Carter Center urges women to utilize FOI

Carter Center Project Assistant, Madam Gbani N. Colliee, urges women to stand up and make use of the Freedom of Information law of Liberia. The law was enacted few years ago by the Sirleaf administration as part of its commitment to upholding free speech and press freedom in Liberia.

Speaking to journalists recently at the end of a FOI workshop here, she says most women are afraid to seek inquiry when something happens, because often men misinterpret them, saying, “Many at times when women go in search of information, some men can start talking that they have gone to look for man.”

Madam Colliee encourages Liberia women to get at the frontline and start to make use of the Freedom of Information law, noting that women these days still have that cultural knowledge that men should always be in the frontline, while they sit in the back and do domestic work.

She observes that women lack self-confidence to step out where their male counterparts are to make inquiry, challenging women to be a part of every process that men are involved, stressing that there is nothing a man can do and a woman cannot do.

She also pleads with men that women equally have rights like them, so they should stop shying women away whenever they go to seek information. Madam Gbani continues that men should stop the notion that women go to look for man whenever they appear to seek information, saying that men should feel free to talk to women so that they can be encouraged to get information whenever they want it.

“It’s everybody’s right to make use of the FOI law, the women should put the pride away and have the courage to step out and exercise their rights”, she  concludes.

By Ethel A. Tweh-Editing by Jonathan Browne