| rdfs:comment
| - For the last year, Charles Taylor, the former President of Liberia has sat in the International Criminal Court at the Hague, on trial for crimes against humanity—namely murder, rape, mutilation, terrorism, enslavement, and conscription of child soldiers. Taylor presided over a brutal civil war for more than a decade, one that killed over 270,000 people and displaced over 500,000 more. If the murder wasn’t enough, Taylor’s war also slaughtered Liberia’s economy. Since the outset of hostilities in 1980, Liberia’s GDP plummeted 91%, the most drastic decline of any country since World War II. Natural resource exports were embargoed to keep profits from funding violence; manufacturing and agriculture ground to a halt; looting soldiers destroyed roads, schools, hospitals, and government building
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| abstract
| - For the last year, Charles Taylor, the former President of Liberia has sat in the International Criminal Court at the Hague, on trial for crimes against humanity—namely murder, rape, mutilation, terrorism, enslavement, and conscription of child soldiers. Taylor presided over a brutal civil war for more than a decade, one that killed over 270,000 people and displaced over 500,000 more. If the murder wasn’t enough, Taylor’s war also slaughtered Liberia’s economy. Since the outset of hostilities in 1980, Liberia’s GDP plummeted 91%, the most drastic decline of any country since World War II. Natural resource exports were embargoed to keep profits from funding violence; manufacturing and agriculture ground to a halt; looting soldiers destroyed roads, schools, hospitals, and government buildings. In 2003, Liberia’s situation began to look up. UN peacekeepers finally forced Taylor from power, effectively ending the war. The UN troops maintained order as Liberia worked toward free democratic elections in 2005, in which the country chose Africa’s first elected female head of state, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. Under her leadership, Liberia has established a Reconstruction and Development Committee that’s working to revitalize its economy and strengthen its infrastructure. The Committee has its work cut out for it: more than 75% of Liberians live below the $1 a day poverty line, fewer than 50 physicians work in public health, and floods of ex-combatants and returning refugees are without homes or jobs, posing the constant threat of a return to violence.
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)