The United States Government has released its ‘2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices in Liberia’.
In the report, which can be found on the US Government’s State Department website, President Joseph Biden’s Administration painted a damning picture of most of Liberia’s rights institutions, including the prison system in the tiny West African nation of 5.1 million human beings.
In the Country Report’s Executive Summary, the US Government says: “Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings; cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media, including violence and threats of violence against journalists; serious government corruption; lack of investigation and accountability for gender-based violence, including child, early, and forced marriage, and female genital mutilation/cutting; crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex persons; the existence and enforcement of laws criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual conduct between adults; and the outlawing of independent trade unions or significant restrictions on workers’ freedom of association,” were observed during the period the report covers.
The Joe Biden Administration further states, “Impunity continued for individuals who committed human rights abuses, including atrocities during two civil wars, as multiple investigative and audit reports were ignored. The government made intermittent but limited attempts to investigate and prosecute officials accused of abuses during the year, whether in the security forces or elsewhere in the government. Impunity continued for government corruption.”
The US 28-page report on Liberia, covers seven sections of Liberian Government’s institutions. The full LIBERIA-2022-HUMAN-RIGHTS-REPORT_US is found here.