Former grantee influences national policy
Rescue Alternative Liberia (RAL) in Liberia received four grants from the Norwegian Human Rights Fund in the period 2002 - 2006. In a recent visit to Liberia, the NHRF met with the organisation to learn about their current work.
The organisation Rescue Alternative Liberia (RAL) received four grants from the NHRF in the period 2002 - 2006. Since the NHRF support ended, RAL has consolidated its position as a major Liberian civil society organisations within the area of anti-torture and prisoners' rights. RAL is currently administrating large grants provided by UN agencies and other international donors, and recently partnered with Liberian legislators to submit a ground-breaking anti-torture bill to the Legislature for enactment into law. According to Executive Director Jarwlee Tweh Geegbe, the NHRF grants provided the base for the establishment of RAL as an influential actor in Liberia;
“The grants from the NHRF took us a long way. We proved ourselves to be a local civil society organisation that could be trusted and made an impact. Without NHRF assistance, we would never have achieved our current status“
Identifying and supporting young, dedicated human rights organisations with great potential is an objective for the NHRF. There are few other sources of income for organisations at this level, as was the case for RAL. As such, the evolution of RAL represents a success story of the NHRF's approach. With NHRF assistance, the organisation successfully lobbied the Liberian Government to ratify the UN Convention Against Torture in 2004, making Liberia the first African signatory and the fifth country in the world to ratify the agreement. Geegbe says it was RAL's success in this campaign that attracted attention;
“When we succeeded in petitioning the Government to ratify the Convention, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the United Nations Mission to Liberia (UNMIL) called upon us and asked us to do the same thing with other documents and agreements that had been sitting in the Parliament for years without conclusion. With assistance from these agencies, we continued our work and eventually succeeded in getting additional documents and agreements ratified”
Here, Executive Director Jarwlee Tweh Geegbe explains how RAL used the first grant from the NHRF: