Africa.gm - Africa news and information community - News - RSS

Syndicated content powered by .geographical media

RSS syndication makes it easy to receive content updates in My Yahoo!, Newsgator, Bloglines, and other news readers.

Current Feed Content

---

Pray the Devil Back to Hell makes Oscar Shortlist

Pray the Devil Back to Hell is the extraordinary story of a small band of Liberian women who came together in the midst of a bloody civil war, took on the violent warlords and corrupt Charles Taylor regime, and won a long-awaited peace for their shattered country in 2003. The movie may now be nominated for an Oscar.

LIBERIA: No relief as most Monrovians go without toilets

With just one in 25 Liberians having access to a toilet, most use the nearest bush or beach, unwittingly committing what the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) calls “the riskiest sanitation practice”. Liberia’s 3.5 million people share just 19,690 toilets, according to a government water and sanitation sector assessment from October 2008, and fewer than one in three Liberians have access to safe drinking water, according to the head of Liberia’s Water and Sewer Corporation, Hun-Bu Tulay. “Open...

Chuckie Taylor convicted of torture

Chuckie Taylor, son of former Liberian president Charles Taylor, was found guilty of torture and related crimes by a US court on Thursday 30 October. Taylor could face between 20 years to life imprisonment for the crimes he committed in Liberia, while serving as the head of the former Liberian President's Anti Terrorist Unit (ATU). These include the use of electric shocks on the genitals, burning victims with cigarettes and hot irons and melting plastic and rubbing salt into wounds. According...

LIBERIA: Mental health problems breed violence

Liberia’s only mental health specialist says the country is experiencing an increase in post-traumatic stress disorders because the country’s two disarmament processes during 14 years of conflict did not address the psychosocial needs of ex-combatants, especially that of youths. Dr. Benjamin Harris said he returned to his home country of Liberia in 1996 to oversee health services for the UN-organised demobilisation, disarmament, rehabilitation and reintegration (DDRR) of fighters following...

LIBERIA: Would you fight again?

Female ex-combatants are twice as likely as men to take up weapons again to escape poverty, based on a recent US-funded survey of more than 1,000 former fighters in Liberia. Almost 30 percent of the people surveyed said they were willing to take up arms again to earn a living wage, family and community acceptance, and respect for their tribe or religion. Researchers concluded that ex-fighters at risk of returning to violence can destabilise a country still recovering from war. Surveyors with...

LIBERIA: FGM continues in rural secrecy

Thousands of young girls annually prepare for their initiation into a women’s secret association, Sande Society, which operates mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. As part of their initiation, young women take a vow of secrecy after weeks of training in the forest, promising not to not tell uninitiated girls or men what happens to them, to assume new names, and to have their clitorises cut off - known as female genital mutilation (FGM) - according to women in the secret society. ...

LIBERIA: Flood relief efforts continue

Hundreds of residents along Monrovia’s coast have lost, or are still blocked from their homes nearly two months after storms started on 20 July 2008, according to relief workers. The Liberian Red Cross Society estimates flooding has affected about 1,400 people. Red Cross relief worker Pappie Toe, said efforts are still underway to assist flood victims who have been sheltering with family and friends. “We give them food as well as medicine. And another package is given to families [whose]...

Liberia ALERT: Journalist’s equipment briefly seized in Senate Chamber

Fredrick Cherue, a member of the Upper House of Liberia’s parliament on August 27, 2008, seized the equipment of a radio journalist for allegedly recording a private discussion in the open plenary session of the House. Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)’s correspondent reported that, Julius Kanubah, a reporter of Star Radio a Monrovia-based independent station was the recording bitter exchanges between two senators, when his recorder was seized. Senator Cherue, a former President of...

8 Liberian fans reported dead

The death of at least eight football fans in Monrovia at Liberia's game with the Gambia has overshadowed the start of Group 6 qualifying for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. A doctor says the fans died of suffocation during the game at a stadium in Liberia's capital. The Liberian Football Association's chief doctor Sam Harris says the victims' bodies were taken to the country's main hospital. The game eventually finished 1-1, with Mustapha Jarju scoring the goal for the Gambia...

LIBERIA: Coastal erosion displaces hundreds

Coastal erosion has wiped out dozens of homes and left nearly 200 inhabitants homeless in Buchanan, the second largest city in Liberia, and government officials say the whole city of 200,000 people is threatened. “The situation is clearly posing a threat to the entire city. Since 2006 the sea has been gradually encroaching on Buchanan leaving more than one hundred homes destroyed and displacing hundreds of people, and it is still getting worse,” Julia Duncan-Cassell, superintendent of Grand...