a developing liberia

If I could predict the future for my country and SDG, I envision violence. 

Liberia is a notorioulsy violent country and even though the nation is undergoing changes to this issue, unfortunately, violence is a bitter constant;  rage and destruction have always lingered in this country, and it has been proven by many years of multiple civil wars. This view might be percieved as pessimistic, but I’d rather refer to it as realistic. 

And with regards to my SDG, violence has lingered so long in this country without any reinforcement I do not see any organizations aiming to fix that anytime soon. The UN has left Liberia in a state of ignored bliss over the past few decades and hasn’t made any actions to enforce a route leading to change - honestly, I believe that this country will remain in a perpetual state of violence. 

Media Clips Relating to my SDG 

Blood Diamond / 2006 

This film relates to my SDG - Jurisdiction and Peace - because it covers the Liberian Civil War. Though this film takes place in Sierra Leone, the issues emanate from country to country. This film does a stellar job shwocasing the grisly terrors and atrocities these citizens and children had to be subject to back in the 90′s and early 00′s. 

Though the cause of the Liberian war wasn’t directly from an economic standpoint involving a lust for diamonds, this film is a good examplar of the pain and struggling all these people had to go through. 

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“I Survived the Liberian Civil War” / Cecelia Danuweli, 2013

Cecelia’s mother was raped when she was young. Cecelia lived in a country ravaged by war and fury. Cecelia was a product of that rage; she was birthed from a mother who was only in the third grade. She was born in 1968, and lived a relatively nonviolent life until December of 1990 - the beginning of the Civil War. For her, the crisis changed everything. Her eduaction came to an abrupt halt and the rapes began. She witnessed her step-father being killed in the street for interacting with a woman of a different ethnic group. Cecelia and her step-sisters were even forced to put his body in a bag and despose of him; that is, until a soldier intervened and saved their lives. 

She lived with the soldier at camps under the guise of his daughter, working as a volunteer, until the attacks began again in 1994. She says she fled into the bushes as the rebels attacked the camp, where she remained for the next four years - on the run from rebels, surviving on nothing but sleep on barren land and food from whatever scarce resources she could find. 

Cecelia lived like this, a child of destruction and chaos and assualt and witness of gruesome killings of friends and family, until 2004, when everything went back to a semi-stable way of life. 

This saddening story about life in Liberia during the Civil War strikes a painstaking chord with my SDG. Peace and Jurisditcion in Liberia is a necessity, even now in the modern day. People like Cecelia advocate for the rights of Liberian’s across the nation, but even that isn’t enough. Liberia needs reinforcement from the UN, creators of SDG’s. 

The Liberain Women Peace Movement 

Pictures of child soldiers in the country of Liberia were ingrained into the brains of the nation after the Second Liberian Civil War. Libera was battling to end a horrendous common conflict, a war that ravaged through the late 90′s and early 00′s, however, military endeavors were going nowhere. 

This is when the mothers, grandmothers, and sisters of Liberia came forward and crafted the ‘Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace’ campaign. 

The women pressured Liberian men to pursue peace or lose physical intimacy with their wives. Wearing all-white clothing, the women of Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, gathered at the fish market in the thousands, sitting, praying and singing. 

“The women of Liberia say peace is our goal, peace is what matters, peace is what we need,” they stated, their message clear; stamped on a billboard in the downtown fish market, it was brandished for the city - and perhaps maybe even the nation - to see. “The world once remembered Liberia for child soldiers,” said Leymah Gbowee, a leader of the peace group for which she won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2011. “They now know our country for the women in white.”

The women’s mass efforts, which continued until the nation’s first elections, were successful. They played a large part in ending the Civil War and putting an end to the immoral use of child soldiers. 

--- https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/april-2018-july-2018/women-liberia%E2%80%99s-guardians-peace --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_of_Liberia_Mass_Action_for_Peace

Develop Africa Inc. / Help Liberian Children Complete Their Education

This nonprofit organization is rooted in the belief of aiding children effected by the fourteen year civil war and the Ebola epidemic. They believe that the rate in which children attend primary school - an abysmal 44% - is a contributing factor to the future risks this might poise; the lack of education for these children is a big concern for Liberia’s future leaders. 

This organization is aiming to provide assistance by strategically addressing the most prominent issues: lack of scholarships, uniforms, school supplies, school furniture, and classrooms. This aid can make a difference in how people view the importance of education. 

Over the past years, there has been numerous challenges Liberia has faced: poverty, a devestating epidemic, inadequate school facilities, and insufficient funds. This NGO is aiming to help with that by enhancing education through the provision of supporting infrastructure and resources.

This fund is currently open online if you wish to donate and help the cause.

Liberia’s COVID-19 Numbers 

In Liberia, as of June 2nd, their cases are scarce compared to the rest of the globe. As opposed to the whopping 33 million of the United States, Liberia harbours a small 2,219 with 2,044 deaths and 86 recovered. Though this country’s mask mandates aren’t as strict as other parts of the world with considerably more people at risk, this small violence-ridden country handles it well. Considering this country’s pattern of violence and aggrieved behaviour when opposed to a country-wide mandate, there suprisingly hasn’t been many documented cases of outrage; the precautions the government has taken is similar to that of Western countries. Positive cases are confined to quarantine in government facilities, the Ministry of Health has initiated a domestic restriction law nationwide, and public gatherings are allowed though they have to be held under strict health protocols. There are restrictions on building capacity as well. 

Compared to the Right-Wing supporters of the United States that have previously outraged against the mandates, the Liberian citizens have taken the recommendations with a grain of salt and have adhered to it. 

Aggrieved Citizens of Grand Cape Mount County Threaten to Stage Series of Protest Until Embattled Simeon Taylor is Certificated as Senator

Just yesterday, on June 1st, 2021, a crowd of angered citizens violently protested over the prolonged delay by the Government of Liberia, through the National Elections Commission, to certificate their Senator-elect Simeon Taylor as the winner of the just finalized senatorial election. This was staged because Senator-elect Taylor’s biggest rival filed multiple legal complaints about his elecion, claiming there to be ‘faulty votes,’ incorrect counting, and inflicting numbers on the records of account. His supporters staged a violent protest in turn. 

http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,971497-1,00.html 

--- In this post we can discover that Liberia has stayed in a perpetual state of chaos and bloodshed for many years, with most of its residents lying dead in the streets or half-starved in the midst of the Civil War. There are also other conflicts inflicted by other countries such as Nigeria, which this reporter states to have caused around $4.5 billion worth of damage by Nigerian fighter planes. She also says - through one of the Liberian soldiers - that the citizens are bitter towards their neighbours. This TIME reporter has also found herself on both lines of the war, even going so far as to be accused as a spy and initiating an ambush on enemy lines.       This goes to show Liberia’s constant state of fear and lack of peace. Near the end of the article, the reporter says to have walked across beaches of skulls and human remains, and having been approached by starving children - noticeably without parents for they were most likely killed in crossfire - begging for food. My SDG, “peace and jurisdiction,” is a necessity in this country. The internal war hasn’t slowed over the years and hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and effected by its crashing economy. 

https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/jcs/article/view/11734/12489

--- This article is about the African refugee crisis. In 1993, there were over 6,000,000 refugees in Africa, and quarter of them resided in Liberia. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) describes a refugee as: “Who owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of the country.”      Most of these refugees found refuge in Sub-Saharan Africa, Mozambique, Angola, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Rwanda. 

Newspaper Article 

The following are some sources used to better understand my chosen SDG and its conflicts, ‘Peace and Jurisdiction.’ 

Secondary Sources: 

http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,971497-1,00.html

https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/jcs/article/view/11734/12489

Primary Sources: 

here you can click the links that will take you directly to each post that you would like to access:

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