SUMMARY

[Note to reader: this Country page primarily contains brief information about state-based violence during the period 1946–1974, and to some extent 1975–1988. For more detailed information on organized violence after 1989, please consult the specific Conflict and Dyad pages available on the left-hand side of this page. These pages contain more detailed information regarding all three categories of organized violence in this country from 1989 and onwards (when applicable), as well as detailed information about state-based violence 1975–1988. The left-hand side menu also contains links to Actor pages for all groups involved in organized violence since 1989 in this country, as well as actors involved in state-based violence 1975–1988.]

The Republic of Liberia has a unique history. Founded in 1847 by freed Black slaves from the Americas, Liberia is one of the few African states never dominated by a foreign colonial power. It was also Africa’s first republic. The state was founded with the help of the government of the USA, whose constitutional model Liberia adopted.

From its foundation, the political life of independent Liberia was dominated by Americo-Liberians (freed slaves or free-born Blacks from the US) whose mother tongue was English, whilst indigenous tribes were marginalized and excluded from state power. The rights of indigenous Liberians were later acknowledged, but the state continued to be dominated by an Americo-Liberian elite. The Americo-Liberian minority governed Liberia through the True Whig party until toppled by a bloody military coup in 1980, when Samuel Doe took power and centered it in his own hands. Doe ethnicized the politics of Liberia further, exacerbating tensions between Liberia's ethnic groups. Armed conflict erupted in 1989, to some extent along ethnic lines, when the Gio and Mano-dominated National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL attacked the Krahn-dominated government which they deemed autocratic.

In addition to the violence surrounding the 1980 coup, two episodes of armed intrastate conflict followed, 1989–1996 and 2000–2003. During the two main phases of armed conflict a number of factions also made use of one-sided violence, such as the NPFL, the two factions of the United Liberian Movement for Democracy (ULIMO - J and ULIMO - K, the Liberian Peace Council (LPC and the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL.

Since 1946 Liberia has experienced the intrastate, non-state and one-sided categories of UCDP organized violence.