the case is expected to be heard in the next term of court starting next month.

George confirmed the delay was caused by the missing file. But, concerningly, said such problems are not unusual.

“We have cases like that… sometimes files disappear,” he said.

At the Ministry of Justice, Gabriel Ndupellar, assistant minister for corrections, said delays often happen because case files are not properly handled between courts.

“The magistrate court commits the person… and does not forward the file, so the prosecuting attorney does not know the person is there,” he said.

Unlike most of the rest of the world that uses electronic files, Liberia’s courts still operate with paper records.

“These are paper documents… they get missing along the way,” Ndupellar said.

Delays Risk Perpetrators’ Escape and Add to High Pretrial Detention Number

Delays in taking a case to court have many consequences. If the accused rapist has a good lawyer delays may allow them to escape justice altogether. Under Liberian law, suspects must be tried within two terms of court. If that does not happen, their lawyers can argue that their rights have been violated and seek release. Once released, most never come back to face trial.

If they don’t have a good lawyer, they will join Liberia’s long list of defendants awaiting trial while incarcerated. Seventy percent of Liberia’s prisoners have never faced trial, one of the highest rates of pretrial incarceration in the world. Some have been there longer than the sentence they would have received had they been convicted.          

“If a case is not properly processed, then something is wrong,” said Tiawan Gongloe, former solicitor general and human rights lawyer. “It is a violation of human rights, Justice is not being served.”

Gongloe faults George and his unit for not taking responsibility.

“The SGBV unit cannot simply say it does not know about a case.”

Other Factors Including Pressure From Families Convinces Many Victims to Drop Cases

The alleged victim is now experiencing another of the major challenges that stop cases from proceeding in Liberia: She said the suspect’s family recently came to her, asking her to drop the case.

“They said they will pay my expenses so we can forget about it,” she said. So far, her family has refused. “My brother said he will call the authorities.”

But the family said it has not given up and plans to return. Advocates say, as case drag on with no progress in sight, many frustrated victims give up and take the money.

For now, the grandmother, who has gone back to panning for gold for survival, says she will not be one of them. She wants justice.

“I want them to take my case to court,” she said.

The story was a 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 donor had no say in the story’s content.