The+Republic+of+Liberia

Created by Patricia Izquierdo and Raquel Martínez

toc =My Country Facts=

Official country name
The Republic of Liberia

Year that country joined the UN
1945

People
People from Liberia are called Liberians
 * 1. What are the people from the country called?**

The official language from Liberia is English but there are also about 20 languages of local ethnics groups that are spoken
 * 2.What is the official language? What other languages do people speak?**

The majority of the population practices Christianism but there are also some people that follow the Islamic religion. Other traditional religions are also practiced and some people don't practice any religion.
 * 3.What are the most-practiced religion?**

Ethnic groups are groups of people that identify with each other because of their heritage and because they have the same language, culture and religion. The most important ethnic group is Kpelle, and also Bassa is very important. There are also other groups like Grebo, Gio, Mano,Kru, Lorma, Kissi and Gola. There are other ethnic groups that less known and a 20% of the population belong to them.
 * 4.What are ethnics groups? Which are the ethnics groups from Liberia?**

Government
The actual president of Liberia is called Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. She won the elections in 2005 but she started ruling in 2006.
 * 1.What is the name of the leader of the country?**

The country is ruled by a Republic which means that there's a president that is chosen from the population instead a king that has inherited the trown. There's also another president which has less power than the previous one, but he or she has also a lot of power and is also chose from the population
 * 2. What type of government is the country ruled by?**

The political parties of the country are The Alliance for Peace and Democracy or APD, The Coalition for the Transformation of Liberia or COTOL, The Congress for Democratic Change or CDC , The Liberty Party or LP, The National Patriotic Party or NPP, and The Unity Party or UP.
 * 3.What are the main political parties of the country?**

Liberia was a volony form The United States. In 1821, the American Colonization city decided to send there all the afro-american free slaves. In 1847, the American settlers declared the independence of The Republic of Liberia.
 * 4.Was your country ever a colony? If so, when did it gain its independence?**

The next elections are going to be in October 2011 because the last ones were in October 2005, and they are hold each six years.
 * 5.When are the next elections?**

Geography
The country is located in the west coast of Africa.
 * 1.Where is the country?**

Liberia is surrounded by The Atlantic Ocean on the west, Sierra Leone on the north, Guinea on the east and Cote d'lvoire on the sud-west.
 * 2.What other nations border the country?**

Liberia's lanscape is known because of its coastal plains that form a plateau which can suppor a very low level of agriculture. In the nothen part of the country, there are also low elevations in the land. In the coastline, there are lagoons, mangrove swamps and river-deposited sandbars.
 * 3.What kind of landscape does the country have?**

Liberia has a tropical weather, which means that winters wet and cloudy with frequent heavy rains, and summers are dry and hot with very hot days and cool nights, sometimes they are even cold.
 * 4.What is the climate of the country?**

Economy
Liberia works a lot on agriculture because it has a lot of water, mineral resources, forests and a climate that most of the time is favorable for agriculture. Liberia is a producer and an exporter of basic products. Thus, a 76% of the populations work in agriculture.
 * 1.What is the most common sector of employment in the country?**

The unemployment rate was measured last time in 2003 and it was a 85%
 * 2.What is the unemployment rate in your country?**

Liberia works with rubber, coffee, cocoa, rice, cassava, palm oil, sugarcane, bananas, sheep, goats and timber.
 * 3.What agriculture products does Liberia work on?**

The most surprising thing I learned about my country was: That the president of the country is a woman, because is something that not all the countries allow to happen.

Committee: UNICEF Topic: Children in Armed Conflicts Country: The Republic of Liberia

In some countries of the world, children are forced to participate in armed conflicts. The children that are chosen are of the age of seven as the youngest because they are easier to manipulate and convince. This situation gives rise to some physicological problems to the children, because they have to work with very dangerous weapons, which is a thing that they're not used to work with. Although there’re some charities working to try to stop it, there’re still over 300,000 child soldiers, and Liberian’s range goes from five to fifteen thousands. Due to this situation, a lot of children don’t receive the properly education and have a very hard childhood separated from their families, so, Liberia is working and helping the organizations to avoid this, because, although in Liberia the number of child soldiers has decreased a lot, in some countries it is intensively happening, and the ones that most affect Liberia are Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire.

The Republic of Liberia believes that in order to end the participation of children in armed conflicts, the children should be reintegrated into the society and rejoin normal life. Due to that, the Liberian government is now imposing justice over all the cases of the use of child soldiers during the ruling of the latest president. In July 2006, there were no known groups that recruited child soldiers in Liberia, but, in the neighbour countries, they were still exisisting, and to prevent the re-recruitment of Liberian child soldiers the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) with some help from the United Nations Office for West Africa (UNOWA) and the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (ONUCI) are carrying border patrols to keep a constant watch. This disarmament and demobilization programme is being successful, in fact, 10,936 children were taken back to their countries, in which a 77% were boys and a 23% were girls. Because of this success, Liberia’s president signed that this programme was going to continue working. Although Liberia is doing that to protect itself from this type of conflicts, is also working and helping some international organizations such us UNICEF to try to end with this issue as soon as possible in the whole world. In Monrovia a new initiative has been launched by UNICEF. It consists on taking all soldier children off the street and establish them into safer places where they receive an education and all the help they need to try to forget all the horrible experiences that they’ve lived from different charities like Save the Children and International Rescue Mission. UNICEF has also created an international campaign called “Zero Under 18” in which Liberia is participating. This campaign means that children under the age of 18 can’t participate in armed conflicts, and this is also a law signed by the President of Liberia.

The number of child soldiers has decreased a lot in Liberia, but is has not disspeared. When the civil war broke out in 1999 within the country the range on children working on it went from five to fifteen thousand, which meant that a 25 to a 75 percent of the armies were children under the age of 18. Now, these percentages are not existing, but they’ve not completely disappear. This situation, is against the Liberian law, and that’s because Liberia is participating in international conferences, to try to set up any law that can put end definitively.

Liberia thinks that nations must work nationally by giving the appropriate education to the children living there, and watching that none of them is being forced to participate in any armed conflict. But there’s also another way to try to stop it, which is working and helping the different charities and organizations because there are a lot of countries joing them and the process will be easier and faster of there are more countries cooperating. But, nations also have to take in account the children that have already been forced to participate in armed conflicts. Most of these children are really affected because of the horrible weapons and experiences, and they want to return with their families, which is not something easy because, as an emergency child protection specialist says: “There are lots of challenges, specially if the child was with an armed group and killed people or committed atrocities. That might be hard for a family to accept.” So in order to end with this issue, the UN should work intensively by sending border patrols to watch if only people over the age of 18 are the ones that participates in armed conflicts and helping the children that have been taken off the armies to be again accepted by their families and give to them their education.