The Organization for Women and Children (ORWOCH) unveiled its comprehensive Domestic Violence Prevention Scorecard, marking a significant step toward accountability in addressing intimate partner violence.
The launch comes two years after Liberia’s historic Domestic Violence Act of 2019, which criminalized domestic violence for the first time in the nation’s history.
The law marked a crucial shift from treating domestic violence as a private family matter to recognizing it as a serious crime requiring state intervention.
“While the 2019 Act created a legal framework for addressing domestic violence in Liberia, implementation remains a challenge. This scorecard brings transparency to how we’re protecting our most vulnerable citizens,” said ORWOCH’s Executive Director Mmonbeydo Joah.
The scorecard evaluates counties across key metrics including shelter availability, legal protections, emergency response times, and support services funding.
Initial findings reveal concerning gaps in rural areas and significant disparities in resource allocation.
Under Liberia’s domestic violence law, survivors can now seek protection orders, access legal aid, and pursue criminal charges against abusers.
The law also prohibits harmful traditional practices and recognizes economic abuse as a form of domestic violence.
The key findings include: only 40% of counties maintain domestic violence response units and the average shelter waiting times reach up to 28 days in remote areas.
While support service funding varies significantly between urban and rural regions with the implementation of the law remains inconsistent across the country’s 15 counties.
“This should not be seen as a way to name and shame government institutions on these responsibilities. We should remind ourselves that this is not in isolation from international law instead, it is linked to many human rights instruments,” Cllr. Tonieh Wiles stated
Cllr. Tonieh Talery Wiles is the former commissioner on law and treaty matters at the Independent National Human Rights Commission.
Cllr. Wiles recommends that the domestic violence law be put into simple Liberian English to ensure the document is user-friendly so that even children can understand and enhance reporting.
According to her, the initiative is timely because it comes at a time when Liberia is up for a Universal Periodic Review of its human rights obligations, and these are issues that will be considered.
She also recommended that the Ministry of Education include the PTA in the implementation of the law because they are the ones who commit domestic violence.
Domestic violence is a first-degree misdemeanor; a person may face imprisonment for up to six months, and the court may also order said person to pay compensation to his or her victim.
A Researcher, Universal Jurisdiction Dublin City University, Tennen Tehounge, informed the gathering that except for the Ministry of Health, which performed moderately, all other line ministries and agencies involved in the implementation of the document, including the ministries of gender, justice, and education, scored low.
“This takes away from revenue generation and funds that should go to the domestic violence fund,” Dr. Tehounge said.
However, the Project Manager at Medica Liberia, Fenny Taylor Diggs said, “It starts with budget allocation or you cannot implement anything. This is proven by the work we do at Medica, and we are grateful for this work that ORWOCH has done.
She emphasized the need to condense both the survivor support fund and the ‘domestic violence’ fund and the need for ministries to be realistic with what they can do with the available resources.
ORWOCH maintains that the domestic violence law remains a critical ward-looking judicial instrument that addresses gaps within the penal code central to the rights and protections of women and girls against all forms of abuse.
The DV Act of 2019 provides a robust framework to combat domestic violence in Liberia. While progress has been made, significant gaps remain in the operationalization of the law.
