 Good morning or good afternoon, depending on which side of the world you are. I'm in Orlando, so it's like 6 a.m. right in Orlando right now. Today we'll be bringing you a presentation on female combatant in Liberia. This research project actually has a co-author that my co-author is also in the U.S. His name is Dr. Daniel Beneni, our alum. The alum includes introduction or research question, our literature review, theoretical framework, the major argument, and our measure of participation. How do we measure participation? Our data, of course, methodology and conclusion. Actually, this research is important in two folds. That's the purpose. One is in the academia and another is policy. From my academic standpoint, there is a contribution to the general literature on political violence, female combatant, and post-conflict recovery. From a policy standpoint, a highlights general role in peacekeeping by encouraging gender participation and women empowerment in a post-conflict society. The research question, our research question is what kind of role do female combatant assume in a post-conflict society? This is very important because usually or conventionally, after the civil war, what you have is a rare class standard DDRR program. That is this armament demobilization and reintegration program. But we are actually a follow-up. What happens? What role, especially female, what role do they assume after the standard DDRR program? Literature. There are tons of literature out there on female participation in arm conflict. But we classify the literature into three groups. This is our own classification. So there may be other classification out there that we did not include. The first group of literature actually argues that female participation reduces the threshold of violence. That is, if you have female in arm conflict as combatant, that conflict is going to produce low level of violence. The second group of literature, there are group of scholars that treat female as victims. They say female is a vulnerable population. So you hear most of the time, while you're in policy, you hear the word women associated with fighting forces or women associated with arm conflict. So this group of scholars actually look at female from a point that they are victimized doing arm conflict. So they are treated as victims of conflict. And the third group of literature, we should call a tire group. This is a tire group of literature. I mean, this group of literature actually treats female as equivalent to their male counterpart. They say if female are given the equivalent, what is weapon, what are the resources in place of in the same situation or circumstances, they have the ability to perform as their male counterpart. That is, female can have the ability probably to rape, for example, like in Sierra Leone and other places that we'll talk about later on. Theory. Our theory actually is in three dimensional, three era. We look at female proud to the conflict in Liberia, and we look at female doing the conflict in Liberia. We look at female after the arm conflict in Liberia. But female doing the conflict in Liberia, actually female play a back seat in Liberia prior to the arm conflict. There were a few exceptions, like Ellen Johnson, Sullivan, maybe Angie Bruce-Rana, they were the exception. But female are actually playing a back seat in the political development in Liberia prior to the arm conflict. That's what we're looking at. The second aspect, which is the second era, we look at is female doing the arm conflict. What that will look at female as combatant. That is, we're looking at female brigades. There were brigades that were exclusively made up of female, and there were female commanders doing the arm conflict in Liberia. We also look at female as non-combatant doing the conflict. There were female, there were a group of women who were non-combatant doing the arm conflict, but these women stood for peace. They launched campaigns that brought peace to Liberia. So we look at that as another approach. And then finally, I will tell you an approach to look at female at the end of the civil war, where this will look at the advent of political parties. There were a lot of political parties created with women in these organizations, remediated after the arm conflict. And we look at women groups, women groups that get towards multi-party elections, civil education, and the whole nine years. That's what we'll look at in our last aspect of our theory. The two photos right here just illustrate what I've explained. The one on my left, this one indicates combating. Female as combating, this one on my right indicates female as non-combatant. The lady here, this lady is called Black Diamond. Black Diamond lay a group of female brigades. They are called Women Ethereal Commandoes. This is a group of female brigades from one of the rebel groups doing the Second Latin Civil War. And this group is known for recapturing the free port of Morrovia from Charles Theta. Black Diamond and her group of female brigades recapture the free port of Morrovia from Charles Theta doing the Second Latin Civil War. The one on my right actually depicts the non-combatant female that geared toward peace in Liberia. The lady here is Lima Bueb. By the way, Lima is a Nobel laureate for peace. Lima had a group of non-combatant female who campaigned for peace in Liberia. This group of women conducted sit-in actions, I mean, demonstrations. I mean, at some point in time, they refused to go home until peace returned to Liberia. But one of their people's achievement during this time was that they negotiated a ceasefire. Yeah, these these people women actually were like mediators because at some point the rebel refused to talk to the government in one of the civil conflict like Charles Theta. And then Lima and her team actually negotiated a truce between the regime and the rebel group. So they were very interesting. Now, predicated on that, this is our argument. We ask you that the experiences of female combatants doing the Liberian Civil War in combination with other wartime role of female activists make them to assume more significant responsibility in post-war Liberia. That's our argument. And our approach, this is our approach to this argument. Our approach is like two levels, qualitative, two qualitative levels. The first one draws on data. We draw our first approach on data. And the second one draws on interview of participants, especially the interview of female combatants and non-combatants. We're talking about political actors, refugee and IDPs. And then the process was hybrid, it was a mix of face to face, Zoom and telephone interview. But doing this, doing an interview data gathering process, we ask series of questions. But one question that is very important to this research has to do with why do women join rebellion? Why female participate doing armed conflict? That question is very important and let you know data always speak for themselves, the data speak for themselves. So what we got from that question, we'll talk to let you know, the data says that women join principally because kept the person of them say, okay, we join the rebellion for protection, they need a protection. And contrary to that, opportunity was the least. I mean, very few ladies said it join the war because it's opportunity, very few. I mean, one percent, but most of them said they needed protection. Of course, you see volunteer, PAE, he fed and the rest of them have all indicators. The case of Liberia, the case of Liberia is very important because of what I just mentioned. And the case of Liberia is important because Liberia produced all these ladies after the armed conflict. This lady, this woman actually, she's there now, by the way, but she's Ruth Sando Perry. She was the interim head of state for Liberia during one of the transitional leaders in Liberia. I mean, she had a Liberia tour, the first election that led Charles Taylor as president after the first armed conflict, Ruth Sando Perry. This woman is the vice president, her name is Joe Howard Taylor. She's the current vice president of Liberia. And the greatest of all is Ellen Johnson-Salim, Ellen Johnson-Salim actually led Liberia for two consecutive terms. I mean, she led Liberia post-conflict elections. I mean, that was Liberia's first major election after the armed conflict and she secured a two term in office. So the case of Liberia is very important because Liberia has managed to produce all these ladies at the end of the armed conflict. In conclusion, to conclude, we said that Liberia women actually secured victory, two wins after the armed conflict. And I know whether you are a scholar or you are in a policy belt, I mean, you'll be wondering why at the time Liberia women were securing two wins for a female candidate, the United States, especially the U.S. at the time, had a female candidate. Why did the U.S. did not secure a win for a female candidate at the same time Liberia women secure a win? I mean, that's an interesting question. That's an interesting food for thought. So wherever you are, whether you're in a policy or whether you're a scholar, in answering that question will lead you to our research because our research answers the question that is why Liberia women were able to secure a two term for a female candidate in the U.S. and other places around the world. I use the U.S. because the U.S. at the time had a female candidate. I know all countries have, but not at the same time. So if you want to answer that question, lead you to our research. Our research finding indicates that Liberia produced all these later because of what we just explained. Another aspect is Liberia women under the leadership of Eileen, the first host of the women leadership conference. It's called the International Colloquia. I don't know what I got it correctly. I mean, that was a group like 900 women that was exclusively based in 2009. They were all on general empowerment and general dimension. And they discussed not an issue of general dimension of climate change. I mean, women empowerment. Also, on an early leadership, we saw a lot of women in cabinets. That's not a form of measurement participation because we measure women participation or female participation after the armed conflict by a cabinet minister. That is how many women in a cabinet position just not a measure we use in our data analysis. I mean, there were also female leadership, I mean, female politicians. And then finally, the women peace and security issue doing Eileen Johnson, Sally Raine. I mean, you have female that were in the security sector. You have female immigration. As we speak to you currently, we have female general in the army. I mean, there's women peace and security. We have female on peacekeeping mission in Mali. So all this issue as a result of Eileen Johnson, Sally, but principally because of female participation doing an armed conflict in Liberia. So I thank you and I will stop here and we'll discuss the rest of those doing the Q&A. Thank you.