Accountability Lab Executive Director Blair Glencorse talks to John Kamma from the Citizens' Bureau about the challenges within the country's desperately under-resourced justice sector. Kamma facilitates the Lab's Community Justice Teams in the country and has so far resolved 400 cases through alternative dispute resolution mechanisms.
By: Beth Goldberg (Summer Resident Fellow at Accountability Lab Liberia) and John Kamma (Founder of Citizens Bureau for Development and Productivity, and Accountapreneur). This blog post is the second in a series about the Community Justice Team in Logan Town, Liberia. Mr. Kamma and his team of mediators face three primary challenges in delivering justice in Liberia: Transportation & Communication – the communities served by the Citizens Bureau are widely dispersed and the mediators have no vehicles. For example, one office of the Bureau serves Logan Town’s 17 distinct communities of over 70,000 residents. This is a tall order, but [...]
By: Beth Goldberg (Summer Resident Fellow at Accountability Lab Liberia) and John Kamma (Founder of Citizens Bureau for Development and Productivity, and Accountapreneur) The five mediators sat along the wall of the bright blue room, sweat beading in the stagnant Liberian heat as the office manager, Rockson, recalled a recent case: A 16 year-old girl was accused of witchcraft by her community for exhibiting “unusual behavior”, not unheard of in Liberia where belief in the supernatural is widespread. The girl was subsequently ostracized by her community, prohibited from attending school and church. The situation escalated when her parents were given [...]
By: Beth Goldberg and Lawrence Yealue (Accountability Lab Liberia) At the Accountability Lab we have recently been running a series of “learning about learning” discussions to understand how we- as a community- can get better at adaptive learning. We want to help highlight practical ways to internalize and build on lessons around what works and what does not; and to support open conversations around impact (read recent blogs from our impact survey process and learning in Pakistan). In Monrovia last week, we brought together a group of donors, civil society representatives and government officials to discuss these issues. In Liberia, [...]
By: John Kamma, director of the Citizens Bureau in Logan Town, Liberia and an “accountapreneur” with the Accountability Lab. This blog post was originally published by HiiL Innovating Justice. At the time of writing, there are more questions than answers regarding the recent death of Victoria Zayzay in a jail cell at the Zone 6 police substation. She had been detained on October 20, 2015 after another woman claimed she had caused L$3,000 (US$40) property damage to her business. A preliminary police report by Liberia National Police said the cause of death was attempted suicide. The father of the late Zayzay has [...]
