The status of children, sustainable development and fixed poverty in Liberia is addressed and chronicled in a more disciplined, logical and methodical way in this essay. Throughout the thesis, the author utilizes examples in an effort to draw honest and sharp contrasts on where the country ought to be focused in regards to issues dealing with children, instead of the sensational headline grabber which some in the Department of Social Welfare at the Ministry of Health seem to relish. 

The author spotlights specific areas dealing with children where urgent attention is needed. The author believes that Liberia has more critical and vexing issues regarding children, which need immediate attention, instead of the fixation some have attached to a singular issue like inter-country adoption when in fact only 1,185 children have been legally and ethically adoption over the past 5 years from Liberia to America. 

Notwithstanding, some in the Department of Social Welfare at the Ministry of Health are fixed on trivializing sensitive children’s issues for sensational headlines. Liberia went through an epoch of devastated economic and infrastructural regimes for 25 years that was the result of administrative mismanagement, widespread corruption and social destitution. This resulted in the decay of structures, the crumbling of infrastructures and the collapse of political arrangements. This author would conclude that these conditions culminated in the brutal civil war that wreaked havoc on our people. Now that the mayhem we created has been over for more than 3 years, Liberia needs its own unique strategy to tackle the unending problems that created those actions that almost brought us to total annihilation. Liberia can no longer continue to depend and rely so heavily on foreign institutions to lift it out of poverty.    

Individuals can no longer be given platforms where political rhetoric is rife and action nil, as we’ve come to see by the actions of successive governments when mere rhetoric deprive our country of critical thinkers. Our richness in natural resources has not yet helped our people to register the necessary economic growth and development which should have brought about a fundamental and meaningful improvement in the standards of living of the majority of our people. Let’s face it, Liberia is endowed with considerable mineral resources and an ample supply of cultivable agricultural land and rich fisheries, to sustain a thriving economic base, yet our political leaders and policymakers continue to conduct business as usual and allow our country to be classify as a ‘bagger nation’. Bureaucrats in the vertical decision making apparatus of government are all talk and no action. Improving conditions and standards of living of our people are not a necessity for promulgating meaningful public policy that benefits the majority of our people.   

Since the commencement of the Sirleaf administration in 2006, politicians and bureaucrats professed to have the greatest ideas to restructure the government and reform the social order, somehow found it difficult to make systems and structures work best for ordinary people. Nevertheless, the national treasury continues to be pillaged for personal gains, and our national heritage is still being put up for sale every time to the first Lebanese businessman that comes along.    

Those at the panicle of the leadership hierarchy with broad discretionary powers never seem to muster the political will to resolutely work against stopping corruption. They never seem to want to bring a halt to the mismanagement of national resources and misuse and abuse of trusted positions which in many cases are known to impede national progress. In other words, our leaders seem to delight in allowing a few misguided and irresponsible persons to coerce and obligate our country into chaos with awful policy decisions. By allowing this pattern of public behavior to continue only broadens our already miserable plight by persistently encircling our country into a poverty trap without fundamentally strengthening our country for greater prosperity.

Liberians will agree that disparities in income distribution are today on the increase in our country and the physical and social infrastructures are methodically deteriorating even though the Sirleaf administration for the first time in our history is systematically making every effort to restore and fix them. For instance, deterioration in the economic sector still has tremendous affect on the lives of our urban, peri-urban and rural populations. More than half of our people now live in absolute poverty; rural life is still at subsistence level fraught with poor education, inadequate healthcare, pitiful farm-to-market road network and lack of the most basic services.

 In addition, unemployment as well as under-employment continues to have a stranglehold on the population due to the slow growth performance of the economy with disturbing features of the labor force in both the urban and rural sectors. Undercurrent of unhappiness and dissatisfaction are beginning to rumble across the landscape. Serious action must now be taken to ease the severe social and economic burden being experience by our people. This will not only breed turbulence, which is not only abhorrent, but also it will continue to remain a formidable barrier to rapid socio-economic and political development in our country.

Below are some examples which the author believes should drive home the point in case some in the Department of Social Welfare at the Ministry of Health hasn’t gotten it as yet. Children in Liberia are more likely to be ill, less likely to be in school and far more likely to die before the age of five than children in America or Europe. Trapped in a downward spiral of disease and deepening poverty, Liberian children and their parents are, by some measures, worse off today than they were 30 years ago. Statistics for another key indicator of well-being for children and their families in Liberia, maternal mortality, are equally disturbing. Nearly half the women who die annually in Liberia die from pregnancy or child birth. With 235 per 100,000 live births, a 2000 UN study concluded that Liberian women are nearly three times more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth than women in South America and South Asia. The study also states that the ratio between Liberian and American women dying at childbirth is one in every 4,085.

Example # 1: Liberia has one of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world. Yet, a few individuals, at the MOH have chosen to politicize single issues like inter-country adoption thereby focusing on the 1,185 children that were adapted to American parents over the past five years (2003-2008). The politicizing the plight of innocent children through inter-country adoption is immoral, offensive and completely unacceptable and unwarranted. Polarizing thorny issues like those dealing with the plight of children for political gains will not sit well with many who view the future of Liberia’s prosperity as being rooted in the lives and success of children.

The author makes the following Cases to point out the serious challenges with policy initiatives that remains a stranglehold on th nation’s children:

Example # 2: Malnutrition is a major problem in Liberia according to UNICEF; it is one of the major challenges holding Liberia's children back from progress. It is estimated to kill approximately 74,000 children by 2015 if urgent action is not taken by the Sirleaf administration, yet some in the Ministry of Health have chose to politicize inter-country adoption without attempting to deal with this potentially devastating and appalling catastrophe. For instance, 40 per cent of children in Liberia suffer from chronic malnutrition, which causes stunting in nearly one-third of children and leaves one in five underweight with a further seven percent suffering from acute malnutrition. Malnutrition in turn hampers national economic growth, with conditions such as anemia and iodine deficiency lowering the country’s economic productivity by $431,000 each year, according to Stella Subah, nutrition adviser at the Health Ministry.

Example # 3: According to a United Nations report, half a million children do not attend school in Liberia, while two thirds of students are being taught by unqualified teachers. Additionally, UNICEF states that in 2007, 39 percent of girls attended primary school, and girls’ enrolment rates in both primary and secondary schools still lag far behind those for boys.

Example # 4: A recent United Nations Report Liberia has one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Sub-Sahara Africa with 23 percent of adolescent girls estimated to have given birth before the age of 18. Sexual exploitation and abuse are widespread and in many cases have exploded especially since the introduction of UN Peacekeepers and international personnel into the country. The report states that 46 percent of teenage girls were pregnant in Liberia in 2007. Teenage pregnancy is a contributing factor to higher maternal and infant mortality rates In addition; the World Health Organization (WHO) says that Liberia is one of the top ten riskiest countries in the world for giving birth.  The organization adds that an estimated 80 percent of maternal deaths could be avoided if women had access to basic healthcare.

With these fixed and alarming statistics, a new level of thinking must now emerge from the Ministry of Health so as to better develop defining new strategies to combat issues dealing with children especially from a human rights perspective. Individuals who are not adequately qualify to deal with children issues should not be allow to set policies, which will affect children and their parents for decades. The time has come for new guidelines for children on criteria and conditions for strengthening standards, and promoting alternative programs to be drawn up. Such an initiative must include the active participation of children and their parents to promote critical changes that can help end poverty.

The Sirleaf administration cannot and will not provide for all the needs of children in Liberia especially those needing care outside of the traditional boundaries of the family. Children centers, orphanages and adoption agencies fill a need that the government cannot, and shouldn’t. One hopes that the government would recognize this and support these agencies and initiatives instead of allowing intermediaries at the Ministry of Social Welfare to put impediments in the way of progress for the Liberian child. Liberians know that people in need outnumber people able to contribute by a huge margin. Such issues are overwhelming, the problems grow worse each day, and successive generations are coming of age under conditions their ancestors could never have imagined.

And so, the shameful question which many poor ordinary Liberians are asking and policymakers are refusing to answer is: Would some children by the choice of their parents be better off with adopted families in American than languish in absolute poverty and squalor in villages and peri-urban communities in Liberia? International adoption is treated on the one hand with skepticism in Liberia because of the level of education of the majority of our people. 

On the other hand, discussion and treatment of this sensitive issue-area by policymakers are appalling. A catastrophe has hit the shores of Liberia on children’s issues, yet those who should be looking over the best interest of children, are themselves traumatizing children and their families because adoption agencies are refusing to provide inducement for service above and beyond established bureaucratic fees.   What a shame that a handful of individuals would be allowed to destroy the painstaking gains of the Sirleaf administration because they are blinded by corruption and trivial-mindedness from seeing the bigger picture of fundamentally transforming Liberia to impr ove the livelihoods, conditions and standards of all?