Prison Guards Learn About SGBV

2 Oct 2013

Prison Guards Learn About SGBV

The initiative left elated guards at the Zwedru National Palace of Corrections (NPC) asking for more when a combined team of facilitators from UNMIL and the County administration took them through a short but incisive course on sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV).

“Let this not be a one-off thing,” NPC Director Joseph G. W. Sumo urged, following the workshop held at the facility on 23 September. “It would be a good thing if we received these briefings regularly.”

In all, some 15 penitentiary guards in attendance gained deeper insight into the concept of gender and, more especially, attendant abuses the public often takes for granted. Among other aspects, the interactive forum reviewed the broad spectrum of social and cultural practices which, though sanctioned by local custom, were in conflict with the law.

“Liberia is signatory to an international protocol on the Rights of the Child proscribing marriage below the age of 18,” Moses Neah, County Coordinator for Gender and Development observed in a briefing with UNMIL Today after the workshop.  He argued, for instance, that by acquiescing to the marriage of girls at age 15, the country’s customary law was at variance with the international instrument.

Neah was one of two facilitators from the local administration, including a member of the Grand Gedeh Peace and Justice Commission. Their counterparts from UNMIL included officers from the Corrections Advisory Unit, the Consolidation of Democratic Governance, Rule of Law and Human Rights Protection Section.

 “Primarily, we reach out to the communities with sensitisation on SGBV, but we can’t leave out agents charged with enforcing the law,” the Gender Coordinator explained of the workshop with Liberian prison guards.
NPC Director Sumo concurred, describing the initiative as important and timely.