The Political Leader of the Liberia People’s Party (LPP), Cllr. Tiawan Saye Gongloe has delivered a compelling message commemorating the 77th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), stating that Liberia is falling short of its promise to the Declaration. In a statement issued December 10, 2025, Cllr Gongloe said the UDHR remains one of humanity’s greatest moral achievements, setting a common standard for dignity, freedom, equality, and justice for all persons everywhere, with Liberia proudly standing among the 48 nations that voted in favor of the UDHR.
He stated that Liberia was created as a refuge from oppression, a nation meant to ensure that all human beings could enjoy the rights given by God and recognized by reason and justice. Therefore, its support for the UDHR was not accidental. According to him, the Declaration of Rights in the 1847 Liberian Constitution—especially Article I—proclaimed freedoms that would later appear in the UDHR: equality, liberty, property, freedom of conscience, due process, habeas corpus, trial by jury, freedom of the press, the right to reform or alter government, and protection against arbitrary power. “Yet Liberia’s lived history has been the opposite of this promise.”
Instead of becoming a refuge for the oppressed, Gongloe noted that the country has often produced refugees—its own sons and daughters fleeing persecution, armed conflict, fear, intimidation, and bad governance. “Contrary to being a haven for those in danger, Liberia has been a refugee-producing country, driven by military coups, violent civil conflicts, systemic corruption, high levels of intolerance, denial of fundamental rights, lack of respect for the rule of law, abuse of public office, the selling of Liberian laborers into forced work on Fernando Po, forced labor on plantations owned by government officials and foreign corporations, the killing of a president and cabinet ministers for corruption, followed by even more corruption, and the painful cycle in which we fight civil war because of bad governance, then repeat the same bad governance once in power.
“What kind of country continues to betray the very promise that gave it life? We were founded as a human rights sanctuary, yet we have too often become a place of fear, repression, and broken trust. This betrayal continues even today. The Weah Government sent back a Sierra Leonean who sought refuge in Liberia, and the Boakai Government recently returned a Guinean who clearly feared death in his country.” Gongloe said.
The LPP Political Leader said both actions violated the Refugee Convention and multiple human rights treaties, adding that most recently, the Speaker of the House threatened to arrest journalists despite the Kamara A. Kamara Act of 2018, which protects press freedom. “As someone who speaks not only as an award-winning human rights defender but also as a victim of human rights abuse, I feel these failures personally. I know from lived experience what it means when a government violates human dignity. That is why I must speak,” he said.
The seasoned Liberian lawyer called on the Government to honor all core international human rights instruments, especially the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Refugee Convention, and the Constitution of Liberia, particularly Articles 11 to 22.
These instruments, Gongloe indicated, are not foreign impositions; they are consistent with Liberia’s founding DNA; they reflect who the people were meant to be.
“Liberia will never develop if it continues to send refugees back to danger, silence journalists, tolerate corruption, ignore constitutional rights, and betray the promise of 1847. Development cannot grow where human rights are abused. Peace cannot stand where justice is denied. National progress cannot exist without the rule of law,” the PLP Political leader mentioned.
