“Her Voice Liberia” Calls on Bea Mountain to Support Affected Communities

Her Voice Liberia Executive Director, Atty Margret Nigba  in meeting with women of the affected communities in Grand Cape Mounty County

The Executive Director for Her Voice, Atty Margret Nigba,  said based on the recent incident with the multinational corporation, Bea Mountain Mining Corporation (BMMC), whose reported activities resulted in a chemical spill of cyanide into the Mafa River, one of the main water sources for communities in Grand Cape Mount County, there is a need for the company to provide relief items and other sexual reproductive goods and services urgently to members of the community.

 Her Voice is a women-led organization involved in providing free legal services to women and girls in marginalized and underserved communities in rural areas.

The organization's executive director  has called on duty bearers to act rightly to restore the rights and dignity of the women in the affected communities who were affected by the chemical spill.

Atty Nigba said the government needs to undertake practical responses to Gender-based violence and sexual reproductive health and rights for women in concession agreements through collaborative efforts.

“This has a detrimental impact, including cutting off the basic human right of access to clean and safe water,” Nigba said in a release issued recently. . 

She described the actions of the company as amounting to violations of Article 16.2 and Article 25.1 of the Concession Agreement on Environmental Protection and Water Use. Both provisions of the law seek  reasonable preventative, corrective measures to limit pollution or contamination of streams, water bodies, and dry land surfaces.

However, despite the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declaring Marvoe Creek and the Mafa River safe and free from all forms of contamination and that Bea Mountain cannot be blamed for the pollution of the waters, the women's group said the environmental law and the international and other legal instruments call for water supply for communities during pollution and not to deprive any person.

Nigba said Liberia is a partner of the African Platform for Human Rights and Governance, which strongly condemned these actions.

She called on the EPA to hold the company’s management and other multinational companies that are engaging in similar exploitative extractive activities to the highest standard of the law.

The situation, according to the release, has led to a lack of water and sanitation, thereby affecting households as women and girls are unable to cook for their families, which is their expected gender role and responsibility in rural Liberia. 

“This results in domestic violence as the women are unable to meet their family duties." Due to the lack of sanitation, women and girls are forced to engage in exploitative activities to keep clean during their menses, plunging an already vulnerable constituency into menstrual poverty,” she noted in the statement.

The group said chemical pollution is also causing environmental degradation, including the deaths of aquatic species, and these have a direct correlation with disruptions in reproductive, maternal, child, and adolescent health, which will negatively impact the country’s morbidity and mortality rates. 

“We want to remind the EPA that national and international laws that Liberia is party to on human rights are in fact legally binding and not suggestive." The agency’s response to the crisis, which pleaded with the company to right their wrongs, is inadequate and a betrayal to the people and the laws of the country, "the group said."

Meanwhile, the group in the release called on the executive and legislative to review all concession agreements and make amendments to become gender sensitive.

The group said the objective of the amendment of the law is to make concessionaires set up SGBV emergency humanitarian response mechanisms in their concession areas for women during health or environmental crises.