Liberia: Men, Tradition Denying Women’s Rights to Land

May 16, 2025 | Esau Farr and Harry Browne
Front Page Africa
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JORPOLU CLAN, Bong County – In 2018, Liberia passed the Land Rights Act. The historic legislation grants communities and women customary ownership of ancestral land, putting an end to decades of deprivation.

About seven years on, men who use age-old traditional beliefs still deny their female relatives access to land. The DayLight interviewed half a dozen women in the Bong County clan of Jorpolu in the Zota-Panta District with heart-wrenching experiences.

“It is difficult for many women, including me, to engage family members about the farmland issue. This place is interior and people can sometimes use tradition to get rid of you,” says Rebecca Gbartawee, a Worta resident.

“As a woman, if you continue, something may happen to you, or they will think that you want to use traditional means to get the land from them.”