Liberia: Secret Logging Contracts Uncovered in Liberia

5 September 2012
The NEWS (Monrovia)

A new report released by Global Witness in collaboration with two Liberian human rights organizations has uncovered how "secret logging contracts" have been awarded in an illegal and sometimes dubious manner. According to investigation by Global Witness, Save My Future Foundation (SAMFU) and Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), a quarter of Liberia's total landmass has been granted to logging companies in just two years, following an explosion in the use of secretive and often illegal logging permits.

The organizations said unless this crisis is tackled immediately, the country's forests could suffer widespread devastation, leaving the people who depend upon them stranded and undoing the country's fragile progress following the resource-fuelled conflicts of 1989 to 2003.

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