Jacob Adebayo
Apparently worried by looming rape cases in his country, Liberian President, George Weah has declared national emergency on the matter.
In a statement on Friday night, the president expressed plan to create a special prosecutor for rape and national sex offender registry in the country.
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This is coming as thousands of Liberians protested rising incidents in the capital Monrovia.
Weah, who vowed to employ necessary measure to end the menace, added that his government will also establish a so-called “national security task force” on sexual- and gender-based violence.
A UN report in 2016 recorded 803 cases the previous year in the country of 4.5 million and found that only two per cent of sexual violence cases led to a conviction, for example.
“It was the resulting sense of impunity and the legacy of the 14-year civil war between 1989 and 2003, when rape was commonplace, that had created the current problem”, the report said.
Meanwhile, rape cases appeared to have risen drastically in the country recently.
Margaret Taylor, the director of Liberia’s Women Empowerment Network, told AFP last month that her NGO had recorded 600 cases of rape between June and August.