The national orator of Liberia’s 172nd Independence Day celebrations, Madam Laymah Gbowee, has identified transparency, truth, equality and love for country above self as collective values that we will live by and teach to the next generation. These values, she advised, will put Liberians on the journey of togetherness and make us stronger.
Delivering her Independence Day national oration on the topic “Together We Are Stronger” at the Samuel Kanyon Doe Sports Complex in Paynesville, Madam Gbowee stressed the need for the nation to be united, claiming that “unity has evaded us…” She further said “we are at a place in our national life where it is very important for us to begin to speak the language of unity; this language of unity and togetherness is a language that we have used from the founding of this nation.”
“The question that kept coming to my mind is: for a nation that has so many ways of preaching togetherness and so many symbols of national unity, why do we need to focus on this now and why do we find ourselves drifting further and further away from the dreams of our founding fathers and mothers? Why has unity evaded us? Why is unity like a mist in this land, we preach it, we proclaim it but we unfortunately cannot hold on it?”
The national orator then wondered: “how can we be stronger together when our country is divided in three parts – the Ruling Position, the Opposition and the No Position – and each comes with rhetoric and hate messages that are worse than the war rhetoric?”
She narrowed in on Liberia’s age-old cause for our lack of unity and development: “For generations, we have lived in this vicious cycle of Opposition and Ruling Position. When Opposition becomes Ruling Position, too often they adopt the same practices that they used to critique. When the roles shift, the situation remains the same or are exacerbated.
“While Ruling Position and Opposition continue to argue about who is right, our country is gripped by many vices. Our young people are feeling hopeless. Drug addiction has taken over Liberia. Education is perceived as a mess by both sides of the divide. While Ruling Position and Opposition go at each other’s throats, our children’s futures are being mortgaged, natural resources are sold to those who have no development agenda for the Republic of Liberia. While these groups argue about ideology, Liberian women are raped, abused, maimed with no form of justice. Our country continues to lag behind our neighbors while these groups clash.”
Madam Laymah Gbowee was, along with Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Tawakkul Karman, awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.
“Too many wrongs are never corrected and are allowed to continue from one regime to the other.”
As a way forward, Madam Gbowee said: “Fellow Liberians, it is time we sit individually and collectively and do some serious soul searching on where we want to go as a nation. For us to be stronger together, we must agree on a set of collective values that we will live by and teach to the next generation. Values that will guide our national politics as well as our everyday life. The Bible says “…two cannot walk together unless they agree”. It will be near to impossible for us to be stronger together if we have not agreed on the values of the journey of togetherness.”
And she identified those values as: “transparency, truth, equality and love for country above self”.
On Transparency, the national orator said: the fight against corruption is not in words, it is in action. You must walk your talk…”
On Truth, she said that truth has evaded us as a nation, stating further: “We lie to gain prominence, to gain positions of authority. Let us stop lying. Truth will bring unity. From generation to generation, our leaders have been fooled by religious and traditional leaders. Bishops have become partisans. Pastors and Imams have become praise singers. Traditional leaders repeatedly twist our cultural practices to please a powerful few, giving unmerited traditional titles. It’s time for us to bring truth back into the national history.”
The third value she spoke on was Equality. The orator maintained that Liberia is not a political party but that it is a nation for all Liberians. “In order for us to move forward together, we must recognize that men as well as women, the blind, the physically challenged, and youth groups are equal parts of the society.”
She said “it is not acceptable for us to have only two women in cabinet. I believe that it is high time that the women who fought through tears and blood from the founding of this country to the bringing of peace to this nation should be given positions of leadership based on their competence. She called on the President, who she claimed is “a self-declared feminist-in-chief…, “to walk your talk. It’s time to stop the old boy’s network.”
The final value she spoke on was Love for country above self. She said: “Liberia is our ‘Land of liberty’. The reality is that despite our differences, this is our home and we share a common duty to move Liberia forward by taking responsibility as civilians and not expecting government to take on the tasks that are in our own hands.”
“A typical example could be taxi drivers putting bags in their cars to help passengers stop throwing rubbish in the streets. We, all 4.5 million of us, are called to use our unique gifts and talents in service of Mother Liberia.”
In closing, the Independence Day Orator gave a touching example of how the broom is a common symbol of unity in Liberia. “A broom isn’t a broom before its tied together. Before being bound together, a broom is a collection of straws scattered with no defined purpose. The scattered straws remind me of the current state of three groups- the No Position, the Opposition and the Ruling Position.
“When the groups are separated and scattered from one another we are unable to work together to meet our common goals. We cannot be coordinated and we move in opposite directions from one another. To become a broom that cleans the house, the hundreds of tiny straws need to be held firmly together with a very strong cord at the top. Similarly, when the three groups come together, united by the cord of our common values: transparency, truth, equality and love for country, we turn an unproductive situation, an unproductive nation around.
“When the three groups come together in service of our nation, we will have true peace. Let us remember that peace is not the absence of war, but the presence of the conditions that gives each person a purpose. Peace is all we have standing between our country’s development or sliding back. To have peace, to really have sustainable peace, as it is said in our national anthem, we must unite together through our common values and collective efforts. For we are truly stronger together.”
About Leymah Roberta Gbowee
Leymah Roberta Gbowee, born on 1 February 1972, is a Liberian peace activist responsible for leading a women’s nonviolent peace movement, Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace that helped bring an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. Her efforts to end the war, along with her collaborator Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, helped usher in a period of peace and enabled a free election in 2005 that Sirleaf won. She, along with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Tawakkul Karman, were awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”
She married Jay Fatormah in early 2014 in St. Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University in New York City, and is mother to the following children: Jaydyn Thelma Abigail, Amber, Nicole, Lucia, Arthur, Joshua Mensah
Awards won include: Nobel Peace Prize, Gruber Prize for Women’s Rights, Community of Christ International Peace Award
Education and training
• Associate of Arts degree in social work (2001) from Mother Patern College of Health Sciences in Monrovia, Liberia.
• Master of Arts in Conflict Transformation (2007) from Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia
• Certifications: Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding Training at the United Nations Institute for Training, the Healing Victims of War Trauma Center in Cameroon, and Non-Violent Peace Education in Liberia
Career
Leymah Roberta Gbowee is the founder and president of Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa, founded in 2012 and based in Monrovia, which provides educational and leadership opportunities to girls, women and the youth in Liberia.
In addition, Gbowee is the former executive director of the Women Peace and Security Network Africa, based in Accra, Ghana, which builds relationships across the West African sub-region in support of women’s capacity to prevent, avert, and end conflicts. She is a founding member and former coordinator of the Women in Peacebuilding Program/West African Network for Peacebuilding (WIPNET/WANEP). She also served as the commissioner-designate for the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission. For the 2013–2015 academic years, she is a Distinguished Fellow in Social Justice at Barnard College of Columbia University. In 2013, she became an Oxfam Global Ambassador.