This report presents findings from the baseline assessment
of International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) Girl Empower
(GE) program in Nimba County, Liberia. GE seeks to
help 13 to 14 year-old girls make healthy life choices and
decrease their risk of sexual abuse. The program centers on
weekly meetings between girls and trained local mentors,
during which the girls learn about life skills and financial
literacy. GE also holds monthly discussion groups for participants’
caregivers, and trains local health and psychosocial
care providers on how to improve and expand services for
survivors of gender-based violence. This baseline report is
part of a cluster-randomized controlled trial, which aims
to assess the program’s impact 24 months after baseline.
21 percent of the baseline sample of 13–14 year-old
females reported having previously had sex. Within this
group, 29 percent indicated that their first sexual act was nonconsensual.
Among all GE girls, 37 percent reported having
experienced sexual violence of some type, such as being physically
forced to have sex, non-physically pressured (coerced/
persuaded) to have sex, someone unsuccessfully attempting
to have sex with them, and being touched in a sexual way.
The levels of nonconsensual first sex and any experience
of nonconsensual sex are at the high end of the range
reported by the UNICEF Violence against Children Surveys
(VACS) in Swaziland, Tanzania, Kenya and Zimbabwe.
As the VACS reporting is for (a variety of) age ranges, each
of which is higher than that in this study, the levels of
sexual violence reported here are very high in comparison