The legacy of Ma Ellen

摘要

BY THE time its stop-start civil war ended in 2003, Liberia had all but collapsed. Fourteen years of barbaric fighting had killed some 250,000 people, or roughly 8% of the population. Many more Liberians were displaced by the violence. The economy had shrunk by 90%. Schools, hospitals and government buildings lay in ruins. Children ate tree bark to survive. This was the catastrophe that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf inherited when she was elected president in 2005.