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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 03/04
Liberia: Security Challenges
November 2003
Abstract
Whether Liberia takes advantage of its best chance for peace in years and West Africa regains stability depends on bold action by the UN, which needs to shape a comprehensive regional security strategy while rapidly building its peacekeeping force up to strength.
The forced departure of former president Charles Taylor on 11 August 2003 after six years of tyranny offers Liberians a chance to reconstruct their country. The arrival of a United Nations force with a robust mandate, which will soon develop into the international body's biggest peacekeeping operation, is welcome by all who want to see peace in West Africa. But creating that peace will not be easy. Liberia is a broken state whose key infrastructure, physical and social, has been destroyed by years of fighting and self-interested political leadership and turmoil that goes far beyond the person of Charles Taylor. A generation under the age of eighteen has become all too familiar with survival through the gun, and problems in neighbouring countries, particularly Côte d'Ivoire, mean that the drive to create peace is taking place in an environment of insecurity.
