Today, we interviewed a woman who is a present day hero in Monrovia. She runs the Center for Liberian Assistance, a safe home for girls and women (10-25 years) who are victims of sexual violence. In the large county of Montserrado (including Monrovia), there are only two safe homes - the one we visited today and one other, operated by THINK. The Center for Liberian Assistance has 18 beds where girls and women can stay, a skills training program, a small clinic with two nurses, two social workers, and sexual & reproductive health classes. The Center began in Ghana where many Liberian women fled during the war, but then when the women returned to Liberia, the workers for the Center came with them. The girls and women have either been abandoned, raped, or trafficked. The ones who have been raped tend to stay longer.
The Center would like to work with the government but they have not received funding and do not receive support from the government. As we went into the topic of victim-witness protection, she explained that there simply is no protection for a girl or woman who wants to testify in a trial for sexual violence. There is no transportation and no place for the victim to stay. They can't return back to their community because of the stigma. So, most victims just drop their case. This is due to a lack of support and to the slow process of prosecution. While we have not yet confirmed whether this is completely factual accurate or not - she expressed that the "rape court" which deals only with rape cases deals with just one case per term. A term lasts for about four months. The Center would be ready and willing to work with government to provide the needed support for victim-witnesses. If someone in the safe home does have a case, the Center transports them to court and provides some counseling.
The Center, along with other advocates push for the government to provide more support for victims of sexual violence. One case (a trial for the murder of a 13 year old girl by her rapist's wife) made it to the Supreme Court of Liberia because so many women pushed for it to go to trial. The woman we met was part of a sit-in at the Ministry for Gender and Development, advocating for more support for victims of sexual violence.
We met 4 girls who are staying at the safe home. The youngest of the four was probably no more than six years old - the youngest one in the safe home. The girls were making puzzles, it was their first time playing with puzzles so they were pretty focused but they did tell us their names. I don't think they knew very much English.
When the girls are ready, the Center aims to reunite them with their families if possible.
Our week is full of meetings and we are eager to continue learning about the system and the experience of victim-witnesses.
**Leila here -- One thing I found interesting about the woman we spoke with today, aside from her feistiness and apparent devotion to the safe house she runs, is that she actually spent 20 years living in the United States before coming back to Liberia in 2003 (while the war was still going on). I found this particularly poignant, especially considering she brought her young son with her, uprooting herself from a life presumably a lot more comfortable in the States in order to help her home country. We've run into this phenomenon a lot here so far. People coming just to study or volunteer for a year or two end up staying and settling here for the long run because they've become invested in the cause of rebuilding. Despite the lack of amenities, the danger, and the general lack of "comfort", something about this place makes people stay. I find that very hopeful, even in the face of the current difficulties we see.
Key takeaway for the day -- it's EXPENSIVE to live here, meaning that foreign aid workers need large salaries to afford living. We learned that a decent apartment in Monrovia can cost between US $3000-$5000 a month! A quart of milk at the grocery cost almost $3. So the money that the government could be allocating -- to locally-run aid groups like the one we met today -- is spent on the salaries of international aid workers, who, in turn, blow all the money on rent and food just to live. On the other hand, more than half the population of the country lives on less than $1 a day. I'm left with one question: WHERE does all the money go???
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