When it opened its doors in 1960, the Ducor was one of a few five-star hotels in Africa, boasting a night club and air-conditioned rooms, according to travel guides
Guinea is fighting the virus with a vaccine used in the DRC, while their neighbours Sierra Leone and Liberia increase border surveillance
A generation of women in Liberia have been irrevocably scarred by the use of rape as a weapon in the country’s civil wars.
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/ 16 January 2009
A human rights group has denounced what it calls ”deplorable” conditions in Liberia’s prisons and has called for reforms in how they are managed.
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/ 14 October 2008
Disputes over land ownership and property boundaries are threatening to undermine Liberia’s fragile peace, according to a survey released on Monday.
A former Liberian warlord, whose drugged fighters appeared on camera holding up a human heart, dodged questions on Wednesday before the country’s TRC.
A former Liberian warlord has told the country’s TRC that the US released Charles Taylor from jail in 1985 to overthrow president Samuel Doe.
Monrovia has been hit by a crime wave that has left inhabitants fearing for their lives while the government admits the situation is deteriorating
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/ 21 February 2008
United States President George Bush, winding up a trip to Africa, promised war-scarred Liberia that the US will see its staunchest ally on the continent out of ”days of challenge and sorrow”. Bush vowed sustained US help to battle poverty and disease as well as an education initiative.
Liberia President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf appealed for honesty on Tuesday as her war-racked West African country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) began its public hearings. ”I call upon all Liberians to respond to the TRC when they are invited,” Johnson-Sirleaf said at the start of proceedings in an opening ceremony in Monrovia.
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/ 7 December 2007
A criminal court has ordered the arrest of Liberia’s ex-president Gyude Bryant on allegations that he embezzled ,3-million while in office. Bryant, who led the nation for two years as a transitional president following the end of Liberia’s 14-year civil war, stepped down in 2005 after Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf won democratic presidential elections.
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/ 7 November 2007
West African military chiefs have charged that the United States has failed to consult adequately with countries that will be affected by a planned American military command for Africa. The group said the plan ”had not been fully understood” by African countries.
Sanctions against former Liberian president Charles Taylor and his entourage are impairing his ability to defend himself against war-crimes charges, his lawyer said on Wednesday. The sanctions are having a ”chilling effect” as witnesses sympathetic to Taylor are afraid to come forward, said the lawyer.
Under an old foam mattress in one of Monrovia’s slums, Niome David keeps a dark memento — the underwear her nine-year-old daughter was wearing the night she was raped. The mother refuses to wash out the blood stain, keeping it as proof of the brutality her child endured. In a nation inured to violence, the fact that she knew to preserve evidence is also, somehow, a sign of hope.
Liberian authorities investigating a possible coup plot have discovered a large cache of new AK-47 ammunition in a town on the main road to Côte d’Ivoire, police said on Monday. Police spokesperson Alvin Jask Kanneh said it was too early to say whether the cache was linked to an alleged scheme to smuggle weapons into Liberia from Côte d’Ivoire.
Liberia on Monday resumed diamond trading after lifting a self-imposed ban on the gems, officials said. The embargo imposed four years ago had been in line with a United Nations ban on the country’s diamonds, blamed for fuelling a barbaric 14-year civil war in the resource-rich West African nation.
The Liberian government has lifted a self-imposed moratorium on the mining, sale and export of diamonds that had been in place for six years, officials said on Saturday. Deputy Minister of Lands, Mines and Energy Kpandeh Fayia said that, ”as of Monday, people can start applying for mining, selling and broker licences” for the stones.
The world’s largest charity hospital ship docked in Liberia on Wednesday to begin a mission to bring free healthcare to Africa. The 80-bed Africa Mercy, a former Danish rail ferry converted into a hospital ship, will spend several months treating patients in Monrovia port before moving on to Sierra Leone.
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/ 28 February 2007
A Liberian Cabinet minister has resigned following the publication of pictures showing him having sex with two unidentified women, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said. Minister of State for Presidential Affairs Willis Knuckles tendered his resignation on Sunday, Johnson-Sirleaf said in statement.
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/ 19 February 2007
Thousands of Liberians on Monday lined the road from airport to the seaside capital, Monrovia, to welcome their leader back from a donors’ conference where she secured a massive debt-relief deal. Villagers and residents of small towns along the 50km road from Roberts International Airport came out to praise President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf for a "job well done".
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/ 2 February 2007
Thousands of cheering Liberians lined the streets of the capital Monrovia on Thursday to greet Chinese President Hu Jintao, who pledged more than -million to aid recovery after one of Africa’s most ruinous civil wars. China has been offering low interest loans, debt relief and other incentives to increase its influence on the world’s poorest continent.
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/ 17 January 2007
One year after Liberia swore in Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf as Africa’s first elected female head of state, three young women braid each other’s hair under a street light that didn’t exist six months ago. ”Before we would have been using candles,” said Latifa Fofana.
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/ 14 January 2007
One year after taking the helm of a country torn by 14 years of war, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is winning praise for her efforts to restore the rule of law in Liberia, and for standing up to world steel giant Arcelor Mittal. The rights group Human Rights Watch says Johnson-Sirleaf is slowly but steadily restoring hope to the nation of 3,5-million people.
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/ 5 November 2006
The first 100 troops of Liberia’s new army graduated on Saturday, as the country’s vice-president called for a new relationship after decades of military rule and civil war. About 500 people attended the passing-out parade at a Monrovia barracks of the troops, resplendent in new uniforms paid for by the United States government.
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/ 13 October 2006
Liberia’s defence minister said on Friday an exiled confidant of former president and warlord Charles Taylor was plotting to assassinate top government officials and called for international help tracking him down. Benjamin Yeaten, Taylor’s former chief of staff and one of his most feared fighters, is believed to be armed, somewhere in West Africa, Defence Minister Brownie Samukai said.
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/ 10 October 2006
Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was on Tuesday to start recording evidence on war-time atrocities committed over more than two decades of successive conflicts, its chairperson said. ”We will open our offices today [Tuesday] all over Liberia, and our workers will receive statements from the public,” Jerome Verdier, TRC head, said. Several hundred people have been trained to document evidence from both victims and perpetrators.
If the Daily Observer sells out today, it will have its centrefold to thank. One hundred and five mugshots line the daily paper. These men and women are the first class of recruits for the Armed Forces of Liberia. ”The New Armed Forces of Liberia Welcomes Recruits … If you know that any of these people were involved in human rights violations or criminal activity, call the Investigation Hotline,” reads the banner.
World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz wrapped up a visit on Saturday to the war-shattered West African nation of Liberia, where he has praised economic progress led by the country’s new head of state, but warned there is ”a lot of work to do”. President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf took office in January after winning elections that made her Africa’s first democratically elected female president.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has painted a gloomy picture of the war-battered country’s health sector, press reports said on Friday, with the country now having just 34 doctors, or just one per 80 000 people. In the late 1980s, there were 400 doctors, she was quoted as telling a just-concluded meeting of aid donors.
Liberia will not be seeking fresh aid from donors at a conference it is hosting but ideas on how to hasten its post-war reconstruction, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said on Wednesday. ”We are not going to ask for pledges,” Johnson-Sirleaf told delegates from major international financial organisations in the capital, Monrovia.
One of Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf’s promises the day she took the oath of office in January was to urgently restore the electricity supply to the capital where power was cut off 16 years ago during the war. Among the ”key objectives and deliverables in the first 150 days of our administration” is the restoration of electricity to Monrovia”, she said on January 16.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has dismissed several government officials in a bid to fight corruption, press reports said on Monday. In her inaugural speech last January, Johnson-Sirleaf had pledged to ”make corruption the number-one enemy” of her government.