Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: How many people live in Liberia?
According to the 2017 revision of the World Population Prospects[4], Liberia's total population was 4,613,823 in 2016. This is compared to 911,000 in 1950.[2]
HIV/AIDS is one of the biggest diseases that has affected and is affecting Liberia to date. At any given time 33,000 people are living with HIV in Liberia of whom nearly 60% are female. Due to Liberia's incapability to treat this disease only about 1.2% of those affected survives the disease. The youth in Liberia is one of the biggest contributors to the extensive post-conflict HIV/AIDS problem. This is due to risky unprotected sex among adolescents without any form of contraception. A new social marketing condom program is being introduced to adolescents in vulnerable areas of the country in order to stop the spread of the disease and to minimize many preventable deaths throughout the country. In a 2012 study conducted by the African Health Sciences organisation over 20,400 condoms were provided to males and 316 to females in over 87 sites throughout Liberia. Communities were informed how to provide awareness of the dangers of HIV AIDS and how easily it can be prevented through the method of safe sex. Through the help of Population Services International in 2012 alone, the provision of contraception is estimated to have prevented 4.7 million unintended pregnancies and 13,600 maternal deaths, and to have provided 19 million couples with protection.
Political tensions from the rule of William R. Tolbert resulted in a military coup in 1980 during which Tolbert was killed, marking the beginning of years-long political instability. Five years of military rule by the People's Redemption Council and five years of civilian rule by the National Democratic Party of Liberia were followed by the First and Second Liberian Civil Wars. These resulted in the deaths of 250,000 people (about 8% of the population), the displacement of many more and shrunk Liberia's economy by 90%.[11] A peace agreement in 2003 led to democratic elections in 2005, in which Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected President. Recovery proceeds but about 85% of the population lives below the international poverty line. Liberia's economic and political stability was threatened in the 2010s by an Ebola virus epidemic; it originated in Guinea in December 2013, entered Liberia in March 2014, and was declared officially ended on May 8, 2015.[12][13][14]
There was a decline in production of Liberian goods in the late 19th century, and the government struggled financially, resulting in indebtedness on a series of international loans.[26] On July 16, 1892, Martha Ann Erskine Ricks met Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle and presented her a hand made quilt, Liberia's first diplomatic gift. Born into slavery in Tennessee, Ricks stated, "I had heard it often, from the time I was a child, how good the Queen had been to my people – to slaves – and how she wanted us to be free."[23]
The origin of the word "Gullah" is unclear. Some scholars suggest that it may be cognate with the word "Angola", where the ancestors of some of the Gullah people likely originated. They created a new culture synthesized from that of the various African peoples brought into Charleston and South Carolina. Some scholars have suggested that it may come from the name of the "Gola," an ethnic group living in the border area between present-day Sierra Leone and Liberia in West Africa, another area of enslaved ancestors of the Gullah people. British colonists in the Caribbean and the Southern colonies of North America referred to this area as the "Grain Coast" or "Rice Coast"; many of the tribes are of Mandé or Manding origins. The name "Geechee", another common name for the Gullah people, may derive from the name of the "Kissi people", an ethnic group living in the border area between Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.
The design is similar to the one on Justin.tv. The chat system and video windows are as portable as with ustream.tv. Users can create a channel, authorize their webcam and start broadcasting to the public. Other people can watch, or choose to participate via video, sound or text chat, which can be disabled. Users can also set up profiles and track how many people have watched them stream live, how many broadcasts they have made, and how long they have been on the streaming. Videos are not archived for playback; once it is broadcast, there is no way of recovering the video, and there is no way of streaming other than live, meaning users cannot pre-record videos and then broadcast them.
The constitution of Liberia limits Liberian nationality to "Negro" people (see also Liberian nationality law). People of other racial origins, even if they have lived for many years in Liberia, are thus precluded from becoming citizens of the Republic.
The Bassa people of Liberia are a West African ethnic group primarily found in its central coastal regions. They live in Grand Bassa, Rivercess, Margibi and Montserrado counties. In Liberia's capital of Monrovia, they are the largest ethnic group. With an overall population of about 0.57 million, they are the second largest ethnic group in Liberia (13.4%), after the Kpelle people (20.3%). Small Bassa communities are also found in Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast.
Black interest in Liberian emigration emerged when the Civil War promised the end of slavery and meaningful change to the status of Black Americans. Some 7,000 enslaved people were freed by their masters, so at that point those free African Americans left the U.S. to escape racism and have more opportunities (mainly because they had lost all hope of achievement). In the 1830s, the movement became increasingly dominated by slave owners who wanted Liberia to absorb the free blacks of the South. Slaves freed from slave ships were sent here instead of their country of origin. The emigration of free blacks to Liberia particularly increased after the Nat Turner rebellion in 1831. Middle-class blacks were more resolved to live as black Americans, many rural poor folks gave up on the United States and looked to Liberia to construct a better life. Liberia provided freedom and equality; it also represented a chance for a better life for the South's black farmers. The Liberian government promised 25 acres of free land for each immigrant family, 10 acres for a single adult, who came to the Black Republic. In the early 19th century, Liberia evoked mixed images in the minds of black Americans. They viewed Liberia as a destination for black families who left the United States in search of a better way of life, returning to their ancestral homeland of Africa.
Liberia is one of the poorest countries in the world. Civil wars have killed around 250,000 people and displaced many more. The wars ended in 2003 but destroyed most of the country's healthcare facilities. Recovery proceeds but the majority of the population still live below the international poverty line. Life expectancy in Liberia is much lower than the world average. Communicable diseases are widespread, including tuberculosis, diarrhea, malaria, HIV, and Dengue. Female genital mutilation is widely practiced. Nearly a quarter of children under the age of five are malnourished and few people have access to adequate sanitation facilities. In 2009, government expenditure on health care per-capita was US$22, accounting for 10.6% of total GDP. In 2008, Liberia had only one doctor and 27 nurses per 100,000 people. It was ill-equipped to handle the outbreak of Ebola in 2014 and 2015.
Liberia has 5,000 full-time or part-time health workers and 51 Liberian doctors to cater to a population of 3.8 million, according to the 2006 health survey. That is equivalent to about 76,000 civilians being attended to by 1 doctor. Most of the hospitals, clinics and equipment were destroyed due to its 14 years of civil conflict from 1989 all the way until 2003. The strengthening of the health sector faced financial problems. The government used only 16.8% of the total health expenditure in the country.
Songs such as "Advice" by CIC,"Behold Behold" by Luckay Buckay, "It Not Right" by Takun J featuring Luckay Buckay, and "Technique" by Bone Dust have been among the many prominent songs that have told people of the government lack of consciousness for her people, prostitution, jealousy, hatred, envy and fornication all over Liberia.
In 2014, the US ambassador to Liberia stated that corruption there was harming people through "unnecessary costs to products and services that are already difficult for many Liberians to afford".
Published July 19, 2010, this first installment focuses on the U.S. intelligence system's growth and redundancies. It questions its manageability, as it has become "so large, so unwieldy, and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it, or exactly how many agencies do the same work." The report states that "An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances."
After the thirteen year long civil war, populations in the slums of Liberia skyrocketed. At this point around 60% of the population, or 2.5 million people, do not meet the poverty line. The people were left with little choice of where to obtain water or sanitation. To date Liberia still lives with bad sanitation conditions, with up to 10 people sharing the same toilet without disinfectant and an extreme lack of clean consumable water. For every four people living in Liberia, there is one living without access to any clean drinking water or substantial sanitation. Every five deaths that occur in Liberia is due to people drinking contaminated drinking water. Due to extreme public defecation, the World Health Organisation discovered that 58% of Liberia's water was contaminated with E coli. The E coli present in the water cause many illnesses such as diarrhea and vomiting throughout the population. The water crisis in Liberia has reached catastrophic levels. Action has been taken by many non-profit organizations, one of which is called Waves for Water who are providing water filters for clean drinking water to over 60,000 Liberian people.
Although many thousands of Ivorians remain in Liberia, convoys of Ivorian refugees - each convoy containing a few hundred people - have begun heading home, frequently finding their communities still in tatters from the conflict. Ivorian officials have blamed deadly attacks launched from Liberia that targeted Ivorian border towns in 2012 on former militia fighters that remain loyal to Gbagbo and now live in refugee camps in Liberia.
Civil war in Liberia claimed the lives of more than 150,000 people - mostly civilians - and led to a complete breakdown of law and order. It displaced scores of thousands of people, both internally and beyond the borders, resulting in some 850,000 refugees in the neighboring countries. Fighting began in late 1989, and by early 1990, several hundred deaths had already occurred in confrontations between government forces and fighters who claimed membership in an opposition group, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), led by a former government official, Mr. Charles Taylor.
Amid the destruction and unending needs, Gbowee was appalled by the arrogance, ignorance and overall cultural insensitivity of the United Nations agencies dispatched to help disarm the country, keep the peace, establish procedures for democratic governance, and initiate rebuilding efforts. "People who have lived through a terrible conflict may be hungry and desperate, "but they're not stupid" (Gbowee's emphasis). They often have very good ideas about how peace can evolve, and they need to be asked." Gbowee advocated for involving Liberian civil society, especially women's organizations, in restoring the country. She grew frustrated with the way the "UN was spending many millions of dollars in Liberia, but most of it was on [their own] staffing resources... If they had just given some of that money to the local people, it would have made a real difference."
Recent documentation has noted "Kru societies can now be found along the coast of Monrovia, Liberia to Bandama River in Côte d'Ivoire". "Villages maintain their ties based on presumed common descent, reinforced by ceremonial exchanges and gifts". The Kru people and their languages, although now many speak English (in Liberia) or French (in Côte d'Ivoire) as a second language, are said to be "dominant in the southwest region where the forest zone reaches the coastal lagoons". The Kru people rely on the forest for farming, supplemented by hunting for their livelihood. In 2010, Kru and associated languages were spoken by 95 percent of the approximately 3.5 million people in Liberia.
Between 1847 and 1980, the state of Liberia was dominated by the small minority of black colonists and their descendants, known collectively as Americo-Liberians. The Americo-Liberian minority, many of whom were mixed race African Americans, tended to marry within their group. They had established plantations and businesses, and were generally richer than the indigenous people of Liberia and exercised overwhelming political power.
A 2001 estimate of the number of Grebo people in Liberia is approximately 387,000. There are an estimated 48,300 Grebo in Côte d'Ivoire, not counting refugees. Precise numbers are lacking, since many have been displaced by the civil war in Liberia of the late 20th and early 21st century.
Historians believe that many of the indigenous peoples of Liberia migrated there from the north and east between the 12th and 16th centuries AD. Portuguese explorers established contacts with people of the land later known as "Liberia" as early as 1462. They named the area "Costa da Pimenta" (Pepper Coast), or Grain Coast, because of the abundance of melegueta pepper, which became desired in European cooking. 
In 2003, the 56th Rescue Squadron of the 85th Group, U.S. Air Force, from Keflavik, Iceland, deployed to Liberia as part of JTF-Liberia. It saved lives by extracting people from the United States Embassy in Monrovia.
Liberia is one of the most poverty-stricken countries in the world. The national human development organisation has stated that 75% of Liberia's people live of less than a dollar a day. Malnutrition is widespread: 40% of children have unnatural stunted growth and 7% of Liberia's population have highly acute malnutrition. This high level of starvation and malnutrition is linked to a major lack of food and the high level of early teenager mothers who have little knowledge of how to look after or treat their babies. The teenage mothers are usually single, sometimes due to rape. These unprivileged teenage mothers are too embarrassed to even breastfeed their babies to supply the nutrients they need to survive. They feel completely robbed of their freedom. One of the most major contributors to a dire lack of food in Liberia is Ebola. Ebola is heavily attacking Liberia's food supply leaving 4.1 million people to try and survive the epidemic on their own accord, with many families or even kids on their own having to travel long distances to try access clean water or bags of wheat or flour for their families in order to even try survive. 85% of families in Liberia have been forced to eat fewer meals, even as low as just one meal a day.
Mende names are common in Liberia including towns that share names on both side of the border; for example, Guma Mende is popular section in Loffa, Liberia and those living along the borders claim dual citizenship.
In the late 19th century to early 20th century Lebanese merchants, families and businessmen began arriving in Liberia. Lebanese currently own many major businesses such as supermarkets, restaurants, textiles, construction works, factories and other production based companies across the country. Despite living in the country, Lebanese are denied citizenship rights due to Liberia's nationality law and are seen in a political view as foreigners.