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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 March 2022
Ruth Perry ends Liberia's civil war
Mother of warlords
She did not look like a tough politician, more like a kind grandmother: an elderly woman with a colourful headscarf and twinkling eyes behind the glasses. But in 1996, after 17 years of conflict and seven years of war, Ruth Sando Perry was assigned the task of bringing peace to Liberia and organising the elections of a legislature and a president. As Ruth Sando Perry told me when I met her in Oslo in 1999:
“Women wanted peace in Liberia. We wanted fighting to stop. Women started forming themselves into groups to talk about peace in 1992 before elections. We held peaceful marches – Christian, Moslem, rural, women from all over. A widowed mother of seven heading a household with 15 children, I was not politically active after the civil war broke out in 1989. I was doing my business at home in Paynesville and tried to survive as best I could with my children and the family.”
From the beginning of the war, women were active in calling for peace in public meetings, and they required to be heard at peace conferences. It took time before this was accepted, but in August 1996, a women's delegation was invited to attend the Abuja peace conference organised by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Ruth Perry explained to me that she was willing to go because women in the country wanted peace. But she did not know that she was going to play a special role before a Nigerian ambassador suddenly arrived at her hotel with a car to take her to the conference. She had to dress in a hurry, and before she knew it, she found herself in front of the Council of State of the transitional government. And they asked her to take over as chairwoman of the Council of State. The warlords said to her: ‘As a mother. Take us as your children, and we will cooperate.’
Ruth Perry admitted that she experienced some trepidation. But she accepted the task:
“I thought that the good Lord had made his choice, and I would continue to pray for guidance. So I replied: ‘Some mothers are overbearing and some are strict. I belong to the last. I love my children, but I discipline them. If the war shall end, you have to cooperate with me’.” (interview, 1999)
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