Liberia IMF:Conclusion of Staff Mission 2008

Source: IMF

Press Release: Statement at the Conclusion of an IMF Staff Mission to Liberia
http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2008/pr0898.htm

Liberia: new malaria initiative

Source: APA

Liberia launches malaria initiative to reduce deaths from the disease

APA-Monrovia (Liberia) The Liberian government on Friday launched the President George Bush Malaria Initiative for Liberia, aimed at significantly reducing deaths from malaria.

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IRIN film DRC & Liberia: Our Bodies…their battleground: Gender-based Violence during Conflict - September 2004

Source: IRIN

Our Bodies…their battleground: Gender-based Violence during Conflict - September 2004

“Our bodies … their battlegrounds” highlights the crisis facing women, girls and infants throughout the world, both during conflict and in its wake. This film gives a voice to victims of rape in The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia, and seeks to challenge the culture of impunity that allows this violence to continue unchecked. View Transcript

[English] [Français]    [English] [Français]    [Duration: 18:59]

Sierra Leone: UNICEF Executive Director sees progress and challenges in West Africa

Source: UNICEF

Executive Director sees progress and challenges in West Africa

During a three-day trip to Sierra Leone at the end of February, UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman said stability was bringing progress for the country’s children after a decade of conflict. Ms. Veneman also travelled to Liberia, which is recovering from the effects of its own civil war and, like Sierra Leone, still faces major challenges to child health and development. More…

UNICEF provides US$19m for education in Liberia

Source: APA

UNICEF provides US$19m for education in Liberia

APA-Monrovia (Liberia)- The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has provided US$19 million dollars for primary education, data collection and analysis strengthening in post-conflict Liberia, APA learns here Wednesday.

The Executive Director of UNICEF Madam Anne Venneman announced the assistance during a courtesy call on Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Speaking during the visit, Madam Venneman revealed that US$17 million dollars is being made available through a new public partnership which will help rebuild Liberia’s primary education system.

She disclosed that the Education Recovery Pooled Fund (ERPF) was formed as a result of a US$12 million dollar donation from the Dutch Government, made through UNICEF and the Open Society Institute (OSI) which will contribute US$5 million dollars.

According to a presidential mansion press statement, the UNICEF Executive Director also announced an allocation of more than US$2 million dollars for use in advocacy, research and strengthening data collection systems.

The statement quotes the UNICEF Executive Director as saying that part of the amount will be used for the planned national census in March this year.

In remarks, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf praised the decision by UNICEF, and stressed the importance of the school feeding program for Liberian schools, and expressed the hope that donor agencies would do the necessary planning to enable the program to continue.

TSS/tjm/APA 2008-02-27

LIBERIA: Help sought for nation’s TB patients

The following article is from IRIN NEWS

LIBERIA: Help sought for nation’s TB patients

MONROVIA, 26 April (IRIN) - The Liberian government’s National Leprosy and Tuberculosis Control Programme says treatment for more than 4,000 tuberculosis patients is at risk because of a lack of funding.

Financing under the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria ended in February and is not likely to resume until December.

“In the absence of this funding we may end up losing our staff because they may start looking somewhere else for better incentives, while we may not be able to maintain our materials,” said Lawuo Gwesa, the programme’s manager.

She said laboratory generators and motorcycles used to deliver medicine to the programme’s 4,514 TB patients throughout the country might not have sufficient fuel because of the lack of funding, which will slow down supervision and testing of patients.

“One major concern now is the need to have the available resources to maintain the staff to supply the patients the regular drugs,” she said.

Gwesa also said that the feeding programme for the 106 TB patients in the National TB Annex building in Monrovia could be threatened as well without additional resources. There are more than 17,000 people living with TB in Liberia.

The Global Fund said funding ended in February and did not immediately resume “because of the quality of the proposals” submitted by the Tuberculosis Control Programme, said Mark Willis, the Fund’s Geneva-based portfolio manager for Liberia.

He did not elaborate on the specific details of Liberia’s rejection, but said that often when funding is denied it is because the programme in question is not fully integrated into the national system, is overly ambitious or under-ambitious, or technical aspects are not in line with what is currently best practice.

Willis said the Global Fund was trying to mobilise support among major donors in Liberia for the TB programme and the malaria programme pending new proposals for funding that, if successful, would yield financial assistance in December. Funding for the malaria programme also expired in February.

“On the malaria side there has been some success [with donor funding] but I haven’t seen that much interest on the TB side,” he said.

“If they got accepted in November we would make a quick effort to get out there,” Willis said. “We would make every effort to sign a new grant almost immediately.”

Liberia Girls’ Education National Policy

The following article was seen on The Development Gateway

http://topics.developmentgateway.org/gender/rc/ItemDetail.do?itemId=1096196

Liberia Girls’ Education National Policy with support from UNICEF

The education of girls will be a “cornerstone” of development in Liberia, according to Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of the Republic of Liberia, who officially launched a Girls’ Education National Policy in 2006. Speaking at the launch the President thanked UNICEF for its leadership in helping to formulate the policy, which called for providing free and compulsory primary schools for every Liberian child. President Sirleaf said that Liberia was working “to see a new country with a shared vision for girls’ education…to free humankind from poverty, discrimination and disease.” The President also stated that the government’s new policy would serve as a “catalyst to end illiteracy and underdevelopment to create literacy and development.” She was speaking at an official launch ceremony held in a red, white and blue balloon-festooned Monrovia City Hall. The President told the assembled audience of government leaders, diplomats, United Nations officials, NGO partners and dozens of girls from government schools that her government’s commitment to girls’ education was a “commitment to our children and a unique opportunity to chart a new course of education for the girl child and for women.” “If there is a global messenger of the maxim of when you educate a girl, you educate a nation, it is you, Madame President,” said Alan Doss, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and the Coordinator of United Nations Operations in Liberia. President Sirleaf is the first elected female president of an African nation. “The education of the girl child in Liberia is critical and an urgent matter. It is actually about human rights and human dignity,” she said. “It is about peace and the development of the country. That’s why achieving universal primary education for all girls and boys is one of the Millennium Development Goals set forth by the member states of the United Nations.”

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