By providing free school meals to some of the poorest children on Earth, a UK charity is also ensuring they get an education
It’s breakfast time in Domagbamatma (population: 63) in the depths of the Liberian rainforest, but there’s no food in evidence in the home of Massa Kamara. The eight-year-old has been up since dawn, collecting firewood, fetching water.
Now she’s ready for school in a crisp white shirt and navy-blue skirt in her family’s muddy, two-room shack.
Continue reading...Palm plantations are fuelling a booming international trade but the people who live on its edges feel forgotten
The sign at the entrance to the palm oil plantation in Grand Bassa has faded thanks to Liberia’s relentless cycle of scorching sun and torrential rain. Even so, it’s possible to make out the phrase: “Your community is rich: Let’s have a fair share.”
Several miles farther on, past endless rows of carefully cultivated palm trees, it’s a slogan that bears little relation to reality. Gbenee Town is a small huddle of huts surrounded by a plantation more than six times the size of London’s Richmond Park.
Continue reading...Agnes Taylor accused of offences that allegedly occurred during Liberian war
A judge in London has dismissed torture charges against the ex-wife of the former Liberian president Charles Taylor.
The university lecturer Agnes Taylor, 54, was charged in 2017 with a string of offences alleged to have taken place in 1990 during the west African country’s civil war.
Continue reading...Faced by a ‘rising chorus of voices’, not least that of legislator Rustonlyn Dennis, President George Weah is considering setting up a long-awaited tribunal into decades-old war crimes
As a child in Liberia’s first civil war, Rustonlyn Dennis remembers seeing dead bodies in the street. In 1991, her immediate family managed to get out of the shattered capital, Monrovia, and survived, but a dozen relatives starved to death.
Civilians were attacked, child soldiers recruited and ethnic groups were targeted in that war, setting a pattern for many of the wars that were to follow on the African continent. Hundreds of thousands of people died.
Continue reading...Ex-footballer under pressure 18 months into presidency, as thousands take to the streets
Thousands of people have gathered in Liberia’s capital to protest against failures to tackle corruption, economic mismanagement and injustice under the former footballer turned president George Weah.
Riot police lined the streets of Monrovia where more than 5,000 people turned out despite the rain for one of the city’s biggest protests in living memory, according to witnesses. The protesters walked to Capitol Hill to present the government with a list of demands.
Continue reading...An American woman who established a charity to help vulnerable girls in Liberia has resigned, six months after taking a leave of absence in the wake of allegations that a local staffer raped several girls in the charity’s care.
Related: Liberia launches investigation into alleged rapes at US-backed school
Continue reading...The threat of poaching by foreign trawlers has eased for the nation’s 33,000 local fishermen, who are hauling in the rewards of a coastguard crackdown
Photographs: Nicole Schafer/Sea Shepherd