Strengthening Partners’ Works through Collaboration & Local Context  

Civil Peace Service (CPS) Network Partners – Liberia, Trimester Meetings enabled partner organizations to share experience and provide regular updates about their activities. This helps strengthens their collaboration and provides greater impact in their work.

CPS Network Liberia Partners during their Trimester Meeting

During  last meeting held in January, CPS Network Liberia partners reflected on the challenges and impact of program activities during 2023. They also reflected and discussed CPS partners’ work during the 2023 elections in Liberia, focusing on a non-violent free and fair elections. Held after the elections and aimed at uniting communities after the  elections and uniting communities after the 2023 elections. 

They also highlighted the role played by CPS through peace messages for a free and fair elections, and best practices shared by two CPS Liberia Network observers, who observed the elections in Sierra Leone.  Earlier, they welcomed the New Coordinator, Decontee E. George to the Network and assured her of their support in enhancing Bread for the World and CPS objectives. They highlighted successes, and discussed context analysis, which provides a road map for continuation of their work.

Participants discussed security political, socio-economic and cultural issues, looking at the positives and negatives, with key questions on who, what, where, why, when and how, affecting the Liberian population. This is intended to provide a better understanding of the conflict factors or factors that may affect conflict, which may help or enable the responses of partners of the network to make informed and better decisions through knowledge of the situation and understanding of underlying trends.

The context analysis also helps CPS partners to build a better picture of the situation, review it from multiple perspectives. In their analysis on security in 2023, the Network Partners network reported an increased number of young people are engaged in commercial motorbike riding, an increase in drugs and substance abuse, some communities aiding and abetting drug users, proliferation of locally made small arms, tribal politics, corruption and no political will to tackle corruption. They also noted negative media reporting from some media organizations, which prompted some CPS partners to hold awareness  and meetings with some media practitioners on elections reporting.   Ethnic divide, political differences, and voter trucking in the 2023 elections were some of the negative issues discussed around security context. They noted that the country remains relatively  peaceful for 20 years since the cessation of hostilities or the civil war in Liberia.

On the political context, the analysis said, there is freedom of speech, peaceful co-existence among Liberians, there exist the rule of law, religious tolerance, peaceful assembly and free and fair elections as some of the positive contexts of the country, noting that the Liberia Council of Churches held dialogues and mediation between key political actors after the elections, the conduct of Youth Actor Summit by the Liberia YMCA, as some of the peace initiatives by the Network. They highlighted corruption and  non-adherence to elections laws by some political actors as some of the negative political contexts.

On the socio-economic and cultural fronts, the Network named the presence of international organizations in Liberia, functional educational institutions, the value system, policies in place, the willingness of farmers to farm, the establishment of more Liberian owned businesses, and consistency in the Liberian currency as positive economic impacts in 2023. The partner organizations on the other hand noted, unstable and inaccessible electricity in the country, high cost of living, high expectations from government, huge salary disparity among working people, problems in farming, due to negative climate changes, limited or poor quality in education and high prices, which has affected the Liberian market negatively as a result of the global market factor.

Civil Peace Service-Liberia Network partners stressed the importance of collaboration, which they noted has brought new ideas and innovation in the implementation of their work. They assured the Network that they will remain  supportive