The Heroes of Liberia

Fri, July 23, 12:00pm – 1:30pm

1014 Torney Avenue, Pacific Room at Tides, Thoreau Center for Sustainability SF

Women’s Rights International and Voices In Empowering Women, a group of nurse-midwives in Liberia, worked together during a decade of civil war. 14 years later, at the invitation of the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, they opened the Truth Commission’s Women’s Hearings with findings from surveys they conducted during the war. Attended by hundreds of Liberian women, the survey findings were presented first as dramatic plays and then as pictorial graphics so that everyone could understand them.

The short film, True Heroes of Liberia, documents Liberian women’s creative and powerful participation in transitional justice mechanisms and shows how local documentation of human rights violations can lead to accountability, justice, healing, and the building of a strong, vibrant grassroots movement that can protect women's human rights.

Shana Swiss, MD, has worked for 20 years with women and girls living in countries in conflict including the former Yugoslavia, Liberia, Haiti, Sri Lanka, and the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Women’s Rights International works with local groups to document human rights violations against women and supports programs using story-telling and popular theater to address the effects of violence on women’s lives.