Nobel peace prize winner defends law criminalising homosexuality in Liberia

Click here to watch the video of Tony Blair discussing anti-gay law with Liberia's president.

The Nobel peace prize winner and president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has defended a law that criminalises homosexual acts, saying: "We like ourselves just the way we are."


In a joint interview with Tony Blair, who was left looking visibly uncomfortable by her remarks, Sirleaf told the Guardian: "We've got certain traditional values in our society that we would like to preserve."

Liberian legislation classes "voluntary sodomy" as a misdemeanour punishable by up to one year in prison, but two new bills have been proposed that would target homosexuality with much tougher sentences. The normally charismatic and eloquent Nobel laureate, when questioned, was brusque, "I won't sign any law that has to do with that area. None whatsoever," she said impatiently.

Blair, on a visit to Liberia in his capacity as the founder of the Africa Governance Initiative (AGI), a charity that aims to strengthen African governments, refused to comment on Sirleaf's remarks.

When asked whether good governance and human rights went hand in hand, the British former prime minister said: "I'm not giving you an answer on it."

"One of the advantages of doing what I do now is I can choose the issues I get into and the issues I don't. For us, the priorities are around power, roads, jobs delivery," he said.

Over his 10 years as prime minister, Blair became a champion for the legal equality of gay people, pushing through laws on civil partnerships, lifting a ban on gay people in the armed forces and lowering the age of consent for gay people to 16.

A Catholic convert, he called on the pope to rethink his "entrenched" views and offer equal rights to gay people. But gay rights, he said, were not something he was prepared to get involved in as an adviser to African leaders.

With Sirleaf sitting to his left, Blair refused to give any advice on gay rights reforms. He let out a stifled chuckle after Sirleaf interrupted him to make it clear that Blair and his staff were only allowed to do what she said they could. "AGI Liberia has specific terms of reference … that's all we require of them," she said, crossing her arms and leaning back.

To read the full article please visit the Guardian website

Food security in Liberia

Fifteen million tonnes of bananas are shipped around the globe every year. Consumers in the developed world have become use to exotic fruit and vegtables at all times - but the UN believes the best way to ensure nine billion people are fed and watered by 2050, is to produce and consume a significantly larger proportion of locally grown food.

On this week's One Planet we consider how resilient our global food chain is. We visit Europe's largest banana ripening warehouse; we hear from the community who are trying to bypass the food chain by growing everything themselves, plus we hear from Liberia - a country that is struggling to rebuild its agricultural sector after years of civil unrest.

To listen to this programme, please go to the BBC World Service website

Liberia land deals with foreign firms 'could sow seeds of conflict'

Pa Sando, the town chief of Konja, in Grand Cape Mount county in Liberia, looks out across the farmland. "I used to pick cocoa on this farm for more than 30 years. My grandfather planted it for us," he says. "All this area here was mine, and now it's all gone."

The land has been leased by Sime Darby Plantation (Liberia) Inc, owned by the Malaysian-based multinational Sime Darby, to grow trees for palm oil. Sando said he was never asked whether he wanted to give up his land – only that he saw the bulldozers in the bush and then his land was taken.

Much of rural Liberia's population lives on land that has been in the family for generations. Most people don't have the money to go through the costly and complicated process of acquiring deeds, so under Liberian law the government is the owner of all public land. Sando's land was not registered, therefore it belonged to the government.

Sime Darby has signed a 63-year agreement with the government to develop 220,000 hectares of land for palm oil. The company's website says it is "the world's premier producer of sustainable palm oil". It boasts of its aspiration of "making sustainable futures real for everyone". The word "sustainable" is mentioned repeatedly.

However, a report (pdf) from the Centre for International Conflict Resolution (CICR), at Columbia University in the US, raises doubts about whether the future is quite so bright for the communities affected by the company's actions.

To read more, please visit the Guardian website

Wronged women of Liberia reluctant to revisit human rights abuses

The women sat on plastic chairs arranged in a circle, some breast feeding, others with small children at their feet. This is their centre in Ganta, the dusty, vibrant commercial capital of Nimba county in north-east Liberia.

"Most of the women here were raped [during the war]," says Yarih Geebah, the speaker for Ganta Concerned Women. "But if you don't have money, nothing happens. [For] we, the poor people, we who don't know book … justice don't prevail."

Liberia went through a 14-year civil war in which people were forced to perform the most debased and cruel acts imaginable. Initial findings from a United Nations Development Programme/World Vision survey in 2004 estimated 40% of the country's women were subjected to sexual violence, although other estimates suggest the figure is higher.

One woman from the group spoke of how she was taken as a "rebel wife" and raped repeatedly. Eight years later, the boy she was "married to" – now a man, and also the father of her daughter – sells petrol in Ganta. She sees him every day.

In August 2003, when the Accra peace accord was signed, it was decided the best chance for Liberia to get some form of justice was through a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), as had been set up in countries such as South Africa and Rwanda. The commission's mandate was to document and investigate human rights abuses committed between January 1979 and October 2003 and then make recommendations to the Liberian government.

To read more please visit the Guardian website

BBC's From Our Own Correspondent dispatch from Liberia

In a refugee camp in Liberia, Tamasin Ford watches a screening of a football match, where there appears to be more at stake than winning or losing the game. 

To hear this report, click on this link.

In pictures: Making charcoal from Liberian rubber trees

To view more, please go to BBC News Online

Liberia's battle to put the lights back on

It is hard to believe how Clara Town, a slum in Liberia's capital, Monrovia, once had access to the country's electricity grid. Pipe-borne water flowed into the community, and some areas even had paved roads. Nine years after the end of more than a decade of civil war, the entire area on the edge of St Paul's river is in the dark, save for the noisy generators here and there pumping smelly diesel-powered electricity into some of the more affluent homes.

Makeshift wires hang dangerously low from the tightly packed concrete homes and tin shacks – the products of business-minded folk who sell their electricity on. The sun has gone down and it feels like the entire community is out on the streets, taking advantage of the little light that emanates from some abodes. Motorbikes and the odd car rattle down the dusty, potholed roads.

"The criminals, they are plenty because it is dark," says Ma Kanneh, 33, as she stirs a huge pot of boiling rice over a charcoal stove at the front of a large concrete house. More than 50 people live in the 16 rooms inside this almost windowless cavern. Kanneh shares hers with six others. "No light. The whole city is dark. We're suffering," she says. The young mother and her family have no bathroom. They wait until it is dark before going out to the back of the house to bathe. "We can buy candles … On the table here is the candle our children use [to do their homework]," she says.

To read on, please click on this link - The Guardian

Liberia violence breaks out before election

Liberia's presidential election has been thrown into deadly chaos after at least two people were shot dead during volatile scenes outside the headquarters of a candidate who has called for a boycott of Tuesday's vote.

Supporters of the opposition Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) party candidate, Winston Tubman, clashed with police near his beachfront offices. Armed police responded with live rounds and teargas, killing at least one person. Tubman and his running mate, the former footballer George Weah, were trapped inside the building suffused with teargas for much of the day. "We are not only sad, we are very disappointed," Weah told the Guardian. "We were holding a peaceful rally and live bullets were used. To see people being killed is shocking. We are here trapped and unarmed and they keep shooting teargas. This is wrong."

Later, a Guardian correspondent witnessed a second protester being shot in the head at point-blank range by a Liberian police officer. The man, who was not armed, died immediately. An air of stunned shock hung over the incident in the searing tropical afternoon.

To read more, please go to the Guardian's website.

Liberia's heated election and fears of media crackdown

People are in the streets singing and dancing.

Motorbike drivers, sometimes carrying as many as four passengers, are racing up and down the roads, horns blaring. Street sellers, taking advantage of the crowds, are plying their wares - bananas, groundnuts and pouches of cold water.

They have been waiting for hours for their hero - the world football legend George Weah. He is the vice-presidential candidate for the main opposition party, the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC). Winston Tubman is running for president on the same ticket.

Today, they are on their way here to Ganta in the north-east of Liberia to campaign and the excitement is mounting.

"They're coming," someone shouts suddenly.

Everyone rushes to see the convoy arrive. But in the mayhem, a man gets knocked down by one of the CDC cars. I join other journalists by the podium where the visitors will speak, and it is here where I see, at first hand, attempts to stifle the press.A Liberian journalist starts taking pictures of him lying on the ground covered in blood. This will be the story in all the papers tomorrow.

To read more, please go to the BBC website.

BBC's From Our Own Correspondent dispatch from Liberia

Tamasin Ford finds worries about intimidation and attacks on journalists as the country prepares for a general election. To hear this report, click on this link.