Liberia: Boakai Government Risking Cuts in US Aid Because of Failure to Act on Anti-Trafficking Cases - FrontPageAfrica
by Anthony Stephens · FrontPageAfricaShare
FacebookTwitterLinkedInPinterestEmail
MONROVIA, Liberia—In December 2022, after 10 months of abuse and exploitation as a housemaid in Oman, Kemah was excited to hear that the Liberian government was finally coming to her rescue. Kemah was one of more than 300 women allegedly duped into traveling to Oman under false promises of good jobs as part of the largest trafficking ring uncovered in Liberia to date.
By Anthony Stephens with New Narratives
Months ticked by and Kemah, 30, heard of other women returning home with the help of government and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). But it eventually became clear that no one was coming for her.
In part 1 of a two-part series, FPA/New Narratives finds the Liberian government is risking serious cuts to US aid by failing to invest in anti-human trafficking action.
Like millions of people trapped in Middle East trafficking rings, Kemah had been tricked into signing a two-year contract that trapped her in an Omani household to cook and clean for 18-hour days, six or seven days a week, for just $US200 a month. To break free, Kemah’s family had to buy her out of the contract, before the Omani agents, who ran the ring, would release her passport.
Kemah says her family had to sell their only parcel of land for $US2500 to secure her release. She recalls in an interview in Monrovia, they bought “the plane ticket, pay the people expenses, before I come back.” Kemah is not her real name. The names of all victims have been changed to protect them from retribution.
In 2023 the Weah administration attracted international acclaim for working with the IOM to convince the Omani government to stop issuing visas and help 112 women come home. The Labor Ministry has not responded to requests for numbers of how many have been repatriated from Oman at its expense. It has also not answered how many women are still there.
Across Liberia, 16 people were prosecuted under a newly revised anti-trafficking law that made the minimum sentence for human trafficking 20 years in prison. Four cases ended in convictions. The success helped Liberia move off the U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Tier 2 watchlist – a crucial development that saved the country from a potential cut in US aid.
But in the months leading up to the 2023 presidential and legislative elections, prosecutions and repatriations ground to a halt. Almost all the $US230,170 budget allotted for anti-trafficking efforts was diverted, allegedly to help plug a shortfall in funds to run the elections. (Many government offices saw the same cuts to funding with the same explanation. A number of Weah government officials have recently been charged after the country’s independent anti-corruption agencies found they had stolen millions from government coffers by creating fake employees and other scams.)
Now Liberia is back on the Tier 2 Watchlist. And the US government is warning the Boakai government cuts are coming. The US gives more than $110 million in funding to Liberia each year – equivalent to about 12 per cent of the government’s yearly budget.
Liberia will lose all non-essential US government’s aid if it stays on the watchlist, according to Mr. Juan Martinez, the former political officer at the US Embassy in Monrovia. Non-essential aid makes up the majority of that $110 million figure.
“You can imagine, it will have a tremendously negative impact on Liberia,” said Mr. Martinez in an interview earlier this year.
It’s a message US diplomatic officials have also been delivering to Liberia’s leadership. But for the first months of Boakai’s leadership, no one seemed to be listening.
Fifty of the women who returned from Oman were chosen for a special entrepreneur program run by the government, in partnership with the IOM, designed to help them recover from the physical and psychological trauma and build their own income so they wouldn’t be vulnerable to another scam. The women were given goods such as rice, onions, and oil valued at $US1,500.
Authorities assured Kemah and other women who have returned from Oman that their turn would come. But it never did.
“Since I came from Oman, the government has not done anything for me yet,” Kemah says. “I do not go to the safe house. When the government treating you like that, will you be happy? I not happy. I feel very bad.”
So, when government prosecutors called on Kemah to testify against Mr. Jones Wilson Saytarkon, one of the people allegedly involved in trafficking her, earlier this year, she was torn. Mr. Saytarkon had been arrested and jailed in February. But he had been released on bail after Kemah and two other women who alleged he had trafficked them refused to testify to a grand jury—a critical legal step that would have led to his indictment.
Although Mr. Saytarkon had been rearrested and detained again after Kemah had told Frontpage Africa/New Narratives that she had changed her mind and would testify against him, Mr. Saytarkon was released on bail for the second time in April when three human sureties signed for him. He reports to Criminal Court “A” twice a week to sign in a book in compliance with Judge Roosevelt Willie’s order. He would face a minimum of 20 years if convicted.
Kemah said she and her family badly wanted to see justice done to one of the people who had allegedly caused them so much suffering. But now they were scared.
Kemah said Mr. Saytarkon’s family threatened her and promised a bribe in exchange for not testifying. She said they also tried to mislead her about what would happen if she turned up to court.
“Jones people say we must not go there. They say when we go there, the government will arrest us because we tampering with the case,” alleged Kemah. She claimed Mr. Saytarkon’s older brother, named James, offered to “compensate us” to dissuade them from testifying. She claimed he has yet to pay.
Experts say victims in cases like this must be offered protection before they testify to protect them from intimidation by the accused. But Kemah insisted the government has offered her no protection. Two more alleged victims have also refused to testify. One repeatedly missed appointments to speak to FPA/NN. The third alleged victim could not be located.
Mr. Saytarkon’s family has denied allegations of bribery. “No one was promised anything. I don’t know what you are talking about,” said Mr. James Wilson, in a text message. “From the day we met those girls at the police station, they voluntarily told us that they didn’t have any interest in pursuing a case against Jones, because they grew up as friends and they didn’t believe he had any intentions to traffic them. They said it all by themselves without us having any negotiations with them.”
Mr. Wilson refused to answer a follow up question about when and why he met the women at the police station, saying, “whatever information you need is at the court.” But the court records, which are publicly available, make no mention of those details. They instead, talk about Mr. Wilson’s brother’s alleged interactions with Kemah and the other women.
It’s not only Mr. Saytarkon’s alleged victims who are refusing to testify. Two victims of Mr. James Warner Jacobs, another man accused of trafficking women to Oman, have taken a similar action. One told FPA/NN by Facebook messenger that she did not “want to be bothered” with anything about Oman. The refusal of the women to testify against their alleged traffickers has put the prosecutions of more human trafficking cases in danger.
Protection of witnesses is a central requirement of professional practice in prosecuting human trafficking cases and a minimum expectation of the US State Department’s trafficking in persons report.
“The lack of support to the victims is crucial, because it is next to impossible for the prosecution to build an effective case without the assistance of victims and witnesses,” warned Mr. Martinez. “It takes tremendous courage to be a victim and then to come and almost be revictimized by the system that doesn’t look out for them – provide them psychosocial services, financial support, or even something as simple as providing transport to and from the court or the one stop center that they need medical attention. They are a vital component to the entire process when it comes to investigations, prosecutions, and convictions, so more attention, more resources need to be directed towards victims and witnesses.”
The refusal of witnesses to testify also came as funding was slashed. Not only were cases halted, accused traffickers have been exploring legal means to have charges dismissed. Mr. Saytarkon has been out of detention on bail since April, with prosecutors telling Criminal Court “A”, which has been hearing the case, that its efforts to get the women to testify “have proven futile.”
Bail was approved for Mr. Jacobs in August after his lawyer convinced the court’s judge that his client had been denied his right to a speedy trial since his arrest in January. The conditions of his release require him to name three “human sureties of eminence” – meaning three people who would go to jail in his place if he failed to appear in court. Mr. Jacobs has been unable to provide those names. Potential sureties may be cowered by the experience of two people who provided sureties for Cephas Selebay, another accused trafficker in 2022 and spent four months and four days in jail respectively when Selebay allegedly fled the country and didn’t show up for trial.
Cllr. Cooper Kruah, Liberia’s Labor Minister – which houses the government’s Anti-Trafficking Unit – said that he had appointed two prosecutors to bring cases against Mr. Saytarkon and Mr. Jacob during the just concluded term of court, which began in August. That didn’t happen. Instead, the government prosecuted just one anti-trafficking case, against Mr. Yacouba Sawadogo, 36, an Ivorian man, unconnected to the Oman case. The government lost that case this week.
Cllr. Kruah, who had pledged to prosecute the Oman cases himself if government prosecutors did not move on them, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The Anti-Trafficking Unit’s 2024 budget of $US32,000 remains unchanged, even under the revised budget submitted to the Legislature in August. It is still far short of the $US271,000 allotted when Liberia remained on the Tier 2 watchlist for three consecutive years, before it was finally upgraded to Tier 2 in 2022.
Minister Kruah, who began the job in February, said the government has already taken steps to address the concerns raised by the US government. The Labor Ministry helped to voluntarily repatriate a 19-year-old Sierra Leonean woman, whose father had been sentenced in 2018 to five years in prison for selling her for $US105,000.
In an interview in August Cllr. Kruah denied that he has abandoned the women.
“Just about a week ago, we paid the rental for the safe homes. We also made provision for food to go to the safe home,” he claimed. “I also allocated funds for hospitalization for those who may not be okay. We did $US60 for someone who, I understand had malaria. If there are additional information to us that someone is not well, we definitely will cover that process from any resource that will be available to us.”
Minister Kruah did not respond to follow up requests for comments on the women he claimed he had approved the medical support for. In text exchanges with her after Cllr. Kruah’s comments, Kemah said she had not gone to the government for help and was treated by her family but clarified that she had received no help from government.
An investigation by FPA/NN in Margibi County, where two of the three government safe homes are located, established that only one of them is operational. The property, fully fenced with barbed wire, electricity, running water and a tiled floor, in undergoing renovation. But there were no Liberians in that safe home when FPA/NN visited in August. Although Liberian TIP authorities, who restricted FPA/NN coverage to just observatory notes taking, with no pictures, said there were three Sierra Leoneans in the home, only one, a woman, could be seen there at the time.
In part 2 of this series FPA/NN looks at how much if any support has been given to women who were returned from Oman after a massive trafficking ring was broken up in 2023.
This story was a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the “Investigating Liberia” project with funding from the Swedish embassy in Liberia. The donor had no say in the story’s content.