Published: September 24, 2026
NEW YORK – Liberia has signed an African convention that sets out how children drawn into armed conflict should be disarmed, demobilized, and reintegrated. Its backers intend to carry the treaty beyond the continent and make it a global instrument.
Foreign Minister Sara Beysolow Nyanti signed the African Convention on the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration of Child Soldiers on Wednesday on the sidelines of the 81st U.N. General Assembly. More than 10 countries signed. Minister Nyanti said Liberia was among the African states that worked on the text, and that its experience demobilizing children after the civil wars shaped that work.
“Liberia is a country that has experienced war,” she told reporters after the signing. “We ourselves had children affected by armed conflict, and we experienced DDRR. We know what worked, what didn’t work.”
Minister Nyanti said the convention does not require ratification at this stage and represents agreement in principle. She said the government would bring it home and share it with the Legislature and others. Ratification at the national level would be required once the instrument goes forward for international recognition, she said.
She said Liberia reviewed the text before signing to ensure it aligned with the country’s own rules and international human rights law. More countries are expected to sign, and Burkina Faso and Cameroon are still studying the document, she said.
Minister Nyanti did not detail specific provisions. She described it as broad guidance on children affected by armed conflict, setting out what should and should not be permitted.
“We have a responsibility to protect children and give them their childhood,” she said. “We have a responsibility to ensure that children have an opportunity to grow and to thrive and to not be affected by guns, not to be running from guns.”
She called the provisions a starting point agreed among the signing countries. The next step, she said, is to see how many more countries sign before the convention is taken up as an international instrument.
Minister Nyanti said the signing positions Liberia as “a country of reference” on diplomacy and on the U.N. Security Council’s agenda for conflict and post-conflict solutions.
“This is what Liberia used to do,” she said.
She pointed to Liberia’s role as a founding member of the Mano River Union, ECOWAS, the Organization of African Unity and the United Nations. She said the country was regaining that prominence as a founding member of key global instruments. She said Liberians should use that standing to draw attention to the country, including for tourism, and to advance President Joseph Boakai’s ARREST Agenda for Inclusive Development.
The signing came during the same General Assembly week in which Minister Nyanti launched the PATHWAYs framework, a vision document on youth, peace, security and development, at a high-level side event held at the African Union Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in New York. At that event she said youth, peace and security are a top priority for Liberia on the U.N. Security Council.
Liberia has a long link to African child-rights law. The preamble of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child recalls the Declaration on the Rights and Welfare of the African Child, adopted by the Organization of African Unity’s heads of state at an ordinary session in Monrovia.
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