After 14 years of brutal dictatorship by Charles Taylor opposed by equally brutal warlords, both pillaging, raping and brutalizing the people of their country into starvation, Liberia (created by freed slaves of America in 1820) was on the verge of self-destructing by 2003.
One woman, Leymah, had a dream that the women could come together and pray for peace. So the women started gathering in the fish market to pray. Over the weeks they were about 2500 of them, they marched to his presidential palace and got Charles Taylor to attend the UN peace talks. They sent women to invite all the rebel forces to do the same. When the peace talks went on like a vacation while the fighting continued, they barracaded the doors by interlocking arms and forced the peace talks to come to an agreement - "No food or water so that you know how our people have been living for 14 years."
When one rebel leader tried to kick his way out, the UN chief negotiator dared him to try and said, "You aren't real men, because real men wouldn't kill and rape their own people, that's why they treat you like boys."
After the UN Peacekeeping Forces moved in, fighting broke out again, so the women took over the disarmament (!). But still they felt they hadn't finished until there was a democratic election, so they campaigned night and day and got Liberia the first woman president in Africa, Ellen-Johnson Sirleaf.
Wow, talk about empowerment!
2 comments:
You have brought out The essence of life and liberty there so well and condensed out of the book ! ty
yw, mok.
It is one of the first recorded modern models of women in politics, in the Peace and Justice movement, both muslim and christian working together. What a fantastic example to set for their descendants. I wish women everywhere would be as courageous.:)
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