Freed American slaves founded Liberia in 1847. The government was led by the Americo-Liberians and this created tension with local populations who were marginalised. The country experienced relative stability until the election of William Tubman in1944 when indigenous tribes began to complain of discrimination and Tubman ruled with increasingly tough measures.

Discontent continued with Tubman's successor, William Tolbert, and in 1980, Master Sergeant Samuel Doe staged a bloody coup and 13 senior officials were publicly executed.

Doe won presidential elections in 1985, which opposition parties claimed were rigged, and continued with his policy of favouring his own ethnic group, the Krahn, who dominated the national army. The army was accused of committing extensive human rights abuses, forcing many Liberians, including sacked minister Charles Taylor, to flee the country.

Taylor trained a rebel army and invaded Liberia from neighbouring Cote d'Ivoire on Christmas Eve 1989. In 1990, a West African multinational peacekeeping force ECOMOG, the Economic Community Cease-Fire Monitoring Group, was sent to Liberia to little avail.
In September of that year, a splinter rebel group captured Doe and tortured him to death.

From 1990 to 1996, Taylor's rebels controlled much of the Liberian countryside. Taylor set up his own government in the interior town of Gbarnga and this led to the emergence of several armed splinter groups opposing his leadership.
In 1997, Taylor won democratic elections that were supervised by a 16-nation delegation. This brought a temporary peace that ended in 1999 when exiled rivals of Taylor returned and revolted against him.

Fighting escalated in the summer of 2003 and Taylor lost control of the country, including the capital, Monrovia.

An internationally-backed peace agreement was brokered in August 2003 between warring parties and civilians. It ended the 14-year civil war and forced Taylor into exile in Nigeria.
The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), consisting of 15,000 UN peacekeepers, was created to monitor the peace agreement and aid in the rehabilitation process.

Presidential and legislative elections held on October 11, 2005, and the subsequent November 8, 2005 presidential run-off were the most free, fair, and peaceful elections in Liberian history.
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf won the election to become Africa's first democratically elected female president.
The country is still struggling through a difficult reconstruction process.

Peace and security

Liberia's 14-year civil war ended in 2003 with the signing of a comprehensive peace treaty and the deployment of 15,000 peacekeepers as part of UNMIL. These troops, along with 1,115 international peace officers from 40 countries are charged with the maintenance of peace, law and order as the country rebuilds itself.

From December 2003 to October 2004, the UN supervised a countrywide disarmament programme. A total of 101,495 combatants were disarmed.

In November 2004, heads of the country's three main warring parties signed an agreement to officially disband their groups.

Some 65,000 demobilised combatants have so far benefited from reintegration and rehabilitation opportunities funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Approximately 37,000 ex-combatants are still waiting to be placed in reintegration programmes.

UNMIL continues to collect and destroy remaining weapons and ammunition, willingly surrendered or discovered through cordon and search operations.

Since 2004, Liberian police, army and security forces, all of which were at the centre of abuses during the war, have been restructured and rehabilitated. So far, almost 2,000 of the authorised 3,500 new police officers have been retrained.

Training of a  2,000-strong new army has begun with finance from the U.S. government.

Refugees

Liberia's civil war forced about 200,000 people to flee the country, mainly to neighbouring Guinea, Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria. There were also over 130,000 internally displaced people (IDPs).
Since October 2004, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) has been facilitating the return of refugees.

As of October 2006, there were 81,096 Liberian refugees who had returned through organised land, sea and air transport while an estimated 150,000 returned home by their own means. A total of 140,793 registered refugees still remain in camps across the region.

From November 2004 to April 2006, the UNHCR facilitated the resettlement of 321,000 IDPs, providing them with food rations and household items.

Democracy and governance

Liberia is a Republic and its system of government is based on that of the United States. The president heads the executive branch, the speaker oversees the legislature and the chief justice controls the judiciary. The country's constitution prohibits each branch from interfering with one another.

After freed American slaves founded Liberia in 1847, the country was governed as a democracy. The government was controlled by the Americo-Liberians, who ruled with increasingly tough measures as discontent grew amongst indigenous tribes.

In 1980, Master Sergeant Samuel Doe staged a coup. Ten years later, after Charles Taylor launched a rebellion from neighbouring Cote d'Ivoire, Doe was tortured and executed by a splinter rebel group. Although elections were held under both leaders, they were not seen as fair.

After 14 years of civil war under Taylor, a transitional government took over in 2004. Presidential elections were held in November 2005, and former World Bank official and Harvard-trained economist Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf defeated international soccer star George Weah and became Africa's first democratically elected female president.
Weah alleged irregularities but international observers declared the elections free and fair.
Political parties have flourished. The present legislature is dominated by opposition parties, with the governing party holding a minority of seats, a first in Liberian history.

There is much attention on Johnson-Sirleaf to see how she will fair in rebuilding and reconciling the country. Referred to in Liberia as the "Iron Lady", she has declared "zero tolerance" for corruption and one of her first priorities is reintegrating child soldiers.

The country's judicial system is barely functional, particularly in rural areas where there is a lack of judges.

Media

Since the end of the civil war, Liberia has seen the proliferation of newspapers and radio stations. During the period of the war, publications ceased, stories were censored and broadcasters banned from the airwaves. Media became dominated by Taylor's Liberian Community Network, which operated a television service, FM radio stations, a short-wave radio station and two newspapers. Journalists were jailed, beaten and tortured.

There are now more than 30 newspapers, although most sales are limited to Monrovia. Six of those papers have their own websites.

Rural communities rely on radio stations for information. There are almost 50 community radio stations across Liberia and a dozen commercial stations in Monrovia. UNMIL operates a radio station that transmits to all parts of the country on the FM band.

There are a few commercial television stations and international channels such as BBC and CNN are available in Monrovia.

Economy

Although rich in resources, the civil war in Liberia plummeted the country into a cycle of corruption and illegal industry.

Rubber remains one of the country's biggest exports. During the early 20th century, Liberia encouraged foreign investment by leasing vast portions of land for rubber plantations. Highly unregulated, the industry was viewed as exploitative and continues to be criticised by human rights groups.

After the end of the civil war, ex-combatants took over some of the biggest plantations and began to perform illegal tapping. In May 2006, some rubber manufacturers were accused by the Liberian government and the United Nations of buying rubber from these illegal plantations, however, there is no system in place to monitor the origin of rubber in Liberia. In August 2006, the United Nations and the government announced they would repossess the Guthrie plantation, one of the largest in the country.

During the civil war, the United Nations imposed sanctions on Liberia's timber and diamond exports to curb revenues from fuelling the conflict and arming rebels. The sanction on timber was lifted in October 2006, and exports are expected to resume next year.

The five-year UN Security Council ban on diamond exports remains in place. Liberian authorities must comply with an internationally approved diamond certification regime known as the Kimberly Process that ensures the sale of diamonds mined only under regulated conditions.

The mining of iron also suffered during the war due to the damage and closure of mines. According the African Development Bank, prior to the civil war, the mining of iron contributed 23.5 percent to the gross domestic product and there were proven reserves of about four billion tonnes. There have been bids by international companies to reopen mines in the Nimba mountains in the north of the country, however it is not known when exports would resume.

To help combat graft and help with restoring economic stability, Liberia's transitional government approved a far-reaching scheme known as the Governance Economic Management Assistance Programme (GEMAP). Backed by Liberia's partners and donors such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, it places foreign financial experts in key administrative positions in the Central Bank and other revenue agencies.

There has been criticism of long-term deals signed between the interim government and foreign corporations that give generous tax breaks. The new government is reviewing the deals.

Population

Liberia has a population of three million and the growth rate is 4.9 percent. Life expectancy is only 39 years and the fertility rate is 6.8 live births per woman, which is one of the highest in the world. Infant, child and maternal mortality rates are high. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that the maternal mortality ratio is 760 deaths for every 100,000 births, while the infant mortality ratio is 155.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births.

The last population census in Liberia was conducted in 1984. The Liberian constitution requires that a census is done every 10 years, however, the civil war interrupted this procedure. There are efforts to conduct a new census in 2008.

Liberia's 16 ethnic groups make up 95 percent of the population and are divided into three main cultural groups. Tribes in each group share linguistic and traditional similarities. These groups are the Mende and Mel from the western, central and northern regions of the country and the Kwa, from the coastal and heavily forested southeastern region. Other tribes include the Krahn, Mandingo, Gio and Mano.
Americo-Liberians, descendants of freed American slaves and the Congo People, freed slaves from the Caribbean make up the other five percent of the population.

In terms of religion, 40 percent of the population practices indigenous beliefs, 40 percent Christianity and 20 percent Islam.

Development indicators

Liberia is not ranked on the UNDP's Human Development Index due to a lack of information and its emergence from civil war. It is among 18 of the world's least developed countries, with as many as 80 percent of the population living on less than one U.S. dollar a day. This is up from 55 percent in 1997.
As much as 85 percent of the population is unemployed and the country continues to be among the most food insecure in the world with an estimated 35 percent of the population being undernourished.
The illiteracy rate is high amongst women at 58.4 percent compared to that of men at 26.7 percent.

In conjunction with the UNDP, Liberia released a Human Development Report for 2006 that highlighted the urgent need for reconstruction in the country, particularly in the health sector.

Education

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has said that the quality of Liberia's education sector has been in a decline for the last two decades. Low salaries and deteriorating work conditions drove qualified teachers out of public schools.
According to UNICEF, about 65 percent of children in primary and secondary schools are taught by unqualified teachers.

Liberia's education system is still recovering from the war, which damaged school buildings and forced many students to abandon their studies.

According to a 2003 UNICEF report, at the time of the end of the war more than half of school-age children did not attend school. Families of children who attended public and private schools, were asked to provide uniforms, books, pencils and even desks.
In 2003, UNICEF launched a back-to-school initiative to help 750,000 students return to school.

In April 2006, President Johnson-Sirleaf launched the Government's Girls' Education National Policy to forward the Millennium Development Goal of "ensuring that children, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling." The government also aims to reduce secondary school fees by 50 percent and recruit and train more female teachers.

Children

Liberia's infant mortality rate is one of the highest in the world, with 155.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births. UNICEF estimates that diarrhoea and cholera are major child killers. Diarrhoea is responsible for 22 percent of deaths in children under five and cholera is endemic.

According to a 2004 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, child soldiers were used extensively during the civil war. Child soldiers were used by both rebel and government forces. Through the disarmament and demobilisation process from 2003 to 2004, a total of 11,780 former child soldiers otherwise known as Children Associated with Fighting Forces were disarmed and demobilised.
UNICEF in Liberia says that to date, 3,639 of these children (2,647 boys and 992 girls) are now enrolled in formal education. Over 3,000 are currently enrolled in skills training and apprenticeship programmes, while over 1,000 have already completed similar programmes.

Gross enrolment in primary and secondary schools nationwide is just about half of the population of school-aged children.

While the gender gap in education has been reduced since 1989, there are still approximately three boys to two girls in primary and secondary schools and more than three boys to one girl at tertiary levels. Pressure placed on girls to work and high teenage pregnancy rates are among the reasons for the disparities.

Health

According to Liberia's National Human Development Report released in August 2006, over 95 per cent of the 325 health facilities that operated prior to Liberia's civil war were either completely or partially destroyed in the conflict. Rural health facilities were worst affected.

The same report revealed that by the time the war ended in 2003, there were less than 20 government-aid Liberian doctors left in the country. By the end of 2005, only 14 new doctors had been trained, bringing the total to 34.

A shortage of health workers has caused low access to medical services in rural Liberia. The country's latest Millennium Development Goals report released in 2004 said the disease burden in Liberia is enormous. Of the 24 illnesses under routine surveillance, malaria, diarrhoea, measles, acute respiratory infections and malnutrition account for the highest morbidity and mortality.
Malaria is a major disease and the prevalence increased from 37.4 percent in 1993 to 56.9 percent in 1999/2000. The UNDP estimates that four out of every 1,000 people in Liberia have tuberculosis.

Only 26 percent of the population has access to adequate sanitation facilities and most immunisation rates remain low.

HIV/AIDS

There is little information about the prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS in Liberia since there have been no general prevalence surveys conducted. A National Human Development Report for 2006 estimated that the rate is between 8.2 and 12 percent.

With the end of the war, the country's National AIDS Control Programme has begun the establishment of voluntary counselling and testing centres in the rural parts of the country where thousands of refugees and Internally Displaced People ( IDPs) are resettling.
Church-run hospitals have started providing HIV/AIDS treatment. The Global Fund to
Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is the main donor for the support of the country's fight against the disease.

Food security

A UN multi-agency Comprehensive Food Security and Nutrition Survey was released in October 2006. The survey was conducted between February and June 2006 and among 5,409 households. The survey encompassed 375 rural and semi-rural communities. It concluded that 11 percent of surveyed households are food-insecure, 40 percent are highly vulnerable and 39 percent of children under five are stunted due to chronic malnutrition.

The report stated that the underlying causes of food insecurity include low agricultural production capacities, limited economic access to food, and limited biological absorption due to a lack of access to safe drinking water.

The main groups of food-insecure people are returnees, households that rely on hunting and contract work, and households that have experienced food production shocks, such as the loss of harvests due to pests.

The World Food Programme (WFP) initiated a school feeding programme in November 2003 and since its inception has reached nearly 400,000 students in 1,065 schools.

The WFP has also expanded its regional offices and currently operates in 12 of Liberia's 15 counties. These sub-offices allow for better monitoring of interventions and to be closer to beneficiaries. In 2005, the WFP aimed to assist 942,000 people.

Gender issues

Liberia has a Ministry for Gender Development, which oversees programmes intended to empower women. The ministry has been advocating for 30 percent of government portfolios be given to women.

According to Liberia's electoral commission, the country's first post-war legislature has less than 20 percent of women in both houses of the legislature, only 12.5 percent in the 64-member House of Representatives and 16.7 percent women senators.

In January 2006, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was sworn in as president, the first democratically elected female president in Africa. Since her inauguration, major cabinet posts such as Finance, Justice, Youth and Sports, Commerce, Police, and Immigration are now headed by women.

Liberian law prohibits domestic violence; however, violence against women has become widespread. Several NGOs have programmes to help abused women and girls, and to increase awareness of their rights. Liberia's police force has a Women's and Children's Protection Section that deals with sexual offences.

In December 2005, parliament passed legislation to make rape illegal. Convicted rapists now face sentences that range from seven years to life imprisonment and accused rapists are ineligible for bail. Rape became common during the country's 14 year civil war, including in IDP camps. Few perpetrators were prosecuted due to a weak legal system, inadequate  evidence, or social taboos against reporting sexual offenses. 

A US State Department report on human rights noted that female genital excision was performed on young girls in rural areas. The civil war disrupted the activities of secret societies that performed excision and many experts believed that the incidence of excision had dropped to as low as 10 percent. However, since the end of the civil war, traditional societies are re-establishing themselves throughout the country, and the practice of excision is believed to be on the rise.

Human rights

Human rights abuses were rampant in Liberia during the civil war. When a peace agreement was signed in 2003, it made provisions for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission rather than a War Crimes Tribunal. The commission's mandate is to "investigate gross human rights violations and war crimes, including massacres, sexual violations, murder, extra-judicial killings and economic crimes, such as the exploitation of natural or public resources to perpetuate the armed conflict. The commission is now active and functional.

The commission is also intended to provide "an opportunity for victims and perpetrators of human rights violations to share their experiences, in order to create a record of the past and facilitate genuine healing and reconciliation."

Charles Taylor, whose rebel group started the civil war, was arrested on war crimes and crimes against humanity charges for funding rebels in Sierra Leone by selling smuggled diamonds on their behalf and buying arms for them. He was indicted by a UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone and is in detention in the Netherlands awaiting trial. A tentative date of April 2007 was been set for the trial.

The protection section of UNMIL has criticised the Liberian judiciary in its handling of cases dealing with rape, sexual exploitation and abuse. In places where courts were operational, only a fraction of cases listed for trial were heard.
Also, inefficient investigation, prosecution and hearings led to prolonged pre-trial detention in many cases, and frequently suspects were released from detention without ever facing trial.

UNMIL also noted that building the capacity of Liberian authorities and civil society is vital for sustainable human rights promotion and protection.

Humanitarian needs

Despite the return of stability following years of civil conflict, the UN says there are urgent humanitarian needs in Liberia. These range from healthcare, drinking water, shelter and education, food insecurity, and the reintegration of former fighters.

The humanitarian problems are compounded by an inadequate infrastructure, with many roads becoming impassable during the rainy season.

Reforms also need to be brought to the justice system so that impunity does not prevail and the resettling of refugees continues to be a priority, human rights groups say.

CREDIT : IRIN - United Nations Office – Humanitarian Country Profile