BBC's From Our Own Correspondent dispatch from Sierra Leone

Two religions, one God - and one devotee

Some people argue that the world today is living through 'a clash of civilisations' - between Islam and Christianity. You only have to tune into the news from time to time to see that there are people all over the world who believe these two religions to be utterly opposed. Look at the stories of inter-communal friction – and sometimes violence - between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria, Pakistan and Indonesia.

But in Sierra Leone, a country which has seen more than its fair share of war and devastation, Tamasin Ford has met some people who feel that not only are Islam and Christianity utterly compatible, they can even be seen as complementary. So: what is a "Chris-Mus" exactly, and what does he or she believe?

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Youths need a future - President of Liberia

The Nobel Peace Prize winner has received her fair share of criticism at home in the form of youth riots and allegations of conflict of interest.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf sees her government's main task as providing an environment that allows the young population to prosper while ensuring that international investors engage with their host communities.

Q: With the recent discovery of oil in Liberia and your admission in the past that corruption at all levels is a problem, how can you ensure transparency when oil revenues will be in the hands of a state company?

A: Let's first of all be very clear about what's happening in the oil sector. There was a discovery, but it still has to be determined whether there are sufficient quantities commercially. By the time they start to drill oil, it will probably be at the end of my administration anyway. However, our responsibility is to ensure that we put in the right laws, the right policies so that the funds from oil will be used for the national interest. We are working – Sierra Leone and Liberia – with the Norwegians to see if we can benefit from some of their experiences, structures and systems. We are working with ASET \[International Oil & Gas Training Academy] and they've already started workshops. And let me say that we've also tackled corruption in almost the same way by adopting different laws, by putting in systems, by putting in structures, by building capacities, by improving compensation. So, today, even though corruption is a problem, it's been addressed and it's largely reduced. Punishment is the only area that we now need to work out with the judiciary.

Q: Already, there have been allegations that appointing your son, Robert Sirleaf, as chairman of the board of the National Oil Company of Liberia is a conflict of interest?

To read the rest of this interview please click on this link to The Africa Report website.

Living with HIV in Liberia

                                                                  Liberia has one of the lowest rates of HIV in Subsaharan Africa, a region more affected by HIV and AIDS than anywhere in the world.

Years of civil war through the 90s coupled with high circumcision rates among men reduced the spread of the virus in Liberia while it reached epidemic levels elsewhere.  However, high rates of sexual violence in the West African nation, according to UNAIDS, pose a threat to women.

Tamasin Ford reports from Monrovia, the capital of Liberia.

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Liberia's growing pains

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf faces a fractious political environment and gaping infrastructure deficits as her government tries to attract foreign investors to boost employment.

In the past six years Liberia has seen unprecedented levels of transparency, democracy and press freedom. The small West African nation with a population of just over four million people and a pitted history of dictatorship and corrupt regimes brought Africa's first democratically elected female head of state, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, to the helm in 2006, after 14 years of a devastating civil war. Every facet of society, from infrastructure and human capacity to the rule of law, needed rebuilding. 'Ma Ellen,' as she is fondly called by some, had an enormous task ahead of her.

She has not always taken everyone with her. November 2011's tense and violent election, which ended with opposition candidate Winston Tubman boycotting the second round, hardly delivered a ringing endorsement. For Liberia to extricate itself firmly from the past, where the freed American slave elite who 'founded' the country skimmed riches for themselves and educated their children in the US, Sirleaf's government has to promote inclusion. There is a long way to go. Two peacebuilding projects, the National Palava Hut Programme and the Liberian Reconciliation Initiative headed by fellow Nobel laureate Leymah Gbowee, are yet to take off.

But despite the political differences, Liberia's economy continues to thrive. It was one of the fastest-growing economies in the world with a real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 6.9% in 2011, the highest in West Africa after Ghana's. The national budget has quadrupled, and the country reached the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative completion point in June 2010, ridding Liberia of most of its crippling $4.9bn in foreign debt. Economists expect the real GDP growth rate to climb to 9% in 2012. Vaanii Baker of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) says: "If you look at the resources that Ghana has, Liberia has everything Ghana has and even more."

To read the rest of this article, please click on this link to The Africa Report website.

Liberia's hasty forest sell-off risks more conflict

More than half of Liberia's forests have been granted to logging companies according to figures released to the Guardian from Global Witness – and all of the contracts have been issued during Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's government. "What we've seen over at least the past 18 months is an explosion of logging concessions," said Jonathan Gant, policy adviser at Global Witness.

More than 40% of the Upper Guinea rainforest is in Liberia. Rich, dense forest packed with rare and endangered species sprawls for hundreds of miles over the small coastal country. Sapo National Park, one of three protected areas in Liberia, contains more than 40 endangered species including the pygmy hippo, forest elephant, golden cat and western chimpanzee.

After 14 years of civil war, during which the country was stripped of roads, electricity, hospitals and schools, the revenue from logging concessions is crucial for rebuilding the country. But Global Witness has found evidence that huge swaths of land are being relinquished to logging companies without adherence to local regulations or laws. Most of this land is virgin rainforest.

Conflict timber became the main source of funding for the former president, Charles Taylor, during the war, after the UN imposed sanctions on importing Liberian diamonds in 2001. Despite this, Liberia still has an abundance of forest. Global Witness calculates that, since 2008, 2.4m hectares (5.9m acres) of the country's 4.4m hectares of forest have been granted to logging companies – around 55%.

Logging exports resumed in 2010, after a UN timber ban was lifted in 2006, and are expected to increase as dredging companies deepen the ports in Monrovia and Greenville in the south-east.

To read the rest of this article please click on this link to the Guardian's website.

Liberia's first large-scale military operation since the conflict

Liberia is launching its first large-scale military operation since the end of its brutal civil war. Liberia's army, which has been trained by the U.S. military over the last six years, is going after mercenaries and rebels who are using thick forest as cover from which to launch ambushes in neighboring Ivory Coast.

Tamasin Ford reports from the Liberian border.

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Liberia launches military operation

In Liberia, army, police, and immigration officials are involved in a major military operation in the dense forests along the border with Ivory Coast. Liberian mercenaries and Ivorian rebels have been using the area as a base to launch attacks on Ivorian villages....as Tamasin Ford

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Illegal hunters turned protectors

Liberia is home to one of the world's most diverse rainforests. But its wildlife is in danger. Tamasin Ford reports from Sapo National Park where the government is turning to hunters to save the remaining flora and fauna.

To listen to this report please click on this link to the DW website

Domestic violence is biggest threat to west Africa's women, IRC says

(A 15-year-old girl seeking medical treatment waits at the Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) clinic in Monrovia after being raped. MSF in Liberia is encouraging get victims to come forward for treatment. Photograph: Glenna Gordon/AFP/Getty Images)

Husbands, not strangers or men with guns, are now the biggest threat to women in post-conflict west Africa, according to a report by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) released on Tuesday.

The IRC report, Let Me Not Die Before My Time: Domestic Violence in West Africa, based on data collected over 10 years by the IRC in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ivory Coast, said domestic violence is the "most urgent, pervasive and significant protection issue for women in west Africa".

It calls on the international community to recognise domestic violence as a humanitarian issue and to increase funding significantly to address the problem, saying: "If the humanitarian community ignores what has been considered a 'private matter', it will fail to confront one of the most significant public health crises and primary obstacles to women's empowerment in post-war societies."

Sierra Leone passed a domestic violence act in 2007, establishing basic rights for women in the home and entitlements for survivors such as free medical care. Domestic violence is now punishable by a fine of up to 5m leones (£720) and up to two years in prison. But by the end of 2010, only one person had been prosecuted. Amnesty International's report on Sierra Leone last year said: "Women's lack of access to the police, exorbitant fees charged by medical officers and pressure to make out-of-court settlements all contributed to impunity and state inaction."

In Ivory Coast and Liberia, no such laws exist. In Liberia, Africa's first female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, amended the penal code to make rape illegal – previously only gang rape was a crime. In 2008, the government established a special court to try cases of sexual violence. But since it opened in 2009, only 18 cases of rape, resulting in 10 convictions, have been tried there.

In a small church on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia, an elderly lady from a women's group jumped to her feet. With a smile on her face, she cried out: "Women, O women!" – the start of the chant Liberian women use to unite each other. "Don't just sit down. Do something positive," the group replied with force.

To read the full article, please go to the Guardian's website

Taylor verdict absorbed by a region that can forget, but not forgive

Twenty-odd miles from Sierra Leone's seaside capital of Freetown, the tiny hamlet of Grafton lies off a rutted dirt track. In a clearing surrounded by a cluster of low, sand-coloured buildings, three old men idle their time away under the shade of a mango tree, watching goats and chickens wandering past. It's a sleepy rural scene – marred only by the fact all three are missing an arm or leg.

The men are a lingering reminder of the war that gripped this tiny nation of 5 million for over a decade, ending only in 2002. Sorie Sawanah, a former taxi driver, rarely speaks about the day he became one of the statistics of the brutal "Operation No Living Thing", when drug-crazed child soldiers rampaged through Freetown in 1999.

On the eve of Charles Taylor's conviction for "aiding and abetting" such attacks as he and his allies sought control of lucrative diamond fields, Sorie maintained his silence. "I don't want to recall them days," Sorie said, covering his face with a shaking hand.

Sorie's son Ibrahim had nightmares for years about the scene he witnessed cowering behind a bush. "A child soldier give my father 'short sleeves'. A boy 10 years of age carrying a long military knife. He say, I dey chop your arm, your arm go fly! Then he mark," Ibrahim mimes a machete tapping at his elbow, "one, two, three – cut arm final! But the arm no cut right, so he cut again."

"Today it is like we are free. I will sleep well, well today. All these years Taylor lived well, but I can never go to school because my father cannot earn money. Today we can forget, even if we never forgive," Ibrahim said.

Like many in the country ravaged by 10 years of war, money was too scarce to make the short trip to the Freetown-based Sierra Leone special court where several hundred had quietly cheered the downfall of Taylor. Instead, Ibrahim received the news from a friend in the capital, and in turn set about passing the news by text message.

To read the full article, please go to the Guardian website.