Recommendations from economic conference finalised

Liberia’s security forces need to be reorganised to ensure greater professionalism, and a comprehensive national policy on reconciliation should be drawn up, participants in a conference held in Monrovia on the national economy said in a statement released on Thursday. The statement summarised the findings of the 4-6 November conference in the areas of governance, economic and financial management and human resource development. Other recommendations relate to strengthening the independence and integrity of the judiciary, doing more to enhance transparency and accountability in all domains of governance, greater empowerment of women, and the formulation of a comprehensive policy on youth and children. The conference was organised by the Center for Democratic Empowerment (CEDE) with the support of the Carter Centre. It brought together representatives of the government, private sector, civil society and the international community. Participants also made several recommendations relating to economic and financial management. They called, for example, for the preparation of an updated reconstruction programme with rigorous safeguards to protect resource allocation. The civil service should also be restructured to rationalise the number of independent ministries and agencies, they added in their final statement. Steps should be taken to reverse the brain drain and enhance the capacity of Liberia’s education system to develop its human resources, the participants urged.