The Liberia VPA annex lists 52 pieces of information that the Government of Liberia (GoL) has committed to placing in the public domain. This assessment uses a ‘traffic lights’ system showing whether each piece of information (a) exists (as far as the research was able to ascertain), and (b) is on the FDA or other official GoL websites. The assessment was carried out in September 2022.

A similar assessment was conducted under the Multi-stakeholder Forest Governance and Accountability Project (MFGAP), also in September 2022. This included contacting the Forest Development Authority (FDA) and other relevant regulatory authorities in Liberia to assess the availability of information on request and/or through hard-copy distribution. The results of this MFGAP survey are integrated this report.

Key findings:

• Only 12 of the 52 pieces of information stipulated in Annex IX of the agreement are currently available on any Government of Liberia websites.
• Since the ratification of the agreement in 2013, community forestry has become the predominant management regime in Liberia’s forests, but Annex IX does not provide for access to information on community forests. This briefing proposes revisions to remedy this.
• The initiative to make a public portal into the LiberTrace system should allow accurate, official, and up-to-date information to be available to all.
• A web-based portal is ideal for access to ‘live’ information that changes day-by-day, such as production data and payments.
• The more ‘fixed’ information, such as laws, regulations, and contracts, needs to be published on the pages of the FDA website designated for these documents.