In 2003 during the Second Liberian Civil War, Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace forced a meeting with President Charles Taylor and extracted a promise from him to attend peace talks in Ghana[6] to negotiate with the rebels from Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy and Movement for Democracy in Liberia. A delegation of Liberian women went to Ghana to continue to apply pressure on the warring factions during the peace process.[7]
Two hundred women surrounded the room, dressed in white, dominating the conversation. Any time the negotiators tried to leave, the women threatened to take off all of their clothes. Enclosed in the room with the women, the men would try to jump out of the windows to escape their talk. But the women persisted, staging a sit in outside of the Presidential Palace. They blocked all the doors and windows and prevented anyone from leaving the peace talks without a resolution.
The women of Liberia became a political force against violence and against their government. Their actions brought about an agreement during the stalled peace talks. As a result, the women were able to achieve peace in Liberia after a 14-year civil war and later helped bring to power the country's first female head of state, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.[7] When President Ellen Sirleaf first came into office, she made women's rights one of her priorities. Her administration focused on the condition of women in Liberia and their needs.[8]
Some of the changes she made involved: putting more women in office, establishing the Women's Legislative Caucus, a multiparty committee in the House of Representatives that ensures a gender-sensitive approach to the legislature, and creating The Inheritance Act, an act that made rights of inheritance for spouses of statutory and customary marriages. Under President Sirleaf, rape, a prominent weapon of war, was also made punishable with a maximum sentence of life in prison.[8]