GANTA, Nimba – The Carter Center, under its Access to Justice Program, has concluded a two-day training for Chiefs and Elders of Nimba County, educating them on how to respond to judiciary matters in their various communities.

The two-day event, held by The Carter Center, was centered on citizenship, the citizens’ fundamental rights, and the role of traditional leaders in maintaining peace and security in Liberia as the 2017 election approaches. Other topics covered included election law and the 2017 general and presidential election processes and procedure, gender issues, the structure of the Judiciary System of Liberia, the Criminal Justice System of Liberia, and conflict resolution.

Following the two-day event with the traditional leaders, Robert Gbarbea, the senior legal associate and deputy chief of party of the Carter Center, provided more details to the press about the training.

“My purpose here in Ganta is to conduct a series of trainings – we having two days of training for traditional leaders. We [are] having two days of training for the women leaders and we’re having two days of training for youths,” Gbarbea said.

“We trained them in several aspects,” he said, “We have somebody coming from the [National] Election Commission to present to them. We also had, yesterday, the county attorney and even ourselves, we’ve been training them on the Constitution, the process in the Court System of the Country and also the Justice System.”

Gbarboe said as interactive as the training was, the Carter Center was able to identify some of the common issues that always confronts the Chiefs and Elders. He said the training is necessary to deal with these issues.

“This is a learning exercise where we bring the chiefs and elders together to train them in the various aspect of the law so that they can be able to impact their communities positively,” he added, “and as they go back, they will be able to apply what they learned in some small measure to help their communities.”

One of those who participated in the training was Zaye Bruce, a zone chief in Nimba’s Wee-Gbeh Administrative District Two. She expressed her gratitude to the Carter Center for the training and promised to turn a new page.

“I think I will be grateful to the Carter Center because they are really educating us,” she said. “We talked about the constitution of Liberia and some of the things in the constitution – this constitution is the big law book of Liberia.

When I go back, I will gather my community people together and inform them that most of the things we’ve been doing were not right. But this time, since we are informed, we will take the right procedure.”

Training conducted by the Carter Center is expected to continue in Ganta with two days each for women groups’ leaders and youths.

Featured photo by Arrington Ballah