All in all, an unusual day to begin a women's solidarity visit to Liberia. A five-member international ecumenical delegation of women will spend a full week visiting women and women's organizations in the country. The five women want to find out at first hand about the situation of women and children in post-war Liberia. They also want to assure the women of Liberia of international solidarity and, above all, they want to listen. The Supreme Court is headed by a woman, as is the Commission on Reconciliation.
Women are in leading positions in the police force and in the army.
During the civil war some of them fought for Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front and reached the rank of commander. Liberian culture had a high regard for women, but when the war came women went to extremes. Women on the winning side and women as victims. Women as agents of peace and reconciliation and women commanding battalions of child soldiers. Estimates by the World Health Organization suggest that, during the eight years of civil war in Liberia, more than one-third of the estimated 500,000 displaced women and children were raped.