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Our Bodies - Their Battle Ground: Gender-based Violence in Conflict Zones
IRIN Web Special on violence against women and girls during and after conflict.
LIBERIA: Working on rebuilding lives and trust
Victims of sexual violence await medical attention in Liberia
Credit: IRIN
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Women generally bore the brunt of the suffering during Liberia's civil wars, which raged on and off for 14 years. As the country begins the long road to recovery, improving their situation is likely to prove an arduous task.
Mama Morris works for Sharpe Home Care Services, a local non-governmental organization providing skills training for women in Liberia - a big job, but one that she believes will empower them, making them better able to defend themselves.
"Traditionally women do not argue with men here in Liberia, that needs to change," Morris told IRIN in Voinjama, the main town in the northern county of Lofa . "We want it to be a 50-50 arrangement in future."
Men are used to being the boss, she said, and during the war years, rape and sexual abuse were often inflicted on women and girls.
"When the fighting was going on in Voinjama, two of my female colleagues stayed on in town - they wanted to carry on doing their job. They were both raped," Morris said. "At that time, medical treatment was non-existent and one of them got an infection. It's been years now and she still has not recovered. She's now sterile.
"As for the other woman, her husband found out. Unfortunately it was a third party that told him. The shock killed him. He had a heart attack and died not shortly after."
"Even the old were raped here in Voinjama," she added.
Voinjama is a small town near Liberia's border with Sierra Leone and Guinea. Over the past decade and a half, it has been battered by recurrent bouts of fighting, the latest of which pitted pro-government forces and rebels from the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) movement.
Whenever the fighting came to Voinjama, women would run and hide in the forest. "My aunt hid in the bush for two years and eight months," said Morris. "She ran from Voinjama when she heard the gunfire. When I finally saw her she was covered in maggots, they were all under her skin.
"I prepared a poultice with salt and rubbed it into her skin to draw them out. I tried and tried, but I couldn't make her better," she said sadly. Her aunt died soon afterwards.
The war has ended but it has left deep divisions among the women in Voinjama since not all had remained passive during the conflict. Some took up arms alongside the men. Some, known as "bush wives", were forced to have sex with combatants, who also used them as cooks and porters. "There were female fighters and the 'wives'," Morris explained. "They are here in town, but they are separate from the other women."
Healing the wounds the war has left so that victims and aggressors can live once again side by side is going to be a major challenge, Morris said. After disarmament, people will need "to talk and know we are one".
"First we need to disarm," she said. "We need to talk and know we are one, we need to reconcile."
[ENDS]
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