Reports

Hundreds of thousands of Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees along Guinea's border were relocated from the embattled border area in early 2001 to camps in the interior of the country. While the organized movement from the border is a welcome and long overdue step, the long-term safety of the refugees is still under threat.

State-sponsored national human rights commissions represent a new vogue among governments, and particularly in Africa. The number of state human rights commissions has multiplied across the continent in the past decade, spreading from one country in 1989 to two dozen by 2000.

On July 19, 1997, Liberia's seven-year war was finally ended through an election that swept former faction leader Charles Taylor and his party, the National Patriotic Party (NPP), into power with 75 percent of the vote.

Throughout the world, thousands of children are used as soldiers in armed conflicts. Although international law forbids recruiting children under fifteen as soldiers, such young children may be found in government armies and, more commonly, in armed rebel groups.

Children who have been used as soldiers are among the most tragic victims of the war in Liberia.

In late 1993, a new armed faction emerged in Liberia known as the Liberian Peace Council (LPC), and engaged Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) in combat.

In 1990, the Economic Community Cease-fire Monitoring Group entered Liberia as a peacekeeping force, temporarily stopping the bloodshed and ethnic killing.

On November 28, 1990, Liberia's warring factions signed a cease-fire agreement, theoretically ending 11 months of fighting that had ravaged the country.

In the course of less than a year, Liberia has become a human rights disaster. Over half its population has been displaced from their homes, including over 500,000 who are refugees in West Africa.

A small group of rebel insurgents attacked the Liberian border town of Butuo in late December 1989, killing an undetermined number of soldiers and immigration officials. The government of Liberia responded to the attack with a show of force, sending two battalions to Nimba County, where Butuo is located.