-WONGOSOL Executive Director Demands Radical Overhaul of Power Structures at UN Meeting
In her address to the UN Peacebuilding Commission on May 28, 2025, Esther S. Davis Yango, Executive Director of Liberia’s Women NGOs Secretariat (WONGOSOL), flagged the international community’s failure to properly recognize and resource women’s central role in maintaining Liberia’s fragile peace.
Speaking with the authority of two decades leading grassroots peace efforts, Yango declared that Liberian women have moved beyond seeking recognition as peacebuilders to demanding concrete structural reforms that would finally grant them equal decision-making power, justice for wartime atrocities, and direct access to peacebuilding resources.
Her words: “Excellencies, Liberian women have long been on the frontlines of peace, not as beneficiaries, but as engineers. From dialogue tables to protest lines, from community mediation to national advocacy, our resolve has been resolute. The time has come to move from recognition to realization. We stand ready, WONGOSOL and civil society to co-create a future where peace in Liberia is inclusive, just, and truly sustainable.”
The activist painted a damning picture of systemic exclusion, revealing that despite women constituting the backbone of Liberia’s post-conflict recovery through initiatives like the renowned Women Peace Huts, they remain shockingly underrepresented in formal politics. With women holding just 11% of legislative seats – far below neighboring Sierra Leone (32%), Ghana (40%) and Senegal (44%) – Yango argued this disparity reflects deliberate political gatekeeping rather than lack of capability.
She particularly criticized the concentration of female appointees in “soft” ministerial portfolios like gender and culture, while key sectors such as defense, finance and justice remain male-dominated fortresses.
Yango’s address contained several explosive revelations, including previously undisclosed data showing that rural women peacebuilders receive less than 2% of direct peacebuilding funding, despite handling over 80% of community-level conflict mediation.
She described the absurd paradox of international agencies spending $2.3 million on Monrovia-based gender workshops since 2022 while Peace Hut operators – who recently averted violence in three counties ahead of elections – struggle with budgets under $150 per month. A confidential WONGOSOL analysis cited in her speech showed 92% of these critical grassroots peace architects lack stable salaries, forcing many to use personal funds to transport rape survivors to clinics or mediate land disputes.
On transitional justice, Yango delivered what she termed “a final warning” about Liberia’s “justice time bomb.” With 16 years having elapsed since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report and at least 14 key witnesses having died since 2020, she presented new data indicating 68% of female war survivors now report worsening trauma symptoms. Her voice trembling with restrained fury, Yango recounted how former warlords openly flaunt their impunity while rape survivors die destitute, their reparations perpetually delayed by bureaucratic inertia.
The WONGOSOL leader’s five-point ultimatum contained meticulously crafted demands with built-in accountability mechanisms. She called not just for gender quotas but for legally-binding 30% minimum representation with electoral funding guarantees and anti-violence protections. Her War Crimes Court proposal included an unprecedented 50% female commissioner requirement and survivor-led reparations programs.
Most radically, she demanded a complete overhaul of peacebuilding financing – requiring 30% direct allocation to women-led organizations through a new Civil Society Peacebuilding Transparency Initiative that would publicly track all international aid.
The address concluded with what observers called a masterstroke of diplomatic pressure – the announcement of an intergenerational Women/Youth Peace Consortium that would institutionalize youth-elder co-leadership outside government structures.
