The woman who ousted Charles Taylor and restored peace in Liberia
Former Liberian President Taylor in the courtroom of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
What you need to know:
- Leymah commenced her studies with the dream of becoming a paediatrician, a group of armed rebels crossed the border from Côte d’Ivoire into Nimba County, three hours from Monrovia.
- Leymah fled to Ghana twice, and during her first stay, she lived in deplorable conditions at the Buduburam refugee camp, Accra. On her second stay, she grew exhausted from the sequence of maltreatment while living with her physically abusive Ghanaian boyfriend, Daniel.
In March 1990 at the age of 17, Leymah Gbowee, who had graduated from BW Harris Episcopal High School in Monrovia with distinction, was anticipating the beginning of her medical studies at the University of Liberia. Within six months, all her dreams were obliterated.
As Leymah commenced her studies with the dream of becoming a paediatrician, a group of armed rebels crossed the border from Côte d’Ivoire into Nimba County, three hours from Monrovia. Their leader was an imposing autocrat called Charles Taylor. He claimed he would overthrow divisive, petulant and dictatorial President Samuel Doe, in what was the precursor of a brutal 13-year conflict.
In the subsequent eight years, Leymah fled to Ghana twice, and during her first stay, she lived in deplorable conditions at the Buduburam refugee camp, Accra. On her second stay, she grew exhausted from the sequence of maltreatment while living with her physically abusive Ghanaian boyfriend, Daniel. She boarded a bus back to Monrovia in 1998 with her malnourished children Amber, Nuku and Arthur, while pregnant with a fourth child, Pudu.
Charles Taylor broke into pre-eminence. He was entrusted with the Liberian presidency by the electorate on July 19, 1997. In September 1998, Leymah enrolled in Mother Patern College of Health Sciences that offered an associate of arts degree programme. She simultaneously applied for a Trauma Healing and Reconciliation Programme (THRP), operated by the Lutheran World Federation.
At THRP, Leymah became a provocateur of dialogue and information, while learning the intricacies of conflict resolution. She rejuvenated war victims to normalcy. The occupation paid a stipend of 100 British pounds, a fortune for a jobless single mother of four.
For five consecutive years, she held communal meetings with female villagers who were anguished by the civil strife and overtly trained them in collective rehabilitation strategies. After graduation from Mother Patern, THRP permanently hired her as a staffer, doubling her salary to 200 pounds a month.
She formulated a rehabilitation program called 'The Shedding of the Weight,' after a crash course by Women in Peace Building Network, a reputable Ghanaian organisation. She held workshops across Liberian counties and motivated self-introspection of sharing uncomfortable information, to provide respite and unburden women.
In her memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood Prayer and Sex Changed a Nation, she articulates how the power of her movement was so immense, it built unity that transcended guns. Exhausted by frequent killings, Leymah gritted her teeth in readiness to oust Taylor, who had turned Liberian children into Small Boy Units (child soldiers). They would return to villages to rob, rape and kill women.
The cover of Leymah Gbowee's memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood Prayer and Sex Changed a Nation. She articulates how the power of her movement was so immense, it built unity that transcended guns.
With reinforcement from Asatu Bah Kenneth, a Muslim woman from the Female Law Enforcement Association, Leymah launched a Christian-Muslim Peace Outreach Project. She mobilised thousands of Muslim women to collaborate with Christian women and in December 2002, she inaugurated the Christian-Muslim Alliance.
She subsequently made an announcement on Radio Veritas on April 1, 2003, which was under the control of the Catholic Church. The next morning, hundreds of women inflicted by war, travelled in 15 separate groups from nine different counties and arrived in Monrovia in renewed spirits to champion peace. Leymah now thrived on adversity and civil disobedience, and valiantly expressed confidence. She magnified her response to Taylor's autocracy, calling for mass action on April 11, 2003.
Her defiant messages of bravery emboldened the nation. At 6am on April 23, she assembled a crowd of over 2,000 women at the University of Liberia, which was now dilapidated from encroachment. They crossed Tubman Boulevard to Taylor’s executive mansion in Capitol Hill. While facing Taylor, Leymah read the nonpartisan demands of women. She commanded the government and warring rebels to declare an immediate unconditional ceasefire, and commence dialogue between warring factions.
When Taylor and the rebels were unmoved, the Christian-Muslim Alliance combined their protests with a sex strike, which caught the widespread attention of the global press. Ecowas and the UN expeditiously scheduled peace talks on June 4, 2003, in Ghana between Taylor and the warlords. Leymah mobilised funds and travelled to the four-star La Palme Royal Beach Hotel, Accra.
As weeks elapsed, she grew deflated by the festive warlords, whose urgency of signing a peace agreement had receded. She mobilised 200 Liberian female refugees from the Buduburam refugee camp in Accra where she once resided. They marched to the conference hall of La Palme Royal, to confront the convening warlords.
She ordered the women to barricade the doors until a peace agreement was signed. A fierce altercation ensued for hours as Leymah accused the warlords of trivialising the severity of the conflict. When the warlords desisted, the women leveraged their last resort and began stripping naked. Noticing the shame that nudity caused, the rebels proceeded with urgency and established a consensus.
On August 11, 2003, Taylor resigned from the presidency and agreed to relocate to Nigeria in exile. Leymah watched his Monrovia resignation speech on TV in Accra. “God willing,” he concluded, “I will be back.” She shouted back in relief: “In your dreams!”
His exit was a statement victory delivered by a poor single mother of four, who had displayed exceptional tenacity and ousted the most vicious leader in Africa. She befittingly received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011.
The writer is a novelist, Big Brother Africa 2 Kenyan representative and founder of Jeff's Fitness Centre (@jeffbigbrogher).
