• UN projects aim to help Liberian refugees reintegrate into their homeland
• UN refugee agency concludes operation to repatriate Liberians forced into exile amid civil war
• Liberia has 'turned the corner' towards lasting peace

• Liberia suffering from pervasive drug use
• Ghana-Liberia: Limbo for ex-Liberian refugees
• Shady deals threaten Liberian rainforest - report

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Positive Trends
Short Summaries of Top Stories

UN projects aim to help Liberian refugees reintegrate into their homeland
11 March 2013 - The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) will assist in the reintegration of Liberian returnees with several projects aimed at equipping them with vocational and entrepreneurial skills to help them regain livelihoods in their homeland. Two projects, each with a budget of $1.5 million and funded by the Government of Japan, will provide Liberians who have already returned, or intend to return to their home country, with vocational skills training, entrepreneurship training, and other related services to help them find jobs or start up livelihoods or businesses. (more)

UN refugee agency concludes operation to repatriate Liberians forced into exile amid civil war
6 January 2013 - The United Nations refugee agency has announced that the last group of Liberians participating in its repatriation programme had returned to their country after having been forced into exile for many years due to the civil war that broke out in 1989 in the West African nation. 'The final 724 Liberians returned from Guinea on the last weekend of 2012, officially ending our return programme that began a year after peace was restored in Liberia, in 2004,' the chief spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR), Melissa Fleming, told reporters in Geneva. (more)

Liberia has 'turned the corner' towards lasting peace
26 September 2012 - Ten years after the end of Liberia's civil war, the country has made tremendous progress on the path to lasting peace and stability, its President, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, told the United Nations General Assembly on 26 September, while adding that serious challenges remain. 'As Liberia moves toward its tenth year of sustained peace, we can state with conviction that our country has turned the corner,' President Johnson-Sirleaf said in her address to the Assembly's high-level General Debate, which began at UN Headquarters in New York on Tuesday. (more)

Liberia, AFDB sign $4.5 million development agreement
21 September 2012 - The Government of Liberia and the African Development Bank (AfDB) have signed a development support agreement worth US$4.5 million. The agreement is intended for a new program that will further expand and deepen the reform process of the country, to increase service delivery, reduce corruption, and ultimately reduce poverty in Liberia. (more)

Liberia could hit double-digit growth this year - finance minister
18 September 2012 - Liberia's economic growth could reach double digits this year as its iron ore and rubber industries ramp up production and services and construction sectors expand, its finance minister said. Liberia is rebuilding after 14 years of conflict that ended in 2003. Finance Minister Amara Konneh said the government could beat its official economic growth target of 8.8 per cent this year. (more)

New discoveries raise West Africa oil hopes
21 February 2012 - Energy companies African Petroleum Corporation and Anadarko said they struck oil off the coasts of Liberia and Sierra Leone, raising hopes for an energy bonanza in the war-scarred West African states. Oil exploration off the coast of West Africa has surged since 2007 when Tullow Oil found the Jubilee field, one of the continent's biggest recent finds. The field came on line in late 2010, driving double-digit economic growth in Ghana. (more)

UN commends Liberians as voting in key election takes place peacefully
11 October 2011 - Liberians drew praise from the United Nations as they voted peacefully today in Presidential and parliamentary elections seen as a major milestone in the country's effort to strengthen peace and democracy, nearly a decade after the end of a brutal civil war. In a statement issued by his spokesperson late today, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the smooth holding of the polls and commended Liberians 'for exercising their right to vote in a calm and peaceful manner'. (more)

Liberians vote on constitutional changes seen by UN as milestone in peace process
23 August 2011 - Liberians went to the polls on 23 August to vote in a referendum on constitutional changes, a move described by the United Nations envoy for the West African country as a milestone in the process to entrench peace and stability that has prevailed since the end of the civil war in 2003. (more)

Liberia wins praise, grant from US
30 May 2010 - The US on Thursday approved a $15 million grant programme for Liberia as President Barack Obama met Liberian leader Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and praised her efforts in rebuilding the country from war. 'Liberia is now emerging from a very difficult period in its history,' President Obama said at the White House. 'Part of the reason that it has been able to emerge is because of the heroism and courage of President Sirleaf.' (more)

Liberia: First birth registrations in Liberia for 19 years
29 May 2009 - The Liberian government says it has resumed registering births following a 19-year interruption across most of the country due to the civil war. The government has re-established registration centres in five of Liberia's 15 counties and will do so in the remaining nine by 2011, Acting Health Minister Vivian Cherue said. (more)

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Flops
Short Summaries of Top Stories

Liberia suffering from pervasive drug use
7 December 2012 - Liberia's Drugs Enforcement Agency (DEA) has been trying to crack down on local drug dealers since the civil war ended but there are significant challenges due to weak laws and logistical problems. Liberia is both a transit point for drugs being transported from South America to Europe, and also a drug-producer, mainly of marijuana which is grown by small-scale producers. 'The fight against illicit drugs in Liberia is a challenging and an overwhelming kind of undertaking. There has not been any kind of legal framework to address the issue. And as such, traffickers, users, and other people take advantage of that weakness and there is a serious problem in the country,' said DEA Director Anthony Souh. Substances were heavily promoted during the civil war. Various concoctions of drugs were reported to be regularly consumed by militias as a form of psychic and physical 'protection' against enemy bullets, and to make fighters brave and fearless. Some 9 per cent of students in Liberia say they use cannabis, according to the UNODC 2012 global drug report, while the increased trafficking of cocaine has also led to increased cocaine use across the region. (more)

Ghana-Liberia: Limbo for ex-Liberian refugees
3 October 2012 - Over 6,000 Liberian refugee have been living in Buduburam refugee camp near the Ghanaian capital Accra for over two decades after fleeing the civil war in 1990. In June 2012, they lost their refugee status alongside 11,000 Liberians across the region, and the camp will soon be handed over to the district assembly. But lingering fear prevents many Liberians from returning home. Of the residents at Buduburam camp, Some 4,000 have applied for local integration, around 1,000 will return to Liberia, and about 1,000 are applying for exemption to remain as refugees. A significant number of people in the camp have little choice but to stay as they have no identification cards or paperwork. Living on the margins of Ghanaian society, there are few opportunities to find work. Nowadays Buduburam no longer resembles a refugee camp but is like any poor Accra suburb, with dilapidated houses, and shops selling clothes and cheap Chinese goods. The neighbourhood became associated with crime and lawlessness over the years and police carry out periodic raids to arrest criminals. Even so, some prefer to stay on the sidelines of Ghanaian society than return to the past. (more)

Shady deals threaten Liberian rainforest - report
4 September 2012 - Liberia's forestry department has given a quarter of the nation's land to logging firms over the past two years in a flurry of shady deals now under investigation by the government, advocacy group Global Witness said on Tuesday. Global Witness said its research revealed that the scale of the deals marked a serious threat to the war-torn and impoverished country's vast rainforests, as well as to the hundreds of thousands of people who depend on them. 'A quarter of Liberia's total landmass has been granted to logging companies in just two years, following an explosion in the use of secretive and often illegal logging permits,' the group said in a statement. 'Unless this crisis is tackled immediately, the country's forests could suffer widespread devastation, leaving the people who depend upon them stranded and undoing the country's fragile progress since the resource-fuelled conflicts of 1989 to 2003.' Logging has been a controversial issue in Liberia since the civil war, when rebels used proceeds from timber to purchase weapons. (more)

Liberian presidential poll marred by boycott
8 November 2011 - An election that was supposed to solidify peace in this nation emerging from war was marred by dismal turnout Tuesday, after the opposition went ahead with a boycott. The move guarantees re-election for the continent's first and only democratically elected female President, but election monitors and country experts worry that the low turnout could discredit the victory and delegitimize her government. It's a worrying prospect in the nation of 3.9 million that experienced one of Africa's most horrific civil wars and where a fragile peace is held in place largely by the presence of 9,000 United Nations peacekeepers. Helicopters hovered overhead Tuesday and armoured-personnel carriers patrolled the main boulevards, especially in the neighbourhood where the opposition is headquartered. At least one person was killed and another four suffered bullet wounds after CDC supporters clashed with police on Monday, as they attempted to lead a march in support of the boycott. (more)

Libya forces shell rebel-held city amid truce push
11 April 2011 - Libyan government forces battered the rebel-held city of Misrata with artillery fire on Monday despite an announcement by African mediators hours earlier that Moammar Gadhafi had accepted their cease-fire proposal. The shelling killed six people, one of them a 3-year-old girl, a doctor said. Concern about civilian casualties is centered on Misrata. Residents of the city say Gadhafi's forces have shelled the city from its outskirts for weeks and lined a main street with snipers. In Geneva, the UN children's agency said Monday that at least 20 children have been killed and many more have been injured in the city over the past three weeks. Children as young as 9 months were among the victims and the majority were under 10 years of age, UNICEF said. (more)

Curfew in north Liberia after religious clashes
27 February 2010 - Liberia's government has imposed a curfew in the northern county of Lofa after religious clashes killed four there on Friday. The fighting near the Guinean border was the third outbreak of violence between Muslim and Christian communities in West Africa this year. A doctor at the Talawayon hospital in Vionjama said four people had died of bullet wounds and that another 18 people were being treated for injuries. Witnesses told Reuters on Friday that rioters had burnt down the Catholic, Baptist, and Episcopal churches in the area. Human rights observers say violence that is triggered by religious incidents in the first instance often becomes politicised, and can involve disputes over land or property. (more)

Former leader of Liberia accused of embezzling over $1 million
1 March 2007 - Former Liberian President Gyude Bryant has been charged with stealing more than $1 million from Liberia's coffers while in office, government officials said Wednesday. `Mr Bryant has been formally charged with theft of property,' Information Minister Laurence Bropleh said, adding the figure of $1.3 million 'could go higher'. (more)

Liberia: Debt waiver is key to recovery from war, govt tells donors
15 July 2006 - The government of Liberia is calling for a waiver of the country's huge external debt to help it quickly recover from war. (more)

Ex-Liberian President on trial for war crimes
21 June 2006 - Former Liberian President Charles Taylor left West Africa for the Netherlands for a long-awaited trial on charges of backing brutal rebels in Sierra Leone. (more)

Liberia joins global anti-hunger march
22 May 2006 - Tens of thousands of children marched against hunger in Liberia Sunday, adding their voices to a global event to tackle food shortages that many in the war-battered west African nation have felt firsthand. (more)