A boy in front of a sign illustrating the reasons behind the creation of Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Photograph: Rebecca Blackwell/AP

Wronged Women of Liberia Reluctant to Revisit Human Rights Abuses

 

Tamasin Ford
theguardian
February 28, 2012

The women sat on plastic chairs arranged in a circle, some breast feeding, others with small children at their feet. This is their centre in Ganta, the dusty, vibrant commercial capital of Nimba county in north-east Liberia.

“Most of the women here were raped [during the war],” says Yarih Geebah, the speaker for Ganta Concerned Women. “But if you don’t have money, nothing happens. [For] we, the poor people, we who don’t know book … justice don’t prevail.”

Liberia went through a 14-year civil war in which people were forced to perform the most debased and cruel acts imaginable. Initial findings from a United Nations Development Programme/World Vision survey in 2004 estimated 40% of the country’s women were subjected to sexual violence, although other estimates suggest the figure is higher.

To read the full article at theguardian, click here.

To visit the Ganta Concerned Women via the photographs of Christopher Herwig, click here. (Select West Africa upon reaching his web site.)