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Liberia: Corruption and anti-corruption in the areas of environment, climate change and rule of law

Liberia’s rich reserve of natural resources have often done it more harm than good. Corruption scandals in natural resource management involve governmental and international players. The effects of climate change have dire consequences on national development efforts and could potentially increase the current challenges in alleviating poverty. Rule of law enforcement remains weak, resulting in a culture of impunity. While citizens’ access to pertinent information and meaningful engagement and participation in key decision-making processes still remains a challenge, citizens’ demand for accountability, transparency, and integrity at different levels of society has heightened over the last few years, especially in public services.

26 May 2020
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Liberia: Corruption and anti-corruption in the areas of environment, climate change and rule of law

Main points

  • Despite recent progress, mainly in the passage of key laws and the establishment of integrity institutions, Liberia suffers from endemic corruption, with nepotism, cronyism and political corruption being the main challenges.
  • Natural resource management, especially in the mining and forestry sector, has a history of corruption, crime and conflict. Corruption in this sector is also known to perpetuate poverty among citizens, especially in the affected communities.
  • The effects of climate change may have disastrous socio-economic impacts as a majority of Liberians are engaged in climate reliant activities for their sustenance.
  • While the three branches of government have significant independence, the executive remains dominant. The judiciary suffers from functional deficits and corruption.

Cite this publication


Rahman, K.; (2020) Liberia: Corruption and anti-corruption in the areas of environment, climate change and rule of law. Bergen: U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, Chr. Michelsen Institute (U4 Helpdesk Answer 2020:9)

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About the author

Kaunain Rahman

Kaunain received her Master's in Corruption and Governance from The Centre for the Study of Corruption at the University of Sussex in the UK where her focus area of research was corruption in international business. She works as Research Coordinator at Transparency International (TI), and her main responsibilities lie with the Anti-Corruption Helpdesk.

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All views in this text are the author(s)’, and may differ from the U4 partner agencies’ policies.

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

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