Summary:
- Five years after Liberian organizations united to push for sexual and reproductive health rights, advocates say they have changed public debate, trained thousands of young people and won support from some religious leaders.
- But the coalition’s biggest goal remains unfinished. The Public Health Bill, including controversial abortion provisions, has been stalled in the Senate since 2022.
- With donor funding ending, advocates say sustaining the movement now depends on Liberian institutions carrying the work forward.
By Joyclyn Wea, gender correspondent with New Narratives
Five years ago, organizations working on sexual and reproductive health across Liberia reached the same conclusion: acting alone was not enough. With funding from the Swedish government, they formed the Amplifying Rights Network, a coalition that has since trained community leaders, mobilized thousands of citizens, and helped move women’s reproductive health into national debate.
Partners in the coalition are celebrating those gains this week as the project comes to a close. But as cuts to reproductive health and education funding by major donors cast a cloud over the celebrations, activists admit some of the project’s biggest goals remain out of reach. The coalition has yet to secure long-term local ownership of the movement or win passage of the reforms it has spent years advocating for. Its defining goal, passage of the Public Health Bill that would expand access to legal abortion under limited circumstances, remains stalled in the Senate, leaving many women facing the same risks the coalition was created to address.
“When you serve the Liberian people in the government, let your community also feel the impact of the work you do,” said Kutaka Devine Togbah, director of the Human Rights Protection Division at the Ministry of Justice.
The project started as Liberia continued to face some of the region’s most difficult reproductive health and rights challenges. Out of every 100,000 births, 628 mothers die, or 2 to 3 every day – one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world. Nearly one-third of women who want contraception still cannot get it, while adolescent pregnancy remains among the highest in West Africa.
A Ministry of Health and Clinton Health Access Initiative study found that more than 14,500 women sought treatment for abortion-related complications in 2021 alone, and roughly one in ten died or nearly died. These realities helped convince civil society organizations that coordinated advocacy was urgently needed.
Five years later, advocates argue the coalition has changed more than public awareness.Dwede Tarpeh, national program officer for democracy and human rights at the Embassy of Sweden, said the coalition’s impact should be measured by the people it empowered, not the projects it completed.
Dwede Tarpeh, program officer for democracy and human rights at the Embassy of Sweden, speaks at the event.
“There are thousands, literally thousands of young people who have more knowledge and agency than they did three years ago, and that is because of you,” Tarpeh said.
H. is one example of the impact. She was 17 when she became pregnant. She had no idea how pregnancy happened. In her community, discussions about sex were considered taboo.
Too afraid to tell her mother, she confided in a friend instead. Together, they visited an older woman in their community, who told them to grind a glass bottle into powder and drink it to end the pregnancy.
“I nearly died,” she recalled in a recent interview. (New Narratives is withholding her name because of stigma.) Drinking ground glass is one of several extremely dangerous methods of abortion that are widely practiced in the country, and a contributor to thousands of women seeking emergency medical treatment as a result. “For more than one week, I suffered terrible pain.”
H. survived after being taken to a hospital. Today she studies social work at Bong University and is looking forward to pursuing a career and having children when she is ready.
Ida Nowai Kaiser, executive director of the Rural Women’s Rights and Care Foundation, said that teaching rural girls about sexuality education and access, the biggest change over the past five years has been learning that difficult conversations become easier when organizations stand together.
Aminata Kamara provided an impact brief of the Amplifying Voices project, which established the Amplifying Rights Networks.
She said she remembers planning a “Safe Abortion Day” awareness program in Bong County, rural Liberia, when local health officials allegedly urged her organization to cancel the event.
“If it were only our organization, we would have stopped,” Kaiser said.
Instead, nine other coalition members stood beside them and pushed through with the event, demonstrating what Kaiser terms as power in coming together.
The Network organized Liberia’s first national conference focused entirely on sexual and reproductive health rights, bringing together about 1,700 participants across two conferences. It engaged more than 100 religious and traditional leaders, mobilized roughly 3,700 people nationwide to advocate for the Public Health Bill, introduced Braille materials and sign-language interpretation at its 2025 conference, and helped develop guidance for journalists covering reproductive health issues.
Those efforts, supporters said, helped shift conversations that were once considered politically untouchable.
The Network’s supporters said its biggest achievement was helping ordinary Liberians, especially young people, gain the confidence and knowledge to make informed decisions about their health and rights.
Yet the coalition’s defining campaign goal remains unresolved.
The coalition has spent years supporting the passage of the revised Public Health Bill, legislation that would modernize Liberia’s public health law and expand access to reproductive health services. One provision extending legal abortion has become the bill’s biggest obstacle.
The House of Representatives approved the legislation in 2022, but it has failed to win passage in the Senate ever since.
Last month saw the biggest sign that the coalition may have contributed to a national change on reproductive health when the Inter-Religious Council publicly urged lawmakers to pass the Public Health Bill, marking a significant change after years of organized religious opposition.
Dabah M. Varpilah, chairperson of the Liberian Senate Committee on Health, did not respond to a request for comment on whether she now has a two-thirds majority needed to pass the bill. But some advocates said it may well be enough legislators to back the bill. Advocates said that the move reflects changing attitudes.
The coalition now faces another challenge.
With the Swedish government withdrawing its embassy from Liberia, members are now looking to government institutions, the United Nations, and other international donors to sustain the work.
Togbah said the need remains urgent.
The day before Rights Networks’ anniversary celebration, he said, he saw two pregnant teenage girls in his own neighborhood.
“Were these pregnancies by choice or by error?” Togbah wondered.
This story was produced in collaboration with New Narratives as part of the Investigating Liberia project. Funding was provided by a private donor and the Swedish International Development Agency Development Cooperation Agency. The donors had no say in the story’s content.
