Welcome to this special bonus edition of Democracy in Focus, a collaboration between New Narratives and Front Page Africa. I’m Anthony Stephens.

In recent years, Liberia has made big gains in tackling human trafficking, convicting several traffickers including an agent of the National Security Agency and bringing hundreds of victims home from the Middle East.

Those wins saw the county move up on the U.S. government’s Trafficking In Persons ranking. But things took a turn for the worse in 2023 when the Weah administration slashed the budget for anti-trafficking efforts by ninety per cent. Prosecutions stalled. Victims remain stranded overseas. This year Liberia was downgraded to the tier two watchlist.

In this special interview, I speak with two antihuman trafficking experts in the U.S. embassy - Juan Martinez and Drew Engel - to find out what that means for Liberia.

Funding for this podcast comes from the Swedish and US embassies in Liberia and the American Jewish World Service. See more of our collaborations with media in West Africa at www.newnarratives.org