Background brief - “Pray the Devil Back to Hell:” Women‟s ingenuity

In the aftermath of the signing of the CPA in August 2003, the women of Liberia under the auspices of the Liberian Women Initiative (LWI) and the Women in Peacebuilding Program (WIPNET) of the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP) organized a two-day consultative meeting on the CPA. [...] While these gains in women‟s participation, representation and the consideration of their concerns, especially in the political and economic spheres, in post-conflict Liberia are attributable in part to the gains of the mass action for peace campaign, they are also acknowledged to be an outcome of the political will of the President. [...] 5 Background brief: Women’s Ingenuity in the Peace Process in Liberia The second part is an account of the second phase of the Liberian civil war, which took place from 1999 to 2003, and a brief introduction of the women‟s peace movement that emerged towards the end of this phase of the war and whose activism took place within the framework of the mass action for peac. [...] In Monrovia, the Sinkor Airfield was identified as a primary location, 56 and the women sat there for days, weeks and months; in the rain and in the sun; in the mornings, at noon and at night; against all the odds. [...] Neither party included women in their delegations to the peace talks and, in spite of the daily presence of women at the venue of the talks, neither the negotiating parties nor the mediators deemed it appropriate to formally consult and/or engage the women until they seized the hall.