President George Weah has called for toughening Liberia's laws in the face of the upsurge in rape, which he describes as an "
epidemic
" during the first national conference on the issue on Tuesday 8 and Wednesday 9 September.
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The two-day conference, opened Tuesday by the head of state of Liberia, continued on Wednesday in the presence of her predecessor, Ms. Ellen Jonhson Sirleaf, representatives of women's organizations, the UN and traditional leaders.
"
Improving and tightening existing laws and policies to prevent and combat sexual violence will reduce the frequency of rape
" and other gender-related ills, Weah said at the opening of the conference. Tuesday.
He called on participants to “
seek best practices
” to “
end rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence
”, in the country which is facing
an
“
alarming upsurge
” of cases.
Liberia suffers "
a rape epidemic alongside the coronavirus pandemic
, ”he said.
For several weeks, the country has been the scene of a mobilization of Liberian women in the face of rape, but also of protests against the inaction blamed on the government and the president.
“
We recorded more than 600 cases of rape between June and August,
” Margaret Taylor, director of the NGO Women Empowerment Network, working for women's rights and emancipation, said at the end of August.
In May, it was between 80 and 100 cases, she said during a rally marking the beginning of three days of mobilization in Monrovia and other cities of the country.
The frequency of rape in this poor West African country, plagued by wars and the Ebola virus during its recent history, is a long-standing concern.
A 2016 United Nations report listed 803 cases of rape the previous year across a country of four and a half million people, and denounced the lack of sanctions against the perpetrators, adult men known to their victims in the large majority.
The United Nations attributed this figure in part to "
the legacy of impunity left by 14 years of civil war
" from 1989 to 2003, which left 250,000 dead and during which rape served as a weapon of war.
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