Realizing Rights with Street Vendors in Liberia

This video provides a glimpse into the lives of street vendors in Liberia and how Realizing Rights and our partners seek to promote the right to decent work for all.

Promoting Decent Work in Liberia

Over the past three years, Realizing Rights has been supporting efforts by local and national actors in Liberia to address the needs of workers in the informal economy and help foster government policies aimed at promoting decent work opportunities for all.

In November 2009, Realizing Rights staff visited Liberia's capital city of Monrovia to hear first-hand the concerns of street vendors and to give voice to their concerns at the highest levels of government.

Over a decade of civil war increased the number of Liberian households headed by women. Without skills and education, their best option is selling on the street, surplus goods from their farms, local produce or whatever they can round up. Men who are ex-combatants need a legal livelihood or risk a return to violence.

To understand the needs of those in the informal sector, Realizing Rights staff interviewed informal traders about their progress in getting organized and improving their situation and Realizing Rights President, Mary Robinson, visited the leaders within the petit traders union. These pioneering women provided a deeper insight into the pressing needs of their organisation's members and what stumbling blocks remained on their path to greater security and prosperity.