By Grace Q. Bryant
The United States 2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices in Liberia revealed that there has been no Bill passed on Female Genital Mutilation (FBG) in Liberia, rather the immediate past government used political will within the Legislature to address the issues.
According to a selected statistics on women’s status, 9% of women 20-24 years married or in union before age 15; 36% of women 20-24 years married or in union before age 18 and 37% of women 20-24 years have given birth by age 18.
The reports disclosed that, “The law did not prohibit the practice of FGM, while NGOs reported there was little political will within the legislature to address the issue,”
Like on Friday, October 27, 2023, at the Gbanquoi Vocational and Heritage Centre constructed by UN Women under the auspices of the European Union and United Nations Spotlight Initiative, former practitioners from Nimba County handed over traditional tools they used to perform FGM thereby signaling an end to the practice.
While on February 6, the National Council of Chiefs and Elders in Liberia, headed by Chief Zanzan Karwor, only instituted a national ban on FGM and closed a traditional rural school in Montserrado County, replacing it with a heritage and vocational center to train FGM practitioners with alternative skills for livelihood.
The human rights report further revealed that during the year, local authorities closed three secretive rural so-called bush schools, where the practice took place, in three separate counties and worked with UN Women to provide training to residents.
Yet, where it is practiced like Liberia, FGM is performed in line with tradition and social norms to ensure that girls are socially accepted and marriageable, and to uphold their status and honour and that of the entire family and the UN is working with governments and civil society partners towards the elimination of FGM in those countries.
FGM refers to “all procedures involving partial or total removal of the female external genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.
FGM is a violation of girls’ and women’s human rights and is condemned by many international treaties and conventions, as well as by national legislation in many countries.
However, according to the prevailing attitude towards FGM, slightly more than half of girls and women in Liberia think that the practice should stop while around one in three thinks it should continue.
Meanwhile, the reports said the government did not enforce the law on sexual violence while rape was a serious and pervasive problem in Liberia.
The report which was released on Monday, April 23, highlighted the ongoing challenges facing Liberia in teams of protecting a woman or man including spousal and domestic or intimate partner rape and other forms of domestic and sexual violence including so-called corrective rape of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or intersex (LGBTQI+) persons.
According to the report, the government officials allegedly committed acts of sexual violence; documenting that in February, the Commander of the Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency Maryland Detachment, Sergeant Joseph Targeddine, allegedly sexually assaulted a girl age 16.
“Although illegal, domestic violence was a widespread problem, the maximum penalty for conviction of domestic violence was six months imprisonment, but the government did not enforce the law effectively,” the reports disclosed.
The reports further said civil society observers suggested the lack of speedy trials led some survivors to seek redress outside the formal justice system while the law prohibited sexual harassment in the workplace, though it was a significant problem at work and in schools.
“UNICEF reported sexual harassment in schools in the form of “sex for grades” and “sex for school fees” was common,” the report revealed.
According to the report, the law prohibited discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, color, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation or gender identity, or HIV and AIDS status, but the government did not effectively enforce the law.
Adding that penalties did not commensurate with those similar violations and were seldom applied while mechanisms for receiving and acting on complaints were inadequate, and the government made no efforts to strengthen anti-discrimination no efforts to strengthen anti-discrimination regulations.
“The law provided the same legal status and rights for women as for men, but those laws were not respected in certain rural areas of the country,” the report noted.
The reports stated, “In rural areas, traditional practices often did not recognize a woman’s right to inherit land, and women experienced economic discrimination based on cultural traditions discouraging their employment outside the home.”
The reports established that Anecdotal evidence indicated women were paid less than men. Programs to educate traditional leaders on women’s rights, especially those regarding land rights, made some progress, but authorities often did not enforce those rights in rural areas.
