Liberia in 2004

Liberia in 2004

Area: 97,754 sq km (37,743 sq mi)
Population (2004 est.): 3,391,000 (including about 325,000 refugees in neighbouring countries)
Capital: Monrovia
Head of state and government: Chairman of the National Transitional Government Charles Gyude Bryant

Most of 2004 was spent rebuilding Liberia after 14 years of civil war that had killed thousands of people, displaced 300,000, created a generation of child soldiers, destabilized Liberian society, and devastated the national economy. Demobilization efforts were threatened in late January when the leaders from Liberia’s two rebel movements, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia, issued a joint statement declaring that their soldiers would not disarm until transitional leader Charles Gyude Bryant had stepped down. The statement was considered an attempt to derail the UN disarmament program of 40,000 former combatants and the peace process. By April, however, more than 18,000 former combatants had been disarmed and 10,600 weapons collected. Demobilized soldiers rioted against the disarmament program in Monrovia owing to a dispute over insufficient payment for turning in their weapons. Bryant swore in the new 21-member cabinet that would lead the country until March 2005 elections.

At a Lagos, Nigeria, conference of international leaders in February, the UN, the U.S., and the European Union pledged $520 million over a two-year period to rebuild Liberia. The UN Security Council passed a resolution in March freezing the assets of exiled former Liberian president Charles Taylor. Despite arguments by Taylor’s lawyers that a court in one country did not have the right to try the head of state of another, in late May a UN-backed court in Sierra Leone ruled that Taylor could be tried by an international war-crimes tribunal on 17 counts of crimes against humanity for his alleged role in arming and supporting rebels in Sierra Leone. In May a Nigerian court began reviewing Taylor’s right to asylum, and in September Amnesty International, in a brief given to Nigeria’s Federal High Court, maintained that Nigeria was breaking an international law by harbouring Taylor.

Mary F.E. Ebeling