New Liberian refugees top the 6,000 mark

UNHCR has recorded 6,241 new Liberian refugees in western Cote d'Ivoire since early May following renewed fighting between pro- and anti-government forces in Lofa County, northwestern Liberia, a UNHCR official said. Most (3,467) of the new arrivals are women, while 1,167 are children below the age of five years, Marie-Louise Dzietham, head of UNHCR's sub-office in the western town of Danane, told IRIN on Monday. She said 1,511 who had volunteered for relocation had been transferred to the Nicla refugee camp in Guiglo, 516 km west of Abidjan, along with an older caseload of 484 Liberians. Nineteen Sierra Leoneans were also recently settled in Nicla, Dzietham said. Nicla, the sole refugee camp in Cote d'Ivoire, houses more than 6,000 people. Though humanitarian needs are still pressing, the refugees' current worry is the closure of UNHCR offices in western Cote d'Ivoire, including the one in Danane, which is due to close at the end of the month. An office in Tabou, in the southwest, is also slated to be closed in the next few days. The third UNHCR office in the area is at Guiglo, south of Danane and north of Tabou. Its doors are scheduled to be shut in December. The imminent closure of these offices will greatly impact on the refugees because there are still a large number of them in the area, Dzietham said. "The refugees are terrified," she added. Danane, Guiglo and Tabou make up Cote d'Ivoire's 'Refugee Location zone'. More than 120,000 refugees, mostly from Liberia, live there.