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Liberian President George Weah has declared rape a national emergency and has ordered new measures to sort out the issue after a current spike of circumstances within the poor West African state.
The strikes comes after 1000’s of Liberians protested rising incidents of rape within the capital Monrovia final month, in a bid to attract consideration to the nation’s alarming charge of sexual assault.
Late on Friday, Weah mentioned he would set up a particular prosecutor for rape in Liberia, in addition to arrange a national intercourse offender registry, a assertion from his workplace mentioned.
The authorities may also set up a so-called “national security task force” on sexual- and gender-based violence.
The excessive charges of rape in impoverished Liberia, compelled to contend each with warfare and the Ebola virus in recent times, has been a longstanding concern.
A UN report in 2016 recorded 803 rape circumstances the earlier 12 months within the nation of 4.5 million, and located that solely two p.c of sexual violence circumstances led to a conviction, for instance.
It was the ensuing sense of impunity and the legacy of the 14-year civil warfare between 1989 and 2003, when rape was commonplace, that had created the present drawback, it mentioned.
Incidents of rape seem to have risen sharply this 12 months, nevertheless.
Margaret Taylor, the director of Liberia’s Women Empowerment Network, informed AFP final month that her NGO had recorded 600 circumstances of rape between June and August, for instance.
That was up from between 80 and a hundred circumstances in May, she mentioned.
Weah’s announcement of a national rape emergency follows a convention within the capital Monrovia on tackling sexual violence on Wednesday.
Addressing the assembly, the footballer-turned-president mentioned Liberia was “witnessing what is actually an epidemic of rape within the pandemic, affecting mostly children and young girls across the country.”
Weah’s workplace mentioned within the assertion on Friday that additional anti-rape measures can be introduced.
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