Risk education - Liberia

Following many years of civil war, Liberia is blighted by explosive remnants of war (ERW) as well as the wide availability of guns.

Landmine Action’s programme in Liberia provides risk education (RE) in communities likely to be affected by ERW in order to limit the threat from the presence of such contamination. RE programmes aim to raise awareness and understanding of the potential harm that can be caused by ERW, encourage safe practices for individuals living in contaminated environments and develop systems for recording and reporting dangerous items.

During its first year, the RE programme reached communities in Lofa, Nimba, Cape Mount and Montserrado counties.  Initial efforts focused in Zorzor and the Salayea districts of Lofa County and has slowly expanded westwards to Voinjama and Foya districts and south to the border with Bong County.

Landmine Action ran a two-month RE trainers course which established a dedicated team of four Liberian staff - two male, two female - who conduct the community education programmes. The course comprised both classroom and practical work, with considerable supervised RE fieldwork prior to the staff being licensed to work unsupervised.

RE needs are identified initially by an assessment of communities likely to have an ERW threat. These are communities known to have suffered major combat during the 14 year war. The RE team is then deployed to a number of at risk communities where needs assessments are conducted. These needs assessments allow a clear picture of the ERW threat and community RE needs to be developed. On the basis of the identified threat and requirement for training, the RE team prioritise which communities to work with first, and within communities, which target audiences to work with.  Sometimes it is the children who are most at risk, sometimes the male farmers; all will be trained, but the most at risk groups will be trained first.

RE in Liberia is a community based activity. International experts play a key role in training national staff, but it is the Liberian staff who are responsible for entering the communities and helping them to develop safe behaviour with regard to ERW. Understanding local cultural practices, working with low education levels and fitting in with the early and late working hours of rural communities is vital to our work. Women are key to developing safe behaviour in their children, their men and their communities..

Communities receive an initial training period of approximately 3 days. This varies according to the threat from and level of unsafe behaviour towards ERW.  Following this initial period, communities are visited monthly for 1 – 3 days to monitor and improve their progress towards safe behaviour. These visits involve updating the needs assessment, retraining target groups, checking the ledger and removing weapons and ammunition.  Any ERW are confirmed to have been entered into the ledger and the RE team then report them to UN peace-keepers who are responsible for collection and disposal.

Risk education plays an important part in the reduction of accidents from ERW as well as changing attitudes towards guns and violence and encouraging people to take responsibility for these issues within their own communities.