New initiative launched on February 12, 2010.

^{Photo left: Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf greeting delegates at the CRFL launch. Next to her is the CEO of ArcelorMittal Liberia, Mr. Joseph Mathews, who is also current chairman of the Executive Committee of CRFL.  Copyright: GTZ.}

A new initiative aimed at providing an opportunity for businesses to share ideas and collaborate on corporate responsibility issues in Liberia was officially launched by President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf on February 12, 2010. Close to one hundred guests from the business community, government departments, civil society, diplomatic missions, the United Nations and international organisations attended the launch in Liberia’s capital city, Monrovia, among them the ambassadors of Germany, America and China. The Corporate Responsibility Forum Liberia (CRFL) was initiated in 2009 by the Centre for Cooperation with the Private Sector (CCPS) in cooperation with ArcelorMittal Liberia. CCPS is part of a sector programme of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), which is implemented by GTZ. Claudia Hermes, GTZ’s Programme Manager in Liberia, lauded the launch as ‘very successful’. “It will promote responsible investment, good corporate citizenship practices and collective action for the sustainable development of Liberia”.

CCPS has since been providing vital advisory and financial support to the Forum, which encompasses concept development for the Corporate Responsibility (CR) Forum; drafting of the Forum’s by-laws and its certificate of registration and commissioning of a case-study research on relevant CR issues in Liberia. CCPS facilitated the consultative workshop held in September 2009 in Monrovia which aimed at drawing a blue print for the formalisation and official launch of the CRFL and was attended by the Minister of Planning and Economic Affairs of Liberia, Amara Konneh. He urged the private sector and Government to ‘continue to sit together and discuss the development of Liberia’.

Heeding this call, the Corporate Responsibility Forum Liberia will provide a platform for facilitating the exchange of experience, knowledge, research and good practices on corporate responsibility. It will help mobilize private sector resources, and facilitate public private partnerships in support of development initiatives and objectives of the Republic of Liberia. The Forum will provide a platform for engaging the Government of Liberia and other development partners on policy and planning, and will act as a catalyst for capacity building in corporate responsibility.

Doris Popp, Project Manager of the Centre for Cooperation with the Private Sector in Pretoria pledged CCPS to ‘strive to link the Forum with other relevant GTZ initiatives in the region, such as the Regional Natural Resources Governance in Fragile States of West Africa, in which Liberia is a focus country’.