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Abstract

Empirical evidence has demonstrated that in contemporary wars, women and children bear the brunt of the violence unleashed in the form of killings, abductions, and various forms of gendered violence. This research investigates the ways in which returnee refugee women in post war Liberia experience gender-based violence in their everyday lives. It also investigates the role of governmental agencies in addressing this violence and the implications of all these for the reintegration of returnee women and peace in the country generally. To this end, fieldwork was carried out in Liberia employing in-depth and semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, document review, and observation. One hundred persons participated in the study including returnee women across the country, community leaders, and NGO and government staff. The research was framed within human rights theory, which locates women’s rights within human rights and provides practitioners and disadvantaged women alike a vocabulary to frame political and social wrongs. The responses indicate that returnee refugee women in Liberia continue to confront generalized and gender-specific violence. The implementation of government legislation such as the new rape law continue to encumber the drive to tackle gender-based violence (GBV) while other initiatives such as a national GBV taskforce move the country in the right direction. The implications are that reintegration of returnee refugee women remains slow and, although women constitute a remarkable proportion of government, most returnee women have yet to find meaningful ways of contributing to the success of the nascent political order.

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