By: Trokon Wrepue – trokon1992seokin@gmail.com
CAPITOL HILL – Members of the House of Representatives delivered a stern rebuke to the Ministry of Justice official Tuesday after he failed to clarify the status of the cross-border Implementation Agreement between Liberia and Guinea.
What stunned lawmakers was the revelation that Liberia ratified the agreement in 2021, but Guinea has still not done the same.
The disclosure came during a public hearing held by the Specialized Committee investigating the status of the Liberia–Guinea Access Implementation Agreement.
This agreement forms the legal basis on which the Legislature has been asked to review and ratify a 25-year concession with Ivanhoe Atlantic, allowing Guinean ore to transit through Liberian territory.
Deputy Minister of Justice for Economic Affairs, Cllr. Charles F. D. Karmo II, repeatedly defended the legality of the Implementation Agreement but struggled to confirm whether Guinea had ratified it. When Rep. Ivar Jones pressed him with a direct question — “This is a bilateral agreement between two countries.
Have our Guinean counterparts ratified this agreement up to date?” — Cllr. Karmo offered no clear answer.
Jones reminded him of the implications: “If this agreement is not yet ratified by the Guinean Legislature, then it is not binding on them. It is only binding on us, who ratified it in 2021.”
Cllr. Karmo responded vaguely, stating, “We were trying to send a team to Guinea, but something happened,” while insisting that the Ivanhoe deal rests on a lawful, pre-existing agreement between the two countries.
Jones pressed further, asking whether Liberia had even forwarded a copy of the ratified agreement to Guinea or confirmed that Guinean authorities were aware of Liberia’s ratification. Cllr. Karmo admitted that no copy had been sent, saying only that “Guinea and Liberian laws are not the same.”
Lawmakers then revisited what the 2019 Implementation Agreement was intended to achieve. It was crafted as the central legal framework through which any Guinean mining operator would seek access to Liberia’s rail and port corridor.
The document outlined a strict approval sequence: Guinea would first determine a company’s eligibility; Liberia would then evaluate the access request through a joint Monitoring Committee and the Inter-Ministerial Committee.
These bodies were designed to ensure transparency, prevent unilateral decisions, and guarantee that both nations acted in concert.
The agreement also mandated the Technical Secretariat to develop a standard Access Agreement template to guide all future users — a safeguard intended to prevent special deals and ensure all operators were subject to the same rules.
Yet none of these processes appear to have been followed in the case of the Concession and Access Agreement with Ivanhoe Liberia (HPX/SMFG). There is no public evidence of an eligibility review in Guinea, no access request in Liberia, no committee deliberations, and no indication that the CAA reflects the standardized template envisioned in the Implementation Agreement.
These omissions have raised serious concerns that the CAA was negotiated outside the bilateral framework both governments committed to.
Representative Gleekia questioned whether Guinea had even given explicit consent for its ore to pass through Liberia, especially since Guinea has already built its own railway. Cllr. Karmo responded that SMFG — Ivanhoe’s Guinean subsidiary — had obtained a mining permit.
Gleekia countered by pointing him to Article 3 of the Implementation Agreement, which he said “explicitly prohibits either country from taking unilateral actions that undermine the agreement’s purpose,” including the often-cited Article 3.3: “Neither Party shall sign any contract or undertake any action that directly or indirectly restricts or prevents the full effect of this Agreement.”
Representative Jeremiah Sokan of Grand Gedeh County expressed disappointment with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, arguing that it failed to advise the Legislature on the status of the agreement before and after Liberia ratified it.
“That the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not advise this Legislature and did not even inform the Guineans in line with what we have ratified here, for me, is disappointing,” he said.
Deputy Foreign Minister for Administration, Gabriel Selee, had earlier claimed that the Ministry was unaware of the agreement because it was “not a part of it.”
The hearing ended with the committee instructing all witnesses to return next Tuesday as the investigation continues.
