16 September 2008

Buchanan, Liberia: My name is Eric Delanyo Alifo. I am a Ghanaian, and work as a Judicial Systems Monitor for the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL). All of UNMIL's Judicial Systems Monitors are professional lawyers, who are engaged to monitor, observe, and report on judicial processes in civil and criminal matters in Liberia.

The typical day-to-day activities of judicial system monitors include consultation with party litigants, prosecuting and defense attorneys, judges and magistrates, court staff, legal professionals, and various officials working in the law enforcement agencies of Liberia. Reports generated by judicial system monitors largely constitute the bases upon which the United Nations makes recommendations to host governments for reforms and changes in the delivery of justice in those nations.

But, besides the typical functions of the Judicial Systems Monitor - who is constantly at the courts, at the police stations and in the prisons to observe whether or not citizens are being accorded their constitutionally guaranteed rights - the monitor is confronted daily with matters that call his professional and personal judgment into question. This is the occasion where a person, in this case, a UNV volunteer, must make a difference in his or her job to affect the order of things and the lives of the people we serve.

After joining the Legal and Judicial Systems Support Division (LJSSD) of UNMIL in November 2007, I was posted to Grand Bassa County as a Judicial Systems Monitor in February 2008. My coverage area extends to a second county, Rivercess County, which is about a three-hour drive via a rugged road from Buchanan, the capital of Grand Bassa County, where I live.

Grand Bassa County is a strategic one in Liberia because it has the second largest rubber plantation in the country. It also has a sea port and many foreign investment interests, plus a palm plantation and many small-scale business activities. Because of its strategic nature, the 11-year civil war in Liberia was concentrated in Grand Bassa, and left a lot of ex-combatants unemployed in the county. Naturally, the crime rate is very high, and the police and courts are constantly busy. It means that I must also be busy all of the time.

The impression I gather from the judicial staff all over the courts in Grand Bassa and Rivercess is that I am making a great impact in improving the justice delivery system in the two counties. I am constantly approached by both state prosecutors and defence counsel for advice, and to use my official vehicle to seek witnesses in the remote hamlets of the counties.

I am always on the move, speaking to rape victims and their families to come to court to help the state to prosecute alleged rapists. Between May 2007 and July 2007, I monitored several rape cases, none of which would come to trial anytime soon. In Grand Bassa, rape victims and their families cooperate with suspects and their families to frustrate prosecution of rape cases. The victims and their families feel bitter only immediately after the act, but begin to have sympathy for their assailants after they have had some time to think about the possible punishments the assailants might receive when they are found guilty. Consequently, they compromise these cases by accepting money from the families of suspects, and subsequently, the victims vanish from the eyes of state prosecutors.

I have spoken against this behaviour at various meetings with citizens, and at court openings, and on radio in Buchanan. I have suggested a number of times that the Liberian rape law must be amended to allow state prosecutors to use initial complaint statements given to the police by rape victims whenever the victims and their witnesses try to dodge the courts subsequently. The anti-rape campaign, which is very dear to the top UN officials here, is ongoing in Liberia, and I am trying to encourage the people of Grand Bassa and Rivercess to cooperate with UNMIL in the campaign.

Not very long after I had assumed duties in Grand Bassa and Rivercess Counties, a high profile murder case came up for trial in Rivercess in April 2007. In this case, 10 security staff of the Liberian Agricultural Company (LAC - the second largest rubber plantation in Liberia) had been charged with murder for allegedly beating and killing a young man with batons and cutlasses on the plantation. The victim was allegedly on the plantation to steal rubber.

UNMIL became very interested in the case because the murder had sparked civil unrest in the area and citizens had burnt down properties of the company. The citizens of Grand Bassa believed that employees of LAC had committed serious crimes and got away with them because the company was very powerful and bribed its way through everything. To win the confidence of the citizens of the area, UNMIL was determined to ensure that the trial of the suspects proceeded successfully to the end. By some kind of fate, my assumption of duty in the area coincided with the trial.

It was believed that LAC had manoeuvred to change the venue of the trial to the remote county of Rivercess to make it difficult for the state to mobilize its prosecutorial capacity and witnesses to prosecute the case. All the witnesses for the case resided in remote parts of Grand Bassa. Rivercess Couty did not have a qualified state prosecutor to try the case, and the state did not have vehicles in either Grand Bassa and Rivercess to transport witnesses to court.

When I came in the middle of this prosecution, I had to mobilize UNMIL vehicles and security to chase up witnesses and transport them to and fro to ensure that the case ended successfully. I also had to transport state prosecutors from Grand Bassa to Rivercess to handle the case. I slept in UNMIL offices and conference rooms in Rivercess for nearly three weeks to ensure that I monitored every bit of the trial and coordinated UNMIL logistics and security assistance for the trial.

During the trial, the presiding judge conferred with me constantly. I was a moderating figure for both counsels, intervening and urging them to find common ground whenever there were threats to disrupt the process. The trial was hectic and complex but ended with the conviction and sentencing of all the 10 defendants to life imprisonment. I finally had to request UNMIL security and vehicles to convey the convicts from Rivercess to a prison in Buchanan. That was also beautifully executed.

UNMIL recruited me in November 2007 from the United States, where I obtained my Juris Doctorate (JD) and had worked under some very experienced attorneys at the Attorney General's Department of Washington, DC, and at the Baltimore City Public Defender's Office in Maryland. I believe that UNV volunteers can make a lot of changes in the lives of many people if they are proactive, daring, and caring.