36th Session, November 2, 2020
As Delivered by Mark Cassayre
The United States welcomes the Liberian delegation.
We recommend that Liberia:
1. Vigorously investigate and prosecute trafficking cases, raise community awareness of what constitutes trafficking, and increase funding for prosecutors in charge of cases.
2. Thoroughly investigate and enforce existing regulations on incidents of forced child labor, and increase criminal penalties to better deter recruitment, employment, or facilitation of such labor.
3. Decriminalize same-sex sexual relations between consenting adults.
We commend Liberia’s passage of the 2019 Kamara Abdullah Kamara Act of Press Freedom but remain concerned by the government’s limitations on internet access during some public protests. We see need for more concrete action and awareness-raising to prevent sexual and gender-based violence, including rape and female genital mutilation (FGM). The government’s failure to adequately resource and promote the credibility and independence of Liberia’s “integrity institutions” is also concerning.