00:00 Your presidency marked a period of optimism and hope for Liberia. Looking back now, what do you
00:08 consider to be your most significant achievement and the legacy that you've left for the country?
00:13 At two decades of conflict, of violence against women and children,
00:23 the lacking of civil society in promotion of the democratic space,
00:30 and the only way I could have carried out my two terms was to
00:37 preach, engage, encourage peace. That was my legacy.
00:46 Your most important legacy was peace. That's pretty powerful, considering what you went through.
00:52 And your leadership during your, well, the Ebola crisis took place during your leadership,
00:59 and your actions were widely praised. Can you describe some of the key decisions and actions
01:07 that contributed to your successful containment of the pandemic, and what lessons could be applied
01:12 to the COVID-19 pandemic more recently and into the future? I want to start with Ebola,
01:18 because that's where you started. Ebola was, for us, a strange disease that we know how to confront.
01:26 It started in the northeast of our country, but very quickly, because borders are free,
01:32 came into the capital city. And our first response was one of militancy.
01:38 Stop the people from moving across. Well, that didn't work, because few people were hurt.
01:46 One person even died. So quickly, the decision was to make sure we do something about it,
01:54 that we put the identification of the problem, the symptoms of the problem, in the hands of
02:04 communities. And that's how we began to see community health workers as being so vital
02:12 in the role. The other thing that I was faced with was because people were dying, but we have
02:23 some of our citizens who have a burial system that placed a lot of attention
02:31 on how they prepared the dead and how they buried the dead.
02:38 And the result was that so many people were being exposed, not properly buried.
02:46 And I think this was the hardest decision of mine, was to give the order for cremation.
02:56 We saved thousands of lives by doing that, but it wasn't easy, because the Christian
03:06 citizens protested. People who had families that had been victimized and died,
03:13 cried and protested, but it had to be done. And I think the final one was
03:21 to get people to accept the fact that we had to do what we had to do, communication with the people,
03:33 so that civil society could appreciate why we had to do the things we did, how we were to travel in
03:41 places, how we were to protect our nurses and doctors because they were dying. So we had to go
03:49 into places and put ourselves in harm's way to give confidence to our nurses and doctors.
03:59 But I'm so glad, although we lost over 5,000 people,
04:06 that we were able to confront this disease and to be able to win it. And because of that,
04:16 COVID-19 for us was not as difficult. Our community health workers now knew the symptoms
04:28 of infectious diseases and could do something about it. They now knew how to do primary
04:38 response to people as they waited for health care from professionals. And let me say one thing on
04:47 Ebola. I want to say that the African Union has been so great. In Ebola, they came to our rescue.
04:57 Our partnership also, European countries, the United States of America, that partnership was
05:03 vital and it helped us in COVID-19. Today, I'm a big advocate for supporting health care workers
05:11 and our African Union has taken up this charge. One of the initial responses, both with COVID-19
05:19 and even with Ebola, was closing borders. Does that work? No. It's true that major crossings
05:29 from particularly among the three affected countries, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire,
05:37 major crossings, making sure that we had security personnel to manage the crossing work.
05:49 But closing borders never really work. You know, our people move across borders at will
05:54 and we're so interconnected anyway, you know, across religion, across language and all of that.
06:04 So the biggest thing I think is communication. Communicating to people so they know why you
06:11 have regulations, why you have to impose certain discipline. And I think if you say it with
06:20 honesty and admit sometimes when you're wrong, like in our militancy, we had to go to the people
06:29 and say, "Sorry, this we should not have done." And we have changed it. And I think our people
06:36 were very pleased with how we managed the process. A little bit of humility is important for
06:42 leadership. Absolutely. What do you see as the most pressing challenges and opportunities facing
06:51 Africa today? And how can your experience in leadership help contribute to those opportunities
06:58 and make them stronger? Sad to say this, but the most important issue for leadership today
07:11 is the fragmentation among the global powers of the world. That has affected multilateralism
07:24 and the effectiveness that comes from that. It has affected global cooperation and it has
07:32 prevented the action and response to where we now have wars. So I think that's the most important
07:41 one. I always say though, and have to say that an important impediment to progress
07:51 is the promotion of women, ensuring that they have the leadership to be able to put in place
07:58 the policies that will first of all counter the victimization of women through violence,
08:06 but more importantly, the leadership of women in places where they are going to safeguard
08:12 the rights of society, safeguard the rights of women and children.
08:20 And how does that fit into the fragmentation that you've been talking about? And we're seeing
08:24 conflict across the world. What are the priorities? What will bring us together
08:28 to help assuage some of the fallout of these conflicts? We have to see
08:34 the major powers of the world see a changing global situation,
08:43 see the threats to life through climate change, through artificial intelligence and all of that,
08:50 to see how it has affected most of the least developed or poorer countries of the world,
08:58 and to recognize that their interaction of the world, of countries across the world,
09:06 there are no borders that can stop people moving across. Interaction through financial operations,
09:15 through health operations, diseases travel across borders as we found out with COVID-19.
09:21 And so I think we need to see the powers who are represented in what is called a G7 group
09:30 and a G20 group have to now take up this challenge of bringing back the kind of international order
09:39 that we knew in the past decade or so, so that we can address these global threats
09:48 that have not been known, that if we do not do it, the entire world is at stake
09:57 in terms of being able to achieve the economic goals that have been set,
10:03 being able to ensure that people have a right to participation in things.
10:11 Going back and those who have been the least developed, those who have been marginalized,
10:21 can also feel ownership in global action to address the world's problems and make sure that
10:30 we may not have full prosperity for all, but let's ensure that if people have a right to achieve
10:37 their goals and that they're not denied the opportunities for this. So more listening,
10:43 less shouting. Absolutely. Your post-political role has focused on the promotion of women,
10:51 seeing them as a catalyst for change. Do you think women make better leaders?
10:55 Absolutely.
10:58 I don't want to call names, but I think if we look around, you know, and that's not just in Africa,
11:10 but also if you look around in Europe, you look around, you see that women, because women
11:21 rule a little bit differently. First of all, women have equality in every way, in knowledge,
11:29 in education, whatnot. But women bring in a bit of empathy, you know, a bit of compassion, a bit of
11:38 trying to mediate rather than to make war. And if I think if we had more women right now in the major
11:48 powers, you would see faster action in trying to promote dialogue and mediation rather than
11:55 the victors of war. I'll vote for that. President Sirleaf, I want to thank you for being here.
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