Monrovia, Liberia – Liberia has called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine, warning the United Nations Security Council that the escalating civilian toll and growing attacks on commercial shipping demonstrate the urgent need to move from repeated appeals for peace to concrete action.
Liberia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Lewis Garseedah Brown II, delivered the call during the Security Council’s 10,212th meeting on August 24, 2026, on the maintenance of international peace and security in Ukraine.
Brown said Liberia’s position is rooted in its own history of war and peace, arguing that the international community cannot remain satisfied with documenting casualties while failing to create conditions that stop the killing.
“The world has become dangerously efficient at counting the dead and dangerously comfortable with failing to stop the dying,” Brown told the Council.
His intervention came as the Council considered worsening civilian casualties in Ukraine, with Liberia citing July as the deadliest month for civilians since March 2022.
According to figures presented by the Liberian envoy, at least 437 people were killed and more than 2,600 injured in July, while child casualties reached their highest level since April 2022.
Brown said the figures demonstrate that the war is not winding down but escalating with renewed intensity, with long range weapons responsible for a significant share of civilian harm, including attacks occurring far from the front lines.
For Liberia, however, the consequences of the war extend beyond Ukraine’s borders.
The country has a particular stake in the safety of commercial shipping because Liberia operates one of the world’s largest maritime registries.
Brown told the Council that the Liberian flag flies over more than 300 million gross tons of shipping, representing roughly one in six ocean going vessels.
That global maritime presence, he said, has transformed the conflict in the Black Sea into a direct concern for Liberia.
Brown recalled the death of the master of a Liberian flagged merchant vessel following a July strike in the Black Sea and cited another Liberian flagged ship that was struck three times while anchored at Odesa.
He also referenced a Liberian flagged bulk carrier that caught fire while approaching a Russian port to load grain, forcing its crew to evacuate.
The incidents, he said, demonstrate that seafarers have become among the conflict’s most vulnerable civilians.
Liberia is not raising the issue to assign blame, Brown stressed, but to remind the international community that the men and women working aboard merchant vessels are civilians who have no role in the war.
The crews aboard these vessels include Filipinos, Syrians, Indians, Ukrainians and Egyptians, among other nationalities.
“They are not combatants,” Brown said, emphasizing that these seafarers are transporting goods to countries that have no involvement in the conflict, including African nations dependent on global food supplies.
He urged all parties to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 2417, particularly its provisions concerning conflict and hunger, and to treat commercial shipping, seafarers and ports as civilians under international law.
Brown also made clear that Liberia’s position on the UN Charter remains unchanged.
He reaffirmed Liberia’s support for sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence, while insisting that civilians must be protected regardless of the country or continent involved.
But the Liberian envoy warned that principles have little meaning if they are not accompanied by action.
“Principles without action to uphold them are mere decorations,” he said.
Liberia proposed three immediate steps.
First, Brown renewed the country’s call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.
Recognizing that a comprehensive ceasefire has remained elusive, he urged the parties to accept a more limited measure in the interim: a moratorium on long range attacks against populated areas and attacks against shipping and ports.
He argued that such a measure could save lives quickly, would be relatively easier to verify and would focus on areas where the civilian toll is particularly concentrated.
Second, Liberia urged the Security Council and the parties to stop treating broad unity as a prerequisite for progress and instead begin building unity through practical agreements.
Brown identified humanitarian corridors, medical evacuations, prisoner exchanges, the return of children and the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as areas where progress could be pursued.
Third, Liberia called for support for every credible peace initiative regardless of who proposed it.
Brown said Liberia is less concerned about who receives credit for ending the war than about achieving an end to the conflict.
He drew heavily on Liberia’s own experience of civil war, reminding the Council that Liberia spent years on the international agenda before peace was eventually achieved through negotiations.
Brown pointed specifically to the 2003 peace negotiations in Accra, Ghana, arguing that many of the ingredients necessary for peace already existed before the parties finally sat down.
What changed, he suggested, was the mounting human cost.
“Ultimately, this war will end at a table,” Brown told the Council.
For Liberia, the lesson is straightforward: negotiations may be delayed, but they cannot ultimately be avoided if a lasting peace is to be achieved.
The Liberian envoy warned that the central question is no longer whether negotiations will eventually occur but how many additional lives will be lost before the parties engage seriously.
He urged the Security Council to remember its founding purpose.
“This Council was built to end wars, not to curate them,” Brown said.
He closed by bringing the conflict down from diplomatic statistics to the lives of ordinary people.
While the international community debates and prepares its next report, he said, a master aboard a Liberian flagged vessel must decide whether it is safe to sail, while a family in Kharkiv must decide whether a basement or a corridor offers greater safety.
For Liberia, Brown said, those decisions represent the human cost of a war that can no longer be treated simply as another item on an international agenda.
