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Citizens’ Bureau

Monrovia, Liberia
Joined February 2019

We work in Liberia training local citizens to mediate into civil disputes. These mediators resolve conflict before it reaches the point of violence or have to be taken to the police or the court.

Presence in: Liberia
Focus: Generalist Legal Services, Governance, Accountability & Transparency, Peace-building & Transitional Justice

The Citizens’ Bureau is a Community Base Organization (CBO) in Liberia. The bureau, is involved with building the rule of law, promoting civil police relations and mediation in Liberia. The organization was founded on May 8, 2009 with initial activities in sanitation and cleaning up campaigns targeting school campuses whilst advocating to authorities for the promotion of good governance.

In 2013, the Citizens’ Bureau begin its Community Justice Initiative realizing that issue with justice was alarming as most people could not access the formal justice system for the redress of grievances given financial constraints and bribery associated with the system. The lack of affordability, accessibility and timeliness of the formal justice system was seen as a recipe for potential conflict in low income and densely populated urban slum communities. Denying citizens justice living below a dollar daily because they do not have finances  to pay official of the formal justice system is totally unacceptable and this led to the need to engage citizens in low income communities as they embraced the idea to have a Team of informal justice actors hear into misunderstandings occurring in their neighborhood and this constituted the bulk of our work.

In 2014 with support from our partner the Accountability Lab, we established a team in Logan Town in addition to West Point. Whilst in 2018 with financial support from the UNDP the Accountability Lab in conjunction with the Citizens’ Bureau have replicated the  community justice teams in Bassa Community and Kokoyah Road in Margibi and Bong Counties respectively. These Community Justice Teams in 10 months cumulatively resolved 429 disputes of which 65 were tracked or referred by the formal justice system to the CJT for resolution because they were not criminal in nature. Read and watch a video here