An Open Editorial to the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection — and to Minister Gbeme Horace Kollie
JOURNALRAGE EDITORIAL BOARD · MONROVIA, LIBERIA · JUNE 2026
We had prepared a different editorial.
We had written about silence. About negligence. About a ministry that had perhaps not noticed what was arriving in its compound. We had given the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection the benefit of the doubt — the assumption that this was an institution caught unaware, overwhelmed, insufficiently briefed on what the Strengthening Families Conference actually is and what it actually does.
Then we saw the banner.
The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection — the institution mandated by Act of the National Legislature to protect vulnerable women, combat gender-based violence, and advance the rights of Liberia’s most marginalized — has placed its official logo on the promotional materials of the 8th Strengthening Families Conference as a co-sponsor.
This is no longer about silence. This is about endorsement. And journalRAGE is putting it on the record.
WHAT THE MINISTRY HAS CO-SPONSORED
We must be precise about what the Ministry of Gender’s logo now appears on.
The 8th Strengthening Families Conference is organized, funded, and directed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. This institution formally barred Black men and women from its temples and priesthood for 126 years, from 1852 to 1978. It justified that exclusion with theology that taught that Black people were cursed, less valiant in their premortal existence, spiritually inferior to white members of the same faith. It only repudiated that theology in 2013. It has never formally apologized.
Its foundational doctrine on the family — the 1995 Family Proclamation, confirmed as current church doctrine — states that by divine design, fathers are to preside over families and that mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. It defines valid families as those built around a man, a woman, and children born within matrimony. It has no theological category for the single mother. No framework for the widow. No space for the woman-headed household.
This is the institution whose conference banner now carries the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection’s official logo.
And the consequences of that co-sponsorship are not theoretical. The same conference network preceded the passage of life imprisonment legislation in Uganda, three-year prison sentences in Ghana, and a comprehensive anti-family-diversity bill in Nigeria. The Inter-Religious Council of Liberia has now endorsed the conference, asserting that it found no connection between the gathering and religious or doctrinal instruction. The conference is proceeding. The bill is on the floor of the House. The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection has its logo on the banner.
THE SPECIFIC BETRAYAL THIS REPRESENTS
In the first quarter of 2025, the Ministry’s 116 GBV Call Center — situated at the Ministry itself — received 166 calls from 13 counties. Many of those calls came from single mothers, widows, women who left violent marriages, women raising their children without the presiding authority of a man. Under the LDS Family Proclamation whose conference the Ministry has now co-sponsored, those women’s families are theologically deficient.
The Ministry’s logo on that banner says to those women: your government endorses the institution that considers your family incomplete.
The Ministry recently launched the Liberia Spotlight Initiative 2.0, focused specifically on strengthening protection systems against gender-based violence and harmful traditional practices, and economically empowering women to ensure meaningful participation in development processes. The Strengthening Families Conference is designed to normalize the opposite — a doctrine that returns women to the domestic sphere, under male presiding authority, as a matter of divine design.
The Ministry’s logo on that banner says to the EU and UN partners who funded the Spotlight Initiative: we are simultaneously fighting harmful patriarchal norms and co-sponsoring a conference whose doctrine is built on them.
As of May 2025, 9,996 beneficiary households have been enrolled in the Social Cash Transfer program, with 80.39 percent of the primary cash recipients being women — women heads of household, women who are the economic anchors of their families. The conference the Ministry has co-sponsored does not recognize those households as valid family structures.
The Ministry’s logo on that banner says to those 9,996 women: we give you cash transfers with one hand and co-sponsor the ideology that invalidates your family with the other.
Minister Gbeme Horace Kollie stood before the United Nations General Assembly and told global delegates: “Our collective credibility rests on translating commitments into tangible results for women and girls. Resourcing and accelerating action for Women, Peace, and Security is not optional.”
The Ministry’s logo on that banner says to those global delegates: our commitment was optional after all.
THE QUESTIONS THAT MUST NOW BE ANSWERED
journalRAGE is putting the following questions to Minister Gbeme Horace Kollie and the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection on the public record. We are demanding answers before June 19.
One. Who authorized the use of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection’s official logo as a co-sponsor of the 8th Strengthening Families Conference? Was this decision made at the ministerial level, or was the logo used without the knowledge and explicit consent of the Minister?
Two. Before agreeing to co-sponsor this conference, did the Ministry conduct any review of the LDS Church’s foundational doctrine on the family — specifically the 1995 Family Proclamation — and its implications for the vulnerable women and children this Ministry is mandated to protect?
Three. Is the Ministry aware that this conference network has preceded the passage of anti-LGBTQ and anti-family-diversity legislation in Uganda, Ghana, and Nigeria — legislation that has been used to criminalize, imprison, and endanger vulnerable people — and that a similar bill is already tabled in Liberia’s House of Representatives?
Four. Does the Ministry consider its co-sponsorship of this conference consistent with its mandate under the CEDAW, the Beijing Platform for Action, the AU Protocols on Women and Children, and UN Security Council Resolution 1325 — all of which it is legally required to uphold?
Five. Will the Ministry withdraw its logo from the conference banner before June 19? If not, why not?
WHAT WITHDRAWAL WOULD MEAN
journalRAGE is calling, plainly and publicly, for the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection to withdraw its logo from the Strengthening Families Conference banner before June 19.
We understand this will be uncomfortable. We understand that the withdrawal will generate attention, that it will require a public explanation, and that it will put the Ministry in the position of appearing to contradict a decision already made. We understand that institutional inertia and the web of relationships that produced this co-sponsorship will make the withdrawal feel difficult.
It is less difficult than the alternative.
The alternative is that the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection — the institution mandated to protect Liberia’s most vulnerable women and children — allows its logo to remain on the banner of a conference that classifies those women’s families as deficient, that is connected to a legislative pipeline that will further restrict their rights, and that is co-sponsored by an institution which spent 126 years teaching that people who look like them bore a spiritual curse.
That is the banner the Ministry’s logo is currently on.
The Liberian women who called the 116 hotline this year — 166 of them, from 13 counties — deserve a Ministry whose logo stands for them. Not for the institution that considers their families incomplete.
Withdraw the logo, Minister Kollie.
Because right now, the most visible thing on that conference banner that says “Liberia” is your Ministry’s name. And Liberia’s women deserve better than that.
journalRAGE is Liberia’s independent platform for human rights journalism. Founded in 2019. The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection is invited to respond on the record before June 19. All responses will be published in full and unedited. contact@journalrage.org · journalrage.org
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an editorial representing the position of journalRAGE. All factual claims are sourced and documented. The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection and Minister Gbeme Horace Kollie were not contacted for comment before publication of this draft; standard journalistic practice requires right of reply before final publication.