Liberia I

Migration is at the heart of Liberian history. Two civil wars broke out in the country between the 90’s and early 2000’s, leading to the forced displacement of an estimated 800,000 people internally and one million towards neighbouring West African countries.

Many returned after the conflicts, settling in Monrovia and other displaced Liberians migrated mainly to the USA and to Europe. Forced displacement led to human trafficking, particularly of children and women for labour and sexual exploitation.

Although significant efforts have been made to combat human trafficking such as the new anti- trafficking law, that criminalises all forms of trafficking and allocates more funding to NGOs for awareness-raising campaigns, Liberia is not fully compliant with the minimum standards of the 2000 Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act.

There are still shortcomings in areas such as providing adequate care and shelter to victims and training law enforcement and judicial officials on victim identification procedures.

It is in this context that the Bureau of European Affairs within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs requested MIEUX+ technical assistance. This represents MIEUX+ first partnership with Liberian authorities and together we will work towards an improved trafficking in human beings prevention and response system in the country.
The project is two-fold:

• bolstering the capacities of governmental, NGO and academic stakeholders in producing communication campaigns to raise awareness on human trafficking, through onsite workshops and creation of communications materials;
• strengthening the capacities of public officials in the area of inter-institutional coordination with onsite training sessions.