[Freetown, Sierra Leone; September 22. Image via Getty]

Amnesty Secretary General International Bangladeshi-born Iren Khan (C) talks to a woman lying on a bed after she paid a visit to a hospital on September 22, 2009 in Freetown. Irene Khan, will lead a high level mission in Sierra Leone from 18 to 25 September 2009 to launch a campaign to reduce maternal deaths in the country, which has one of the highest maternal death rates in the world. AFP PHOTO / ISSOUF SANOGO (Photo credit should read ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/Getty Images)

[Freetown, Sierra Leone; September 21. Image via Getty]

An aunt of a nine-month-old Maya (R), whose mother died in a taxi at the hospital parking shortly before giving birth reads a document of Amnesty International on September 21, 2009 in Freetown. Irene Khan, secretary general of Amnesty international will lead a high level mission in Sierra Leone from 18 to 25 September 2009 to launch a campaign to reduce maternal deaths in the country, which has one of the highest maternal death rates in the world. AFP PHOTO / ISSOUF SANOGO (Photo credit should read ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/Getty Images)

Taylor, the first African leader to be tried for war crimes, will speak for the first time tomorrow at The Hague in The Netherlands, where the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone is trying him for 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, The New York Times reports.

Taylor is only being tried for crimes committed in Sierra Leone, which neighbors Liberia, between 1996 and 2002, where he allegedly armed and commanded rebel groups that used child soldiers, raped and disfigured civilians, and killed up to 200,000 people. However, it's believed that his policies destroyed the lives of even more people in Liberia, where he first began using bands of child soldiers as a rebel leader in the 1990s and then as president.

When Taylor lost control of the country in 2003 about 15,000 children were fighting in his government forces, and since then they've been struggling to rebuild their lives. The Guardian interviewed dozens of child soldiers who say in addition to being traumatized by they war, they aren't receiving help from the state and are shunned by their communities.

In a video interview, 18-year-old Gloria Sherman, who was 13 when she saw her father and brother brutally murdered and was forced to join the army, explains how conditions were even worse for girls, saying:

For boys they have to do what they are told. If they are told to go somewhere they have to go, but for a girl sometimes we used to be raped not just by one person sometimes two or three and after that we still had to carry weapons to the front lines so girls were maltreated more than the boys.

After two years Gloria managed to escape and went back to her village, Lofa, but she ostracized by the other villagers and labeled a "rebel wife." "They say we are bad girls because of what we did in the war and what we do now," Gloria said. "But they took me and I had no choice." Now she says she can only survive by prostituting herself, and is often paid in food, sanitary napkins, or soap.

Researchers from Plan, an international children's organization which runs support programs for former child soldiers in Liberia and Sierra Leone, found that 70% of girls and 80% of the boys who were once child soldiers are at risk for suicide and 30% have already tried to kill themselves. Gloria says:

When I close my eyes, all I can see is the war. I often think about taking my own life. It would have been better if I'd died in the war, but I am still alive and I hope one day something will be different and I will be a good person.

Ninety-one witnesses have testified about the atrocities committed in Sierra Leone since the trial began in January 2008, but in his opening statement on Monday, defense attorney Courtenay Griffiths said Taylor wasn't responsible, AFP reports. Griffiths said, "Taylor was not an African Napoleon bent on taking over the sub-region. He had a front line role in the conflict as a broker of peace." Taylor's testimony is expected to last for six to eight weeks and there probably won't be a final verdict for another year.

War Crimes Trial To Hear From Ex-Liberia President [The New York Times]
Agony Without End For Liberia's Child Soldiers [The Guardian]
Video: Girl Soldiers: Charles Taylor's Legacy [The Guardian]
Liberia's Taylor 'Was Peace Broker': Lawyer [AFP]

So far, JR has shot in Kenya, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the favela of Morro da Providência, Brazil for the project he calls "Women Are Heroes." He then sticks his pictures to the sides of buses, trains, buildings, and pavement, transforming the towns in which these women live into testaments to their strength and forbearance. Part art, part advocacy campaign, JR collaborates with Doctors Without Borders. And all the images the self-taught photographer captures with his 28mm camera are transfixing.

Pictures of the sites are then included in JR's exhibits — last year, he hit up the Tate Modern in London, and this year he'll be showing in Paris — in what the artist says is his attempt to show that women around the world are all connected.

Previously, the artist worked on a project called Face 2 Face, where he took portraits of Israelis and Palestinians, and posted them on opposite sides of the effective borders.

Intended to underscore the similarities between the two groups of people, the project spawned a number of international exhibitions, and a book.

Like Banksy with a social conscience to match his street-art trickster wiles, JR plans to work more on Women Are Heroes by traveling to countries including India, Laos and Cambodia this year. We wish him well.

Women Are Heroes [Official Site]
Face 2 Face [Official Site]
JR-Art [Official Site]

The Washington Post article focuses (in, it must be said, classic first-world style) on uniquely Sierra Leonean aspects of Marah's plight. The doctor who finally performs her C-section is an ophthalmologist, not an obstetrician, because of the scarcity of doctors in Marah's remote area. The article mentions bugs in the operating room not once, but twice. Marah's husband has to run out and buy her a catheter, and other operations have apparently been delayed while husbands buy rubber gloves for the doctors. Okay, we get it, Sierra Leone is a backward country where hygiene is poor and human life takes a backseat to money. Here in, the U.S., women give birth to healthy babies in nice hospitals full of flowers. Right? Right?

Seriously, the Post article offers a heart-wrenching look at a preventable death, and rightly draws our attention to the country with the highest maternal mortality rate in the world. But let's not forget that the US ranks worst among industrialized nations in maternal mortality, or that black women in the US die in childbirth at four times the rate of whites. Marah's story is worse than that of many American women, but not all, and it's worth remembering that, when it comes to maternal mortality, our "developed" country may not have come as far as we think.

In Sierra Leone, Every Pregnancy Is A 'Chance of Dying' [Washington Post]

Earlier:
Pregnant Women In Poverty Often Die Needlessly
Midwife Nurses in Mozambique Fight Maternal Mortality

Another proponent of FGC, Dr. Richard Shweder, says that Westerners conveniently ignore the fact that they produce their own kinds of genital mutilation in the form of the vaginal rejuvenation of women and circumcision for boys. Shweder says that, "'First World' feminist issues and political correctness and activism have triumphed over the critical assessment of evidence." Ahmadu also has an essay called "Ain't I a woman too?: challenging myths of sexual dysfunction in circumcised women", where she insists that women who have undergone FGC still experience orgasm and a great deal of sexual pleasure.

I asked a friend who has lived in Liberia and works for a post-conflict justice association what she thinks about FGC, and she points out that "There are lots of versions of the procedure. The most severe being cut off the clit, the inner labia, and SEW CLOSED the vaginal hole." That sounds like straight abuse to me. But according to my friend, some modified versions only involve pricking the clitoris. "It's about degrees and when the practice, in its entirety is accepted, there are no ways to moderate the procedure."

What do you think? Is the pro-FGC argument just cultural relativism? Or is the issue more nuanced than Westerners have realized?

A New Debate On Female Circumcision [New York Times]
Ain't I A Woman Too?: Challenging Myths Of Sexual Dysfunction In Circumcised Women. [University of Chicago]