According to the UNMIL chief of staff and the CDU, both responsible for overseeing disciplinary issues, there continued to be problems with personnel engaging in transactional sex and violations of the non-fraternization rule. Authorities often failed to investigate or prosecute cases involving trial by trial, partly because of the perceived cultural aspects of the practice, and partly because of a lack of resources and capacity. While the Ministry of the Interior is a ministry that includes many of the major traditional practitioners and tribes.
As of September, about half of the country's 2,023 inmates were in Monrovia Central Prison (MCP), according to the BCR. The United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Carter Center and PFL continued to provide medical services, medicines and related training and to improve basic hygiene conditions at the MCP and other facilities where such services and conditions remained inadequate. Complaints from staff prompted a July investigation into the prison system by the BCR in conjunction with the MOJ's Internal Audit Department, which revealed corruption in food distribution, including embezzlement.
The Ministry of Justice has responsibility for enforcing laws and maintaining order by overseeing the LNP and other law enforcement agencies. A 2013 study of the MCP population revealed that pretrial detainees were held for an average of more than 10 months. The corrections system continued to develop its capacity to implement probation, including the use of the pretrial supervised release program.
Uneven application of legislation and uneven distribution of staff and resources remained problems throughout the justice system.
Respect for Civil Liberties, Including
In some cases, individuals and organizations can appeal negative domestic decisions to regional human rights bodies. Few people could afford the Community of West African States Court of Human Rights, which Liberians can access. In September, for example, plainclothes security officers arrested the editor of the New Democrat newspaper and held him for four hours of questioning after he republished an article accusing Equatorial Guinea's President Theodore Obiang of human rights abuses.
Libel/Defamation Laws: There were several reports that libel, slander and defamation laws restricted the work of journalists and media reporting on mounds. The Press Union of Liberia called for the decriminalization of libel and slander laws to eliminate prison terms for those unable to pay large fines. The government did not restrict or disrupt access to the Internet or censor online content, and there were no reports of the government monitoring private online communications without appropriate legal authority.
There have been reports of government officials filing civil suits for censoring protected speech and intimidating its messengers. The constitution guarantees freedom of assembly and association, and the government has generally respected these rights. The Constitution guarantees freedom of internal movement, travel abroad, emigration and repatriation; the government generally respected these rights.
The government cooperated with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), other humanitarian organizations and donor countries in providing protection and assistance to internally displaced persons, refugees. In August, Ivory Coast reopened the border, allowing the resumption of regular voluntary repatriation of Ivorian refugees from the country. Although the rainy season put a temporary damper on the pace of repatriation in the latter part of the year, between December 2015 and August, UNHCR and the Liberia Refugee Repatriation and Resettlement Commission assisted the return of more than 19,000 Ivorian refugees and ' expressed an intention to continue to facilitate returns as needed in 2017.
For those Ivorian refugees who wish to remain in the country, the government has worked with UNHCR to develop local integration plans. The government has established a system of providing protection to refugees and those with recognized refugee status and asylum. The Government, together with UNHCR and other implementing partners, continued to provide protection to Ivorian refugees who entered the country after November 2010.
Freedom to Participate in the Political Process
Corruption and Lack of Transparency in Government
Public access to information: The law provides that the government releases upon request information that does not involve matters of national security. Some transparency advocates said the law does not provide citizens with adequate access to verify spending and the proper accounting of government funds.
Governmental Attitude Regarding International and
Discrimination, Societal Abuses, and Trafficking in Persons Women
Rape and domestic violence: Rape is illegal, but the government did not enforce the law effectively, and rape remained a serious and widespread problem. The government operated two shelters for SGBV victims and victims of human trafficking and established two hotlines for citizens to report SGBV-related crimes. During the year, the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection organized workshops and seminars to combat domestic violence.
Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C): The law does not specifically prohibit FGM/C, although the government has claimed that a 2011 law protecting children from all forms of violence also prohibits FGM/C. The government regularly condemned female genital mutilation in debates on violence against women, although some political resistance to its adoption remained. In April, the House of Representatives deleted this provision, prompting the government to propose a stand-alone bill against FGM/C.
Sexual harassment: The law does not specifically prohibit sexual harassment, which has remained a major problem, including in schools and the workplace. The government has included family planning counseling and services as a key component of its 10-year National Health and Welfare Plan. While the law prohibits polygamy, traditional and religious practices allow men to have more than one wife.
The law requires parents to register their children within 14 days of birth, but less than 5 percent of births were registered. Education: The law provides for tuition-free and compulsory education in public schools from elementary (grades one through six) through high school (grades seven through nine), but many schools charged informal fees to pay salaries of teachers and operating costs. the government did not finance. By law, there are costs associated with the upper secondary level (grades 10 to 12) and are essential in practice as the government was unable to fully fund these schools.
During the year, the government started a pilot project with several for-profit education companies to test the feasibility of. In September, some public school teachers went on strike to protest the government's actions, including reforms to inadequate pay and job retention. Although the law prohibits ethnic discrimination, racial discrimination is enshrined in the constitution, which limits citizenship and land ownership to those of.
The law recognizes 16 indigenous ethnic groups; each speaks a distinct primary language and is regionally concentrated. The law prohibits consensual same-sex sexual activity, and the culture strongly opposes homosexuality.
Worker Rights
The law prohibits all forms of forced or compulsory labor, but the government has not effectively implemented these laws. While the government worked to reduce the incidence, in some communities child labor was considered a part of normal life, as poverty outweighed any legal justification. Child labor continued to be seen as a problem of child endangerment; as a result, no reliable data was available on the number of children removed from forced labor.
The government took a few steps to prevent or eliminate forced labor, including periodic labor inspections to enforce the Children's Act and the Decent Work Act and cooperation with international donors on projects to eliminate child labor in the rubber sector. The law also prohibits the employment of children under the age of 16 during school hours unless the employer keeps a record of the child's school certificate to illustrate that the child attended school regularly and can. Terms under this provision of the Act are poorly defined, hindering the ability of labor inspectors and police officers to effectively enforce child labor laws.
The Child Labor Commission is responsible for enforcing child labor laws and policies, although it did not do so effectively, in part due to insufficient staffing and funding. As a result, while inspectors were trained, none were specifically assigned to monitor and address child labour. The Government charged the Child Labor Secretariat of the Ministry of Labour, the Human Rights Division of the Ministry of Justice, the Human Rights Division of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, the Department of Social Welfare of the Ministry of Health and the Section of Protection of Women and Children of the LNP for the investigation and referral for prosecution of accusations of child labor; however, inspections and repairs were insufficient.
The law punishes employers who violate the minimum age provision of child labor laws with a fine of L and imprisonment until the fine is paid. The Government conducted regularly scheduled awareness-raising and training activities, often funded by international donors, and the Child Labor Department worked with the Child Labor Commission during the year to develop a national action plan to address child labour. The adoption of the Decent Work Act and its provisions on child labor was an important step forward, and the National Action Plan to Combat Child Labor was endorsed by the International Labor Organization and UNICEF.
Other local and international NGOs have worked to raise awareness about the worst forms of child labour. See the Department of Labor's findings on the worst forms of child labor at www.dol.gov/ilab/reports/child-labor/findings/. The law does not prohibit workplace discrimination with respect to language, race, color, age, disability, HIV positive status or having other communicable diseases, sexual orientation or gender identity.
