Liberia: War Long Over in Liberia, but Why Is There Still So Much Rape?

Dancers at the launch of an anti-rape campaign in Monrovia (file photo).

London — Even for community workers used to hearing horrific accounts of sexual violence in Liberia, the case of a two-year-old girl raped by a male acquaintance was devastating.
The toddler's mother needed to drop something at the market, so when the man came to visit, she asked him to mind her child for an hour.
"When she got back home, her daughter was screaming and screaming," a welfare officer told researchers. "He had claimed it was just a case of the child missing the mother, but after he left, the infant continued to scream. When she went to change the infant's diaper, she discovered that the baby had blood all over her legs and private parts."
Up to three-quarters of Liberian women suffered sexual violence during the country's 14-year civil war, in which self-appointed generals with names like "Bad Boy" and "Butt Naked" led armies of child soldiers high on marijuana and amphetamines to mutilate and rape as they fought.
Although the conflict ended in 2003, Liberia still has some of the highest incidences of sexual violence against women in the world, according to the London-based Overseas Development Institute (ODI) think-tank.
It cited a 2013 study that found 26 percent of women and girls had been raped outside of marriage and 74 percent had suffered marital rape in northern Nimba county alone.
Research ODI published on Monday blamed "hyper-masculinity" - aggressive, macho behaviour - sparked by years of war, for driving cycles of sexual violence in countries such as Liberia and East Timor, long after fighting has ended.
Mothers raped during conflict now face the risk of their daughters also becoming victims of sexual assaults, ODI said.