With the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) submissions of Liberia and Sierra Leone due in April and September 2025 respectively, Edmund Rice International (ERI) organized a series of workshops in March 2025 to support the Edmund Rice network in preparing their submissions. These workshops, held in Freetown and Bo in Sierra Leone, and in Gbarnga, Liberia, aimed to empower participants to hold their governments accountable for their human rights records.
The first workshop took place on 6–7 March at the Hamilton Retreat Centre in Freetown, drawing 26 participants, including Brothers and collaborators from seven ministries in Sierra Leone and one in Liberia.
The second workshop was held on 18–19 March at the Senan Kerrigan Formation Centre in Bo, and brought together 20 participants, including members of the Diocesan Justice, Peace and Human Rights Commission, secondary school principals, Diocesan Safeguarding Officers, Christian Brother postulants, and local police officers.
Facilitated by Br. Tino D’Abreu from ERI, the workshops focused on enhancing understanding of human rights and how UN human rights mechanisms—especially the UPR—can be used to advocate for accountability. Through a combination of presentations and group discussions, participants identified key human rights concerns based on their ministry experiences and drafted recommendations to address these issues.
A key outcome of the workshops was the development of a ‘zero’ draft, consolidating the identified issues and proposed recommendations for both Sierra Leone and Liberia. In Sierra Leone, core groups were formed in Freetown and Bo to continue refining the draft. The next steps involve sharing the draft with ministry beneficiaries and partners for input, incorporating their feedback, and finalizing the document with ERI before submitting it to the UN in September 2025. Sierra Leone’s UPR is scheduled for May 2026.
For Liberia, with the UPR submission deadline approaching in early April, Tino returned to Liberia with the six participants from Gbarnga who attended the Freetown workshop. Over the following week, he conducted awareness sessions with 12th grade students and staff at St. Martin’s Catholic High School and with seminarians at St. Paul’s Major Seminary in Gbarnga. These sessions helped uncover key human rights issues to be included in the submission.
Over the next two weeks, the Liberia core group, with Tino’s support, finalized the submission. Their recommendations addressed the Right to Quality Education, Clean Water and Sanitation, Environmental Protection, Gender Equality, the prevention of Gender-Based Violence, and the abolition of the Death Penalty. The ERI submission, co-sponsored by VIVAT International, was submitted on 7 April 2025. Liberia is scheduled for its UPR before the Human Rights Council in Geneva on 3 November 2025.
Feedback from two workshop participants:
- ‘The workshop was an eye-opener. I never knew that the UN holds States accountable for their human rights record.’
- ‘I feel empowered with the knowledge I gained and the opportunity to contribute to a UPR submission.’