Ellen Sirleaf Interview (page: 5 / 8) Nobel Prize for Peace	Print Interview

How do you address the problems of young people in your country who have experienced all this war and violence? How do you change attitudes and get rid of lawlessness as a way of life?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: I think it's a combination of many things. For one thing, we have to give these kids some skills. We have to give them back their dignity. Dignity means they should be able to earn a livelihood without having to resort to stealing or begging or extortion. I grant you that for many of them who are hardcore, very difficult to even get them to be willing to go to school and to obtain a skill, because they are the only way they are used to. But if we can get the critical mass of them to begin to get a job, and it's starting to happen, and begin to go to school and to appreciate the fact that you can go very far. Right now, you're in a changed environment where knowledge and skills is what gets you what you want, there's not going to be many opportunities. On the other hand, we also have to have penalties so that if you commit criminal acts rather than using the opportunity to earn, there's a penalty to be had. So we also use that. Counseling is necessary. We still have a challenge there to change the mindset of those who knew no other way. Like I say, that's still a challenge for us. We're still trying to work on that.

We have some similar issues in our inner cities, of course, where there's so much despair and there's been so much violence, and there's inadequate education. Since assuming the presidency, you've also dealt with the issue of rape.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: Yes. Even before my administration started, the Association of Female Lawyers -- given that incidences of rape are so high in our country -- had already got legislation passed. It was already a criminal offense, but now it's a crime against humanity, as recognized by the United Nations. But also they made the penalty life imprisonment by this new law. So what I did was ensure that we try to enforce the law, and also start a program of education with the families. We still have problems with that. Enforcing the law in a judicial system that is weak and that is still very male-dominated is difficult.

Why? Do you think the judges are sympathetic to the perpetrators?

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: They don't think the penalty equals the crime, unfortunately. Also, it's a bailable offense, and because our correctional system has a lot of weaknesses, human rights groups help them apply for habeas corpus every time and they get out. So one of the things I'm committed to do is also to amend that law to make it a non-bailable offense. That would keep them in prison until such time as they have gone to trial. More importantly, we have to work with the families for disclosure, and preventing poor families from keeping silent, because small amounts of money are offered to them to buy their silence. The kids are young. That's very disturbing, talking about three-year-olds up to ten-year-olds. Very, very sad.

There's still a stigma attached to a rape victim. Even when they're older, sometimes it's difficult to come forward.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: To the victim? Absolutely. There's no doubt. In addition to the physical harm, the stigma is there, and that helps to bring the silence on the part of the family.

What about women's rights violations in Liberia, generally speaking?

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: There's not too much of that in Liberia. There are some social barriers, and much of those social barriers, even today, are being removed. Women's rights violations? Domestically there can be a lot of that, but by law, women have full rights. There are times when they may not know of their rights, particularly the illiterate. The uneducated may not be aware, and we need to do more to educate them and sensitize them to their rights. But the rights are there by law.

What about the issue of human rights violations today?

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: There's a lot of that too. Sometimes security forces were accustomed to excesses, mob action too. People take the law into their own hands because they don't have as much confidence in the judicial system, so we have a lot of that.

What do you mean by mob action?

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: Oh yeah. For example, if a thief is caught and they feel that the thief, as experience shows, may get away or bribe his way out. Mob actions, sometimes they are very violent, have even killed if they feel that their rights have been infringed upon by policemen or security people. Mob action will sometimes go unchallenged. They've also destroyed police stations when they felt that justice was not done. We have to instill in them that one crime does not deserve another. There's a rule of law that they all have to subscribe to. But again, it comes from the violence that has been put into the value system: you solve every problem through violence and may the stronger one prevail.

What is the situation with HIV-AIDS in your country?

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: It's been on an increase recently. We are just completing a census, so I can't tell. The number I've heard is somewhere like five percent, six percent. I'm not sure whether that's the right number because they have varied, but we know that there's been increasing cases, particularly among the young population and young girls and we're trying to combat that with the support of the Global Fund. There's an HIV-AIDS program that gives the retroviral treatment to people, and of course there are sensitization programs to encourage prevention. But it is a problem, and it's something that we have to continue to monitor. We've established an AIDS commission. I chair that commission, to bring full attention to that.

What has been the effect of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: They're still at work. I think they've done a lot through testimony to get a lot of information. It's also opened up old wounds, because in those testimonies lots of people have been accused. But it's still part of the cleansing process so it's ongoing. They're trying to complete their testimonies and that report is due in by the end of the year. The mandate enables them to make recommendations that would lead to justice in those cases where wide-scale amnesty does not determine the best course of action. The mandate also could call for some form of reparations for communities that have been affected. So we wait for them. I think it was a necessary process. It has caused some problems in our society, like I said, through testimonies that accuse people -- some people holding high elective offices and all of that -- but it's a process that needed to be done and we'll see what comes when the report is made.

Is the process complicated by having some of the people who formerly opposed you serving in your government?

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: Yeah, but some of the people we're talking about have elected positions and there's nothing we can do about that. They were allowed to run; our election laws did not prohibit them from running. They ran, whether they ran on a platform of fear or whether they ran on a platform of promise -- it's probably both -- but they won. And many of them are sitting in the legislature. They're there. We have to deal with them. We have to work with them.

Ellen Sirleaf Interview, Page: 1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8