A House with Two Rooms - The Advocates for Human Rights

actually moved out of state. I know a family that left a job because [one member] ran into another
person that actually killed somebody in her sight.” 532 Victims generally do not report these encounters,
leading to an accountability vacuum. 533 Another Liberian professional living in Minnesota recounted
his encounter with a perpetrator in a newspaper interview: “[w]hen he was least expecting it – at a
peaceful Liberian community meeting in Minnesota – he saw the man who, years earlier, had tortured
him…After the confrontation years later in Minnesota, [the] torturer apologized. But…he’s not ready
to forgive.” 534
Family-Level Impact
The war has also severely affected families. Because of deaths of family members during the war and
the vagaries of immigration policy, roles within Liberian families have been forced to change. “The
division of families occurs in several ways. Often families were divided during the war. Also, it costs
a lot to bring a whole family to the United States. Many times one person will come to work with the
hope that they can later pay to have the whole family arrive.” 535
Some youth are in the diaspora with no adult members of their families or with no other family
members at all. Both during the conflict and now in the diaspora, “kids have to grow up fast…
they’re becoming breadwinners.” 536 Accordingly, they are less willing to respect elders and traditional
structures, when they view themselves as independent of them. 537 This view is a major change from the
Liberian extended family system in which aunts and uncles have the same power and responsibilities
as parents and in which there is virtually no distinction between cousins, half-siblings, step-siblings,
foster-siblings – all are brothers and sisters. 538
One interviewee in Minnesota noted that:
When I grew up…my parents were there, we didn’t have war, we had
stable community, day-in, day-out…structure was there, rules are the same,
discipline, respect, that kind of thing. But all of that was taken away and
these kids were just thrown from one place to another, some of them don’t
have any parent around, so in some families, some homes, they don’t have
any real structure. They’re just there, existing. 539
Another interviewee in Providence expressed the concern that this lack of structure is “damaging the
fabric of Liberian society.” 540
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