Liberia is also a land of strength, resilience and promise. Martha Karnga, of the women’s group BAWODA, is empowering women to stand up for their rights.
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Many rural Liberians— like the Jogbahn clan of Grand Bassa County— depend on their land to survive. When a British-owned palm oil company attempted to grab and develop their ancestral territory, AJWS grantee Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) successfully pushed back and won.
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“Even if you were to bring guns and machetes, we would still stand for our land. We would not fight [you]…but we would face you non-violently, and we would stand…You will not take [our land].” That’s the message Joseph Cheo Johnson—a chief elder in Grand Bassa County, Liberia—has for anyone seeking to claim the land …
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“We are telling the truth. We want to be heard, and we want justice,” said a petite, elderly woman to a room full of journalists and human rights activists in Guatemala City on February 13, 2016. A survivor of sexual slavery during Guatemala’s decades-long civil war, the woman’s face was obscured by a Mayan scarf to protect her identity.
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Supported by AJWS since 2012, BAWODA unites and empowers women across Grand Bassa County to take greater control of their personal and family lives, assume local leadership positions and influence political decision-making. When Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf declared a national state of emergency due to Ebola on August 6, 2014, the group sprang to action to educate Grand Bassans about the virus.
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As the Liberia outbreak began to ebb in early 2015, AJWS recognized an emerging, urgent need to assist the thousands of people who have been deeply traumatized by Ebola—especially survivors and those who lost loved ones.
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The recent reports of three new Ebola cases in Liberia—including a woman who died on March 31—remind us of the difficulty of fully eradicating the virus from West Africa. They also remind us of the human impact of Ebola, which has killed over 11,000 people in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone since December 2013. This photo essay offers a look at how the National Imam Council of Liberia (NICOL) mobilized imams around the country to educate Liberians about Ebola and how to protect themselves from it.
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In June 2014, a well-known doctor in Banjor, a community near the Liberian capital of Monrovia, died suddenly of a mysterious illness. A devout Muslim, the doctor was buried in the traditional way: imams washed and blessed his body then carried it to a site near the local mosque for burial. Within days, all five of the imams who bathed the doctor’s body were dead. One by one, those who came into contact with them also fell ill—and one by one, they died. In a country where malaria, typhoid and a slew of other sicknesses kill thousands of people each year, it was difficult to determine what was happening. But one thing was abundantly clear: something was killing people in Banjor at an alarming rate, and Muslims were getting hit the hardest.
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As a child growing up in rural Nepal, Bishnu Pariyar would walk to school every morning with three other children from her village. During these two hour-long treks, Bishnu’s age mates treated her as an equal, chatting and giggling with her as they would any other friend. But when they stopped for a drink at …
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