Medie, Peace. "Fighting gender-based violence: The women's movement and the enforcement of rape law in Liberia". African Affairs, Vol.112, No.448 (2013): 377-397.

Medie, Peace. "Fighting gender-based violence: The women's movement and the enforcement of rape law in Liberia". African Affairs, Vol.112, No.448 (2013): 377-397.

• Many laws enacted to prevent rape and other gender-based violence have unenforced in African countries, undermining the goal of the legislation. The same is true in Liberia, but that country also features high rates of prosecution than prior to the civil war, partially due to the strength of the post-war women's movement and the openness of the Liberian government to the suggestions of the women's movement and other NGOs (378-379).
• Political scientists have generally reduced the methods for policy implementation, such as rape law implementation by police, down to political goals, organizational goals, individual-level decisions of police officers, and external pressures on the policy body from civil society (379-380).
• The combination of all of these factors determines the implemented result of an enacted policy (380-382).
• Women's movements have a considerable history in Africa, beginning during the colonial period, but were, alongside other civil society groups, often incorporated into one-party states. As dependent women's wings of ruling parties, many women's movements ceased to function as independent pressure groups on government policy (383).
• The growth and liberalization of civil society in Africa over the past 20 years has allowed women's movements to again become functional pressure groups. They have been broadly successful in introducing legislation to protect women's rights, but have been much less successful in guaranteeing the implementation of those laws (383).
• The author looks at the impact of women's movements and feminist NGOs on the implementation of rape laws in Liberia in Monrovia, with a large concentration of NGOs, and Gbarnga, in the north of the country. The author surveyed literature of women's movements and interviewed government officials, feminist activists, and police officers (384-385).
• Liberia experienced major issues with sexual violence during the civil war, with rape committed by all sides of the conflict and rates of sexual violence remaining high after the war, with rape being the most reported crime in 2007. This still covers only a fraction of the violence, as most is dealt with my family members or community structures rather than courts (385).
• The structure of the Liberian court system discourages reporting rape in multiple ways, instead driving victims towards traditional judicial practices stressing reconciliation. Courts are corrupt, demanding bribes to bring charges, and rape cases are difficult for victims, as they are often stigmatized or accused of lying during the trial (385).
• The crippling poverty endemic to Liberia makes prosecution of rape cases even more difficult, excluding many from the justice process because they cannot pay bribes and making families more likely to accept monetary redress from rapists rather than seek punishment (385-386).
• Social attitudes towards sexual violence in Liberia suffer among both men and women a strong tendency to blame the victim for flirting or placing herself in a vulnerable position. Victims of rape are often stigmatized in society. Although over 90% of Liberians view rape as a serious crime deserving harsh punishment, many also believe that only some forms of rape are 'real', and only those forms deserve strict punishments (386).
• There was some sporadic mobilization for women's rights in Liberia before the civil war, but the Liberian women's movement really took off with the outbreak of war in 1989, when the massive scale of sexual violence prompted women to mobilize on a national level, and played a major role in the peace-making process. There are now a number of women's movements in Liberia, advancing diverse causes; rape is one of their few uniting issues (386-387).
• The political climate following the civil war has allowed the women's movement a privileged position in policy-creation, as many law-makers recognize the severity of the issue of sexual violence during the civil war (387).
• The Sirleaf administration has been supportive of NGO and international efforts to combat rape, attempting to supply them with sufficient funds. The government, however, has a tendency to favour some NGOs and exclude others, usually on the basis of their support for government policies (388).
• The women's movement has successfully lobbied for a number of changes to the Liberian legal code, beginning in 2004 with successful lobbying for a single law to address all forms of rape, and significantly harsher penalties for rape. The law was poorly implemented, however, with inadequate court resources meaning that either rapists were never arrested or they were held in detention for long periods without trial (388-389).
• The 2006, the women's movement successfully created a joint taskforce with international organizations and the Ministry of Gender and Development to strategize on the reduction of gender-based violence in the country. The taskforce has allowed NGOs to directly include their concerns in the policy-creation process (389).
• Again, this institutional reform has failed to translate into action because of a severe lack of resources. Initiatives such as special courthouses for sexual violence have been limited and understaffed, meaning that good ideas cannot be successfully implemented (389-390).
• Feminist NGOs have participated in education and media campaigns about rape, hosting plays, radio programmes, and journalism classes to encourage an understanding of rape as a serious crime and an issue best resolved by the state. They also have direct influence over police education through their role in writing the police handbook for dealing with cases of sexual violence (390-391).
• Many NGOs, however, complain of being sidelined from these outreach activities by the Ministry of Gender, which dominates discussions. This has manifested in diminished viewpoints at meetings and an increased focus on rape as opposed to domestic violence and other gender-based crimes (391).
• Education programs and reforms in Liberian rape law have undoubtedly had an effect on the number of rape cases processed by Liberian police, which has increased since the civil war mainly as a result of increased reporting and decreased rates of victims withdrawing cases (392).
• Interviews with police officers revealed that changing attitudes regarding the severity of rape have been directly linked to educational programs championed by NGOs and international organizations. Influence has mainly been directed through the police handbook of sexual assault, which purposefully dispels a number of unhelpful stereotypes about rape (392-393).
• Police officers expressed a much harsher attitude regarding rape than did the general public, with all officers interviewed noting that it was always unacceptable and a serious offense. They did not feel that victims were sometimes responsible as many members of the Liberian public did (393).
• The taskforce on reducing gender-related violence, including NGOs as well as the Ministry of Gender and Development, has played an important role in this process, exerting pressure on individual police departments to not bribe claimants in rape cases and generally prioritize these cases alongside other serious crimes, like murder (393-394).
• The cases of these women's movements in Liberia demonstrates how, when a state is open to the participation of NGOs, such organization can play a role not only in the process of creating policies, but also in their implementation (396-397).