Liberia Declares Rape A National Emergency....

Liberian President George Weah has declared rape a national emergency and has ordered new measures to tackle the problem after a recent spike of cases in the West African state.
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The move comes after thousands of Liberians protested rising incidents of rape in the capital Monrovia last month, in a bid to draw attention to the country’s alarming rate of sexual assault.
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Late on Friday, Weah said he would install a special prosecutor for rape in Liberia, as well as set up a national sex offender registry, a statement from his office said.
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The government will also establish a so-called “national security task force” on sexual- and gender-based violence.
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The high rates of rape in impoverished Liberia, forced to contend both with war and the Ebola virus in recent years, has been a longstanding concern.
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A UN report in 2016 recorded 803 rape cases the previous year in the country of 4.5 million, and found that only two per cent of sexual violence cases led to a conviction, for example.
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It was the resulting sense of impunity and the legacy of the 14-year civil war between 1989 and 2003, when rape was commonplace, that had created the current problem, it said.
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Incidents of rape appear to have risen sharply this year, however.
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Margaret Taylor, the director of Liberia’s Women Empowerment Network, told AFP last month that her NGO had recorded 600 cases of rape between June and August, for example.
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That was up from between 80 and a hundred cases in May, she said.
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Weah’s announcement of a national rape emergency follows a conference in the capital Monrovia on tackling sexual violence on Wednesday.
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Addressing the meeting, the footballer-turned-president said Liberia was “witnessing what is actually an epidemic of rape within the pandemic, affecting mostly children and young girls across the country.”
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Weah’s office said in the statement on Friday that further anti-rape measures will be announced.
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