WS More or Less: Liberia?s Rape Statistic Debunked

More or Less: Behind the Stats

BBC

Business, Mathematics, Science, News Commentary, News

4.6 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2016

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

Sexual violence was widespread in Liberia?s brutal and bloody year civil war. But were three quarters of women in the country raped? We tell the story behind the number and reveal how well-meaning efforts to expose what happened have fuelled myths and miss-leading statistics that continue to be propagated to this day, including by the UN.

We speak to Amelia Hoover Green from Drexel University, Dara Cohen from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, researcher Phyllis Kimba and Aisha Dukule from the think tank Center For Liberia's Future in Monrovia.

(Photo: Liberian women and children wait for rice rations in overcrowded Monrovia, June 2003. Credit: Georges Gobet/AFP/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, this is Tim. We're making a small change. I hope it's an improvement to the way we do the more or less podcast.
0:06.4	Basically, we're trying to ensure that the longer Radio 4 edition doesn't overlap with material from the shorter World Service Edition.
0:13.3	So if all goes well, you should be able to listen to and enjoy both episodes without any repetition.
0:19.2	Thanks, and enjoy the program, this one being the shorter
0:22.2	World Service episode. Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service. We're
0:28.3	your weekly guide to the numbers all around us in the news and in life, and I'm Tim Harford.
0:33.6	Today we're going to talk about Liberia.
0:36.8	In December 1989, Charles Taylor launched his uprising,
0:41.3	and within months had control of most of the country.
0:44.3	Civil war ensued.
0:47.3	For 14 years, the country was beset by civil war.
0:51.3	Around a quarter of a million people were killed.
0:55.1	Nearly half of Liberia's three million citizens are displaced.
1:00.6	Murders, assaults, and sexual violence were widespread.
1:04.9	Many are left on roads and in ditches to rot.
1:08.3	Others die from hunger and disease.
1:13.6	Hundreds are buried with no record or memory.
1:20.6	The war left a horrible scar on the country. But on the program today, we're going to explore some well-meaning efforts to expose what happened and how those efforts led to false statistics
1:26.6	which are being propagated to this day.
1:29.7	In 2004, less than a year after the end of the Civil War, Phyllis Kimber was walking around
1:35.6	refugee camps in the northeast of Liberia, interviewing women who had suffered from sexual violence.
1:41.4	We managed to speak to her down a sketchy phone line from Liberia.
	...

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