Published: August 3, 2026
MONROVIA – Recurring failures to raise a quorum in the House of Representatives and persistent late starts in the Senate disrupted the work of the 55th Legislature between April and June, according to a monitoring report released Thursday by a coalition of civil society and media organizations.
The report also found that the Legislature did not adequately publish legislative documents on its official website, that mechanisms for citizens and subject experts to take part in lawmaking remain weak, and that women, young people, persons with disabilities and rural communities continue to be left out of legislative processes.
The findings come from the Legislative Monitoring Coalition of Liberia, which assessed the Legislature’s second-quarter performance on transparency, accountability, inclusion and citizen participation. Malcolm Joseph, executive director of the Center for Media Studies and Peacebuilding, presented the report on the coalition’s behalf at a one-day media and civil society roundtable at the D’ Calabash conference room in Monrovia.
To address the failures, the coalition asked the Legislature to build a comprehensive digital repository for legislative documents, enforce quorum requirements strictly, comply with published session start times, institutionalize public consultation on major legislation, open committee proceedings and expand women’s participation in legislative decision-making.
The report credited lawmakers on several counts. It found the Legislature kept to its published agendas, allowed civil society and the media into plenary sessions, and sustained oversight of the executive branch on matters including the fiscal 2026 supplementary budget, education, health service delivery, Ebola preparedness and authorization to print additional Liberian dollar banknotes.
Rep. Bernard Benson of Montserrado County District 7 said at the roundtable that the report was a valuable contribution to legislative accountability and pledged to forward it formally to the House for consideration. He asked the coalition to work more closely with the House Committee on Information and Broadcasting on future monitoring.
The coalition is a civil society and media initiative organized in three clusters covering transparency and accountability, inclusion, and participation. The Center for Media Studies and Peacebuilding leads the participation cluster. The coalition is funded by the European Union and the embassies of Ireland and Sweden through the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy, under the Liberia Electoral Support Project managed by the U.N. Development Programme.
Discussion about this post