[{"bbox": [96, 152, 1134, 207], "category": "Text", "text": "girls remains one of the most significant human rights violations in Liberia¹⁷ and continues to impact women and girls in complex and intersecting ways with multiple forms of consequences."}, {"bbox": [96, 218, 1134, 430], "category": "Text", "text": "Sexual violence (rape and sexual assault) makes up 81% of all SGBV cases, with 88% of the victims of these crimes being girls. Intimate partner violence (IPV) is also widespread. According to the Liberian Demographic and Health Survey (LDHS) 2019-2020, the overall prevalence of IPV within the last 12 months was 44.74%. Out of 326 cases of physical assault in 2018, 93% were committed against women and girls¹⁸. Out of the 2.664 SGBV cases reported in 2019, rape accounted for 69.5%¹⁹. In 2020, out of the 2240 SGBV cases reported, 80% were rape²⁰. Harmful traditional practices (HTPs) such as female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage are also widely practiced. The proportion of women aged 20-24 years who were married or in a union before the age of 18 is 35.9%, of which 8.8% were married or in a union before the age of 15²¹."}, {"bbox": [96, 442, 1134, 523], "category": "Text", "text": "Liberia's rate of teenage pregnancy, around 30%, is one of the highest in the world, as the maternal mortality ratio, with 661 deaths per 100,000 live births according to UN 2020 data²². Besides, 44.4% of women aged between 15-49 years are estimated to have suffered FGM, with the prevalence of the practice standing at 72% in rural Liberia²³."}, {"bbox": [96, 535, 1134, 722], "category": "Text", "text": "Society power structures mostly privilege boys and men in Liberia, and SGBV, including FGM is rooted in unequal power relations between men and women that are embedded in a system that sustains itself through discriminatory gender stereotypes and norms, and unequal access to and control over resources and decision-making. SGBV prevents women from playing a vital role in the country's development and is an enormous impediment to safe sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). Addressing SGBV to advance gender equality hence requires efforts not only in promoting awareness and behaviour change, but also in challenging the fundamental power dynamics that define gender norms, disability-related stigma and relationships²⁴."}, {"bbox": [96, 733, 1134, 920], "category": "Text", "text": "At the national level, even though the various advocacy efforts of women's rights organisations and CSOs to end SGBV resulted in the introduction of robust laws and policies that protect the human rights of women and girls, implementation is still lacking. Challenges also remain in enforcing these laws, owing to the vastly under-resourced justice and security sectors, weak law enforcement capacity, and lack of political will. Furthermore, despite having ratified the major international and regional instruments condemning FGM as a human rights violation, including the Maputo Protocol, Liberia remains one of the only three West African countries that do not have a law criminalizing the practice. Hence, the need to also address the gaps in legislation."}, {"bbox": [96, 931, 1134, 1090], "category": "Text", "text": "While the Spotlight Initiative made significant strides in breaking the taboo on FGM, leading to a 3-year country-wide suspension of the practice in February 2022 and to the total ban of the practice in Montserrado County in February 2023 (followed by Grand Cape Mount, Bog, Nimba and Lofa), these gains should be anchored by formal FGM legislation as a way of sustaining the efforts and ensuring accountability. The Action identification mission found that FGM cases have neither been reported nor prosecuted even though the practice continued after the total ban declared in Montserrado County and elsewhere."}, {"bbox": [96, 1102, 1134, 1289], "category": "Text", "text": "The lack of harmonisation of Liberia's hybrid justice system i.e., customary vs. statutory legal systems and the failure of the customary laws to fully safeguard women and girls from SGBV is another challenge identified. Revisiting and aligning customary law provisions in accordance with international human rights principles that the country has endorsed and acceded to is of paramount importance since the nature of customary provisions could be at times gender discriminatory. Previous studies noted that judicial harmonisations may pose challenges, for instance in terms of cultural tensions between different ethnic groups. While merging the two judicial systems could prevent these tensions, it might require dialogue between groups to establish common grounds²⁵."}, {"bbox": [85, 1378, 1143, 1427], "category": "Footnote", "text": "¹⁷ Tsegaw, M., Mulat, B. & Shitu, K. Intimate partner violence and associated factors among reproductive age women in Liberia: a cross-sectional study using a recent Liberian demographic and health survey. BMC Women's Health (2022)."}, {"bbox": [85, 1428, 1143, 1477], "category": "Footnote", "text": "¹⁸ Enough excuses: challenging gender norms that support violence against women and girls in Liberia. Oxfam & ENOUGH (2019)."}, {"bbox": [85, 1478, 883, 1503], "category": "Footnote", "text": "¹⁹ Ensuring Rights and Choices for all in Liberia. Liberia Annual Report 2019. UNFPA (2019)."}, {"bbox": [85, 1504, 229, 1524], "category": "Footnote", "text": "²⁰ CLIP Liberia."}, {"bbox": [85, 1527, 858, 1551], "category": "Footnote", "text": "²¹ Accessed from https://data.unwomen.org/country/liberia on 5 March. UN Women (2023)."}, {"bbox": [85, 1551, 220, 1572], "category": "Footnote", "text": "²² CLIP Liberia."}, {"bbox": [85, 1573, 608, 1597], "category": "Footnote", "text": "²³ https://liberia.unfpa.org/en/topics/gender-based-violence-19."}, {"bbox": [85, 1598, 852, 1622], "category": "Footnote", "text": "²⁴ UNICEF Gender Transformative Approach for Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation."}, {"bbox": [85, 1622, 619, 1646], "category": "Footnote", "text": "²⁵ Liberia Country Gender Equality Profile. UN Women (2021)."}, {"bbox": [1035, 1680, 1143, 1705], "category": "Page-footer", "text": "Page 6 of 27"}]