No image available
/ 24 October 2005
Diplomats and civil society activists fear the second round of voting in Liberia’s first elections since the end of the civil war will spark a flurry of behind-the-scenes deal-making that could compromise the new government. The National Electoral Commission announced that former football star George Weah and ex-World Bank official Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf will face off for the presidency on November 8.
No image available
/ 14 October 2005
Tuesday dawned as bright as the hopes of the Liberian people. Hundreds slept on the streets of the capital, Monrovia, outside polling stations, anxious not to miss their first chance to vote since former warlord Charles Taylor cajoled and terrified his way into the presidency in 1997.
The arrest of Moujahid Dokubo-Asari, the militant self-proclaimed leader of the Ijaw tribe, has threatened to turn the underlying tensions in the oil-producing Niger delta into a maelstrom of violence. After the arrest of Bayelsa State Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha on money-laundering charges, many feared that the move would inflame tensions between the Ijaws and the Itsekiri.
Every week, the women in white can be found at Monrovia’s dilapidated old airfield, praying for the safety of the Liberian nation. They gather by the hundreds, braving torrential rain or blazing sunshine, determined that God would never forget them again.
No image available
/ 16 September 2005
Precious* was 12 years old when she first sold sex, to a man nearly four times her age. Now 18, the Liberian schoolgirl says she sleeps with between five and six men on an average day in order to pay her school fees, which are the cheapest available at $1 500 Liberian dollars per year. She receives between $25 and $50 for each man.
Below the official portraits decorating the office of the police commis-sioner in Rivers State, Nigeria, bright stickers cling to the wall. ”I am the apple of God’s eye,” reads one. ”Police for Christ,” says another. But the pious slogans are unlikely to win trust from local people.
While international attention focuses on the 62 convicted coup plotters whose release was blocked in Zimbabwe this week, the 11 men still imprisoned in Equatorial Guinea may be slowly starving to death. This emerged both from prisoners’ notes smuggled out of Black Beach prison in Malabo and from a leaked report by human rights monitors.
No image available
/ 15 October 2004
Minni Minawi does not look like a warlord. The former primary school teacher is a softly spoken Sudanese, in a grey pinstripe suit. Yet 34-year-old Minawi is the military leader of the Sudan Liberation Army, one of two rebel factions locked in battle with the Sudanese government in Darfur. ”This [Darfur] is worse than Rwanda. This is not only killing, but starving, displacing, disease and poverty.”
No image available
/ 15 October 2004
In a dusty house in Ogoniland, a picture of executed activist Ken Saro-Wiwa hangs on the wall. Nearly a decade after his controversial death, the Ogoni people are embroiled in a new struggle. Local people accuse Casella, a company contracted by oil giant Shell to clean up a spill, of giving funds to Chief Fabian Gberesan of the Ogoni town of KDere, who pays gangs to attack his opponents.
An ”all-time war” due to begin on Friday between Nigerian rebels and government troops has been averted by 11th-hour peace talks. Rebel leader Alhaji Dokubo Asari met President Olusegun Obasanjo on Wednesday after Asari threatened to attack foreign oil installations. The threat of violence contributed to last week’s record oil prices when barrels of Bonny light crude traded for more than .