LIBERIA: Fears Over Rise in Sexual Violence

There are fears of escalating sexual violence as UNMIL and NGOs scale down their activities, leaving a void that national institutions, with limited capacity, cannot fill.

The UN's Regional Information Network (IRIN) reports that humanitarian workers in Liberia worry that as the UN and NGOs scale down aid operations, the fight against sexual violence will suffer, given a limited capacity in national institutions to take it on.

IRIN: The fight against sexual violence, led by the Ministry of Gender and Development, is part of a wider four-year national plan to implement Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security; the resolution was passed in 2000 but Liberia - where a 14-year war ended in 2003 - began implementing it just last year.

The action plan relies heavily on aid agencies and on international donors for funds, said the Norwegian Refugee Council's coordinator for sexual and gender-based violence, Anna Stone. "But after the [presidential and legislative] elections next year many international NGOs, including the NRC, will scale down operations in Liberia."

Many aid agencies, including NRC and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) - also active in the fight against sexual violence - are gradually cutting their programmes in Liberia. And the post-election role of the UN mission (UNMIL), which has supported much of the government's anti-sexual-violence programmes, is uncertain.

"Agencies do move out and there is high turnover," agreed Madhumita Sarkar, programme adviser at the joint UN-government SGBV (sexual and gender-based violence) programme in the capital Monrovia. "That is a very big concern. This is the wrong time to withdraw - even though Liberia is not in a conflict state. Until now we've tried to work on building local capacities and we now need to continue that, and hand over projects to the government."

"We will go back to zero if people just withdraw now," she said.

Meanwhile the gender ministry is turning to donors to fund its programmes over the long term, aware that international support my wane; the ministry recently received funding from Italy and the United States, according to Deputy Gender and Development Minister Annette Kiawu.