UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS, NEW YORK – Liberia’s transformation from one of the world’s deadliest civil wars into a stable democracy stands as powerful proof that sustainable peace is earned through national ownership, reconciliation, and accountable governance, President Joseph Nyuma Boakai Sr. told world leaders gathered at the United Nations on Thursday.
In a keynote address delivered on his behalf by Foreign Minister Sara Beysolow Nyanti at the High-Level Event marking the 20th Anniversary of the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund (PBF), President Boakai reflected on Liberia’s painful journey while urging the international community to invest more heavily in preventing conflicts before they erupt.
“I regret that the demands of governing our nation at this moment did not allow me to be with you in person. But I want this Assembly to know that Liberia’s presence at this anniversary is not a formality. It is personal. It is rooted in our own history, and in the long road our people have walked from war to peace,” President Boakai stated in the address delivered at the General Assembly Hall.
President Boakai recounted Liberia’s harrowing experience with violent conflict, noting that for more than fourteen years, the country endured two devastating civil wars that claimed an estimated 250,000 lives and displaced nearly half the population.
“Liberia does not speak about peacebuilding as a theory. We speak about it as something we have lived, something we continue to build, year by year, often imperfectly, but always with determination,” he declared.
When the guns fell silent in 2003, the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) stood beside the Liberian people through a long and difficult transition. When the Peacebuilding Fund was established in 2006, Liberia became one of its earliest partners.
Over the past twenty years, the Peacebuilding Fund has supported critical reforms across Liberia’s justice sector, security institutions, women’s empowerment, youth engagement, land rights, reconciliation, and community conflict resolution.
The Fund supported rule of law education that brought human rights and legal awareness to rural communities beyond the reach of formal institutions. It strengthened the security sector, building the capacity of police and military through dedicated gender taskforces. It empowered women as peacebuilders, supporting community peace huts as local spaces for dispute resolution, and funding women’s situation rooms that monitored and addressed hundreds of cases of conflict, including election-related violence.
The Fund helped communities across Nimba, Cape Mount, Sinoe, and Maryland Counties better understand and exercise their land rights, addressing one of the deepest root causes of tension in Liberian society. It also invested in youth, ensuring young Liberians were engaged in civic life rather than left vulnerable to manipulation and exclusion.
Together, these investments helped Liberia conduct three successive peaceful presidential elections, culminating in the 2023 transfer of power that the world recognized as a milestone in its democratic journey. President Boakai outlined four key lessons from Liberia’s experience that speak to every nation represented in the hall.
First, peace is not an event—it is a continuous, generational task. “Liberia held its peace agreement in 2003. We are still doing the work of peace today, more than twenty years later, through truth telling, through national reconciliation, and through our continuing efforts to address the recommendations of our Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” he said.
Second, peacebuilding must be nationally owned. International support was, and remains, indispensable, but no outside actor can build peace inside a country on its behalf. “The Peacebuilding Fund understood this from the start. It did not impose solutions. It invested in Liberian institutions, Liberian leadership, and Liberian ownership of our own recovery,” President Boakai stated.
Third, reconciliation requires honesty about the past. The Boakai Administration has taken deliberate steps to confront Liberia’s history directly, including a national apology to victims of the civil wars and the reburial with full state honors of two former Presidents who were killed while in office. President Samuel Kanyon Doe was laid to rest in Zwedru, Grand Gedeh County, his home county, while President William R. Tolbert, Jr. was reburied with dignity in Montserrado County.
“These reburials, held more than three decades after their deaths, were not merely ceremonial. They were an act of national conscience, long overdue, intended to bring closure to grieving families and to a nation that had carried the weight of unresolved history for far too long,” the President explained. The Administration continues its efforts toward dignified memorialization and work to establish a War and Economic Crimes Court (WECC), with draft legislation now prepared and the process moving toward implementation.
Fourth, peace and development are inseparable. “A peace that does not deliver roads, schools, healthcare, and opportunity will not hold,” President Boakai said, noting that this principle underpins his government’s national development agenda. Liberia comes to this anniversary not only as a recipient of the Peacebuilding Fund’s support, but increasingly as a contributor to the global peacebuilding agenda. Having assumed its first full term as a non-permanent member of the Security Council for 2026 and 2027, Liberia carries into that role the lessons of its own recovery.
“We have said before, and I say again today, that while the seat at that table bears Liberia’s name, it belongs to the wider community of nations that have known conflict and found their way back to peace,” President Boakai stated. Liberia has also announced its candidacy for a seat on the African Union Peace and Security Council for the 2026-2028 period, representing the Western Union, offering a strategic opportunity to harmonize continental and global peace and security deliberations.
President Boakai warned that peacebuilding today faces new and pressing tests. Youth unemployment and exclusion threaten to undo hard-won gains across the region. Climate-related shocks are eroding coastlines and displacing communities. Mistrust in institutions, if left unaddressed, can unravel decades of progress. “Liberia urges this Organization, and this Fund, to keep pace with these realities, investing not only in the aftermath of conflict, but in the prevention of it,” he urged.
In closing, President Boakai extended Liberia’s sincere gratitude to the Peacebuilding Fund, its donors, and dedicated staff who have walked with the country through some of the most difficult chapters of its national life. “Twenty years is a milestone worth celebrating. But I would ask this Assembly to mark it not simply by looking back, but by recommitting to the work that remains,” he said. “Liberia stands ready to continue as a partner in that work, sharing what we have learned, supporting other nations on their own journeys, and continuing to build, brick by brick, the peace that our people sacrificed so much to achieve.”
The anniversary celebration brought together world leaders, senior UN officials, international donors, and peacebuilding practitioners to reflect on two decades of achievements while charting the future direction of global peacebuilding efforts.
