A Liberian female activist and security expert, Asatu Bah-Kenneth, is no doubt, one of Liberia’s best, as the online news outlet GNN-Liberia has been profiling the Deputy Commissioner General of the Liberia Immigration Service (LIS).
Having previously served in many top posts in Liberia’s security sector, Bah-Kenneth currently serves as Deputy Commissioner General of the Liberia Immigration Service (LIS).
She formerly served as Deputy Inspector General of the Liberia National Police (LNP) and as an activist; she is the founder of the Liberian Muslim Women’s Organization, which series of protest actions helped in bringing to an end the second round of Liberia’s internecine gun battles in 2003.
Recently, the online news outlet GNN-Liberia, in its profile of the week, featured Bah-Kenneh, as one of many Liberians nationalistically contributing to the growth and development of Africa’s oldest republic, in the sustenance of lasting peace.
The online publication recalls that the LIS Deputy Commissioner General is an anti-war activist who organized Muslim women protests calling for an end to the Liberian civil war, indicating that Madam Bah-Kenneth teamed up with fellow female Liberian peace activist Leymah Roberta Gbowee, founder of a women’s peace movement, Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, to attain such fete.
Bah-Kenneth and her Liberian Muslim Women’s Organization’s protestations, mostly involving women cladded in white, included sex strikes and sit-in actions that successfully engendered ceasefire negotiations resulting to former President Charles Taylor being taken into exile, before he was indicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone for war crimes and crimes against humanity, taken to The Hague, convicted and sentenced for 50 years that he’s currently serving in a British prison.
Madam Bah-Kenneth, according to GNN-Liberia, is the founding chief of the Liberal National Party of Queensland’s (LNP) Women and Children Protection Act Section 2005, adding the she was a police officer since 1985, and was appointed by ex-President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, as sit-in police boss, after police IG Munah Sieh, who in 2005, as head of the LNP was under investigation for alleged malpractice regarding the procurement process of police uniforms.
Together with Beatrice Munah Sieh and Vera Manly, Asatu was among three key female figures, who helped to shape LNP’s “gender sensitive” reforms, according to the online publication.
Madam Bah-Kenneth is a product of the Louise Arthur Grimes School of Law where she held a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) Sociology where she graduated; she is a member of the Liberia National Bar Association (LIBA), Executive Member of the Liberia National Law Enforcement Association (LINLEA), and served as President, Liberia Female Law Enforcement Association (LFLEA). Madam Bah-Kenneth has been regarded as a credible human rights advocate and female law-enforcement activist for the common good of all in the community.
Madam Bah-Kenneth’s women’s rights advocacy has come a very long way, particularly when in 2019, she represented Liberia at an US-sponsored Institute of Peace international conference in Washington, D.C. the United States of America. At that conference, she spoke demanding for the women’s participation into security sector structures. She also noted that Liberian women police officers were being encouraged to learn specialised skills, stressing at the time that females were needed to be trained in sexual exploitation and abuse, because according to her, women victims are more comfortable in reporting cases of abuse to fellow women, who are law enforcement officers.
