Published: August 21, 2026
BARCLAYVILLE, Grand Kru County — Women in Grand Kru County who are 18 or older can enlist in the Armed Forces of Liberia in an upcoming recruitment exercise, an opening the military is pressing in a force where women hold 7.5% of positions.
A five-member AFL delegation carried the message to Voice of Grand Kru Radio on Aug. 15, telling women across the county to assemble a birth certificate, a voter’s ID and a West African Senior School Certificate Examination diploma now, and to be prepared to show good moral conduct. The team did not give a date or a location for the exercise, saying only that it would be held soon.
The soldiers used the airtime to argue that nothing in the job excludes women.
“What a man does, a woman can do the same,” the team said.
The gap they are working against is documented. A UN Women project document on women’s participation in the AFL puts female representation at a reported 7.5%, broken down as 11.5% of officers and 7.1% of enlisted personnel. The same document says the Gender and Security Sector National Taskforce found in 2017 that women made up 3% of the AFL, the lowest share of any of Liberia’s security institutions at the time, and describes the rise since then as slow.
The Ministry of National Defense and the AFL launched a project on Feb. 9, 2026, in partnership with UN Women and funded by the Elsie Initiative Fund, aimed at placing more Liberian women in United Nations peacekeeping deployments, including in command positions. The project document says it will support recruitment-related outreach, run nationwide awareness campaigns to challenge social bias about women in the security sector, and prepare soldiers for deployment with skills including basic computer training. It is framed against UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which calls for more women in the institutions that prevent and resolve conflict.
Two female soldiers on the delegation, Sgt. Sukie L. Newton and Staff Sgt. Lincoln Patricia, said the AFL gave them skills, discipline, and professional experience they still rely on.
“In the Armed Forces of Liberia, we learned so many things that are benefiting us today,” they said.
Newton said the return goes beyond the uniform.
“Once you join the AFL, lots of opportunities will come your way. You will learn trades and careers that will help you,” she said.
The delegation also appealed to families not to stand in the way of women who want to enlist, and told prospective applicants not to be put off by the military environment or by what people say about service.
“Please don’t be afraid. No one should discourage you from joining the AFL,” the team said.
That appeal tracks the project’s stated approach, which identifies families, schools, county authorities, religious leaders and women’s groups as the audiences whose support has to shift before enlistment numbers do. The AFL measured those barriers itself in September 2022, assessing its capacity to deploy women using the Measuring Opportunities for Women in Peace Operations methodology developed by DCAF, the Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance.
The delegation told listeners the United Nations is supporting the recruitment push. The project document describes a nationwide campaign reaching all 15 counties, but says the first phase covers two of four regional clusters, the Western and the Northern. It does not place Grand Kru in that first phase. Whether the Aug. 15 broadcast falls under the UN Women project or under a separate AFL recruitment effort could not be established.
The team was headed by Junior A. Morris and included Newton, 2nd Lt. Boye S. Mussah, Patricia, and Monicond B. Yarkpizn.
