Prayers, protest and peace: How women helped end Liberia’s civil conflict
- Written by Tina S. Mehnpaine
- Illustration by Marie Schwab
- Edited by Purple Romero
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Key strategy: Peacebuilding
Peacebuilding is the long-term process of addressing the roots of conflicts, building institutions for truth and reconciliation, and creating a lasting basis for peace. It aims to prevent further violence and create sustainable institutions of processes to foster reconciliation. It can operate on a grassroots community level or with support from regional or international peacekeeping bodies.
Key tactic: Interfaith organizing
Interfaith organizing focuses on shared ethical principles of different religious traditions to bring community members together to fight for a common cause. Respect, inclusivity and tolerance are key features of this form of political organizing.
Key tactic: Sex strike
A sex strike is a form of non-violent resistance where someone (usually women) refrain from sexual intercourse with their partners to push for a political or social outcome. When enacted on a wide basis, the strike can draw attention to the strikers demands and leverage power dynamics and personal relationships for change.
It was 2002 and Janice Flomo’s heart was shattered. Memories of her late husband were fresh, and compounded by the anguish and suffering of the second phase of the Liberian war. “As women, we needed peace because we were bearing the brunt of the war. We were being raped while our children were being used as child soldiers,” Flomo says.
The second phase of Liberia’s 14-year civil war was as deadly as the first, killing thousands and inflicting unbearable psychological pain. Women were disproportionately affected. By 2003, the war conflict would have displaced one in three people, and left over 200,000 dead.
The war was already decades old. It had begun on Christmas Eve in 1989, when the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), a militia group led by Charles Taylor, launched a bloody uprising against then-president Samuel Doe. But the group that brought Doe down in 1990 was a breakaway faction of Taylor’s NPFL led by warlord Prince Johnson.
Between 1989 and 1995, several splinter groups fought for control of Liberia. Economic Community of West African (ECOWAS) nations spearheaded peace talks throughout the region and sent troops to maintain peace – but ECOWAS fighters were often themselves pulled into the fighting.
Violence finally subsided when Taylor became president in 1997 – but peace was fleeting. Taylor reneged on pre-election commitments to nation-building, creating a violent paramilitary force, the Anti-Terrorist Unit (ATU).
Come 1999, another full-scale war had broken out – this time characterized by brutal acts of rape, torture and slaughter by rebel groups and warring factions determined to overthrow Taylor.
Millions of Liberians longed for an end to the violence. Few dared to act. But for Janice and 300 other women, the war was an unbearable burden they vowed to end even at risk of their own lives.
The first woman on the frontlines
Liberian women have a history of bringing peace in times of crisis.
Ruth Sando Perry was Liberia’s first female acting head of state, as interim chair of the Council of State of the Liberia National Transitional Government, which succeeded in holding the 1996 elections. Internationally acclaimed as free and fair, the vote brought Taylor to power – ending the first phase of the civil war after her three male predecessors had failed.
Perry also worked to disarm rebel groups, repatriated refugees and resettled the displaced. But when the second phase of the war began in 1999, a group of women working outside mainstream politics tried a different approach altogether.
The Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace (WLMAP) was an interfaith movement whose message was that the bullet does not pick and choose, and nor does it know Christian from Muslim. This was the first time in Liberia’s history that Muslim and Christian women had banded together with such formidable force.
Interfaith power, unique sisterhood
In 2011, Leymah Gbowee would win the Nobel Peace Prize. But when she began to gather together the women who would eventually form WLMAP, she was young and inexperienced, a novice to advocacy. She says her mission was given to her in a dream. “I had this dream, like someone was telling me to bring the women together to pray for peace,” says Gbowee.
A former employee of the church Trauma Healing program, Gbowee used daily fasting and praying to encourage what initially began as a Christian Women’s Association. She held daily lectures and sessions to educate women in peacebuilding and advocacy. During one of these church activities, a Muslim policewoman announced that she would establish the Muslim Women for Peace.
“I raised my hands in the church and said, ‘I got a surprise for all of you,’” says Asatu Bah-Kenneth, who is now a retired councillor. “The congregation – when I spoke – they thought I had something else to say and I was a Christian … all of them were surprised when I said, ‘I am the only Muslim in this church, but I am so impressed with the activities that are going on here today – especially the initiative taken by the Christian women,’ and so I promised and I vowed in the church that day that I was going to establish Muslim Women for Peace.”
She immediately began visiting fellow Muslim women to encourage them to join the group – though many considered her an intruder and wilward. Some Islamic leaders saw her actions as a violation of the Muslim faith. Some said she was misleading women and inciting them to go against cultural norms that prevented them from speaking openly and in the presence of men. But, with support from her husband and mother, she persisted and was eventually able to gather together a movement – and build ties between Muslim Women for Peace and the Christian Women’s Association.
This wasn’t easy either. There were reports of Taylor’s NPFL targeting Muslims for supporting Doe’s regime. NPFL forces burned Mosques across the country and killed over 3,000 people, according to United Nations data. And bringing together Muslims and Christians didn’t just mean bridging the political rupture between opposing sides of the conflict. It also meant connecting across different faiths and ways of life, separate traditions and cultural heritage.
Initially, many women weren’t interested. But with Kenneth’s unwavering persistence and Gbowee’s engagement with the women from her church, the two groups came together as one.
A three-day training was held so the Muslim and Christian women could learn more about each other. A lot of misconceptions had to be addressed – for instance, Christian and Muslim women were suspicious of one another’s prayer practices. Each openly expressed what they felt uncomfortable with and discussed their misunderstandings.
On the last day, they cooked, laughed and danced together. They established shared prayer schedules: Christians giving way when Muslims needed to pray, and Muslims returning the courtesy. “No one was doing any religious bashing,” Gbowee says. “We saw each other not through the lens of our religion, but through the lens of our womanhood.”
They signed a memorandum of understanding to work together for peace as the Liberian Women Mass Action for Peace under the Women in Peacebuilding Network.
“Not only were we peace activists, but we bonded together in a sisterhood that was difficult to understand – especially since we were from different ethnic groups, different religious groups, of which all of us knew that we had to take care of each other,” Leymah says, stressing that this was possible by prioritising respect for one another.
Whatever their ethnic or religious differences, the women’s experiences of war were often all too similar. “The daily jokes and laughter helped me and the other women cope with the sadness of our losses,” says Janice Flomo, who had recently lost her husband when she joined the movement.
“We saw each other not through the lens of our religion, but through the lens of our womanhood.”
-Leymah Gbowee
Peaceful strategies, strategies for peace
Once Christian and Muslim women had forged this mutual understanding and sense of harmony, it was time to see if they could use the same nonviolent approach to end a war that had crippled their country.
At first, neither President Taylor nor any leader from the rebel groups paid attention to their protests and prayers. They realized they have to do more. And so they decided to go on a sex strike, denying their partners intimacy until peace was secured.
This idea was not only taken up by members of the WLMAP. Women across rural and urban Liberia refused to have sex with their husbands, on grounds that they were fasting and praying for peace. Even traditionalists adopted the tactic, arguing that they must remain in a holy state until their prayers for an end to the conflict were answered.
“It did work, especially in the rural parts,” Gbowee says. “Women were determined to deny their partners sex until peace was secure.”
Every day, WLMAP members assembled at the fish market wearing a uniform of white t-shirts, blue lappa and white head ties – and then in an open field, where Taylor could see them as he went to his office at the Executive Mansion and went home to his house in the town of Congo. This became their gathering point, where all could see them – including the rebels.
Finally, Liberia’s women peacemakers had the attention of the country’s warring men – and they were determined to see their protest through. Even though some men turned their aggression on the protestors in homes. Gbowee says some raped their wives, or beat them for refusing.
“It became a contentious issue for domestic violence, and we told the women, if you know you couldn’t do it, don’t force it. We didn’t want anyone to get hurt,” she says.
For months, the women protested. They organized programs, inviting Taylor and other government officials to hear their statement calling for an immediate ceasefire and lasting peace. Taylor refused to face them. But the women were undeterred, continuing their advocacy until Taylor called them to the Executive Mansion, where they finally had the chance to voice their demands.
Taylor eventually agreed to join peace talks in Accra, Ghana, between the leaders of LURD and MODEL, Taylor’s main rival.
Women were answered.
The negotiations had been initiated at the 92nd Ordinary Session of the Africa Union held in Addis Ababa in June 2003, and were led by Nigeria’s former head of state General Abdulsalami Abubakar with the support of ECOWAS.
But the WLMAP received intelligence that LURD and MODEL leaders were not planning to attend the talks in Accra. After learning that the rebels were staying at a hotel in Sierra Leone, a group led by Kenneth traveled to the country to meet them.
In Sierra Leone, Kenneth used radio interviews to mobilize women – including Liberians living in refugee camps – to put pressure on the rebel leaders. “Our presence made them agree to attend the peace talks,” she says. And Leymah Gbowee led a ten-woman delegation to the talks in Accra.
Getting these men around the negotiating table was just the start;making them sign was even tougher. While in Ghana for the signing, Taylor was indicted by the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone for war crimes he committed in Freetown, causing him to flee back to Liberia to avoid arrest, leaving his men behind for the negotiation. Leaders of the rebel groups refused to sign the agreement unless Taylor resigned as president. The negotiation stalled, leading to its postponement.
Resuming after four days, but still with no progress and interest from the warlords, prompting the women to stage a sit-in. Boldly barricading the “peace exits” they made it clear that no one was leaving until an agreement was signed.
The WLMAP was accused of obstructing justice and threatened with arrest by security guards. Rather than back down, the women upped the ante by threatening to strip naked if anyone attempted to remove them from the hall. This, it seemed, was too much for these men of power to countenance. The activists were permitted to stay – providing a major push for the peace talks to proceed.
Finally, months after the peace talks were first initiated in June, Taylor, MODEL and LURD forces signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Ghana in 2003 – ensuring an immediate ceasefire and the disarmament of fighters. It was Liberia’s 15th peace agreement since the war began 15 years earlier. Those that came before had often lasted only weeks.
Taylor fled into exile in Nigeria, where he was arrested for providing support to rebel groups in Sierra Leone between 1991 and 2002, and tried at the Hague. He is currently being held at a British prison, where he is serving a 50-year sentence for aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Africa’s first female president
With Taylor gone, Liberia now had a critical chance to elect a new president. WLMAP put forward Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as their candidate and immediately began mobilizing women to register to vote. They visited markets and public centers, encouraging women to exercise their democratic rights.
“We were so tired of the man’s leadership,” Kenneth says. Since men had waged the war that devastated their country and women had led the charge for peace, it was about time a woman held Liberia’s highest political office.
Sirleaf won the election in November 2005 and was inaugurated as Africa’s first female president on January 16, 2006. During her presidency, she worked with WLMAP, visiting and engaging the women. “Ellen didn’t give us a job, but she listened to us whenever something was happening, and we called her to talk to her,” says Korpor Dennis, who had joined the group to protest and pray for peace after her husband was killed by rebels.
Sirleaf’s presidency attracted huge donor support. Liberia had just emerged from war. Hearts were broken, infrastructure needed repair, the school system was damaged and state security apparatus needed – including the armed forces of Liberia – to be restructured.
Sirleaf served for 12 years and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011. Advocates of greater female participation in politics hailed her presidency as a boost for women across Africa. Yet hopes that her term would open the way for more women into positions of power have been disappointed.
An ongoing struggle for peace and equality
Liberia has one of the lowest levels of representation of women in elective office in the world, according to World Bank 2022 data, and ranks 156th in the World Bank’s Gender Equality Index. Gender quotas encourage political parties to “endeavor to ensure” that 30 percent of their listed candidates are women – yet of 30 senators, only two are female, and just 11 percent of seats in Liberian’s legislature are held by women.
“I regret we did not have a group of women sitting in a room crafting the political future for women. By now we probably have more women in the house,” Gbowee says.
Still, there are organizations working to change things around. The Women in Peacebuilding Network is still active in Liberia, with members meeting every Tuesday and Thursday to pray and share experiences, mutual support, and encouragement with one another.
Gbowee and Kenneth have left the WLMAP group to establish new organizations. Kenneth founded People Uniting for Peace in Liberia,whose activities include educating young people about the country’s brutal past. Gbowee founded the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa, which provides scholarships to youth from poor communities, especially girls, advocates for gender equality, and provides education on democracy and peacebuilding.
If there’s one thing Gbowee wants to tell young women as they work to carve bigger, bolder paths for Liberia’s women, it’s this: “If I were to tell any young girl what to learn from me, I would say tenacity: you really should be able to step up there and do what you can do.”
About the Author
Tina S. Mehnpaine is Liberian journalist covering various science, health, politics, and climate change topics, with a special interest in humanitarian issues.
