IDPs struggle to rebuild shattered lives

Bendu Kiadii, 38, fled fighting in western Liberia in April, along with her family. After they had trekked through bush for days, her husband Momoh contracted cholera and died, leaving her to continue eastwards with their eight children aged three to 15 years. "We lived in the bushes for many days. Eventually I arrived at the Wilson camp for the displaced, and have since stayed with my sister and her four children," she told IRIN, before bursting into tears. Her three-year-old daughter stared blankly as her mother wept uncontrollably. The camp, a sprawling complex of mud and wattle huts located in Montserrado County, was home to 25,500 internally displaced Liberians when IRIN visited it in August. Like Kiadii, they had fled war in various parts of the country between government troops and rebels of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). Women formed 65 percent of the camp's residents, while half of the remainder were children, according to camp officials. "I have not yet built a shelter, because it is hard work for a woman. I rely on my sister and her husband to help my children," Kiadii said later. "As a single mother, life is tough here, but I cannot go back, because I fear to be killed in the fighting." Finding food and adequate medical treatment for the children has been particularly difficult for her. She could not receive food, because the policy in all Liberian camps was that food aid was given only to heads of households who owned shelters. The policy was agreed upon as an emergency measure by agencies to ensure equitable distribution of food. However, the World Food Programme was reviewing it. NGOs in the camp were trying to help at least 200 desperate single mothers build shelters by buying plaited palm leaves for them - at five Liberian dollars (about 7 US cents) per three braided strips - for them to use as thatch. However, a mother needed 300 pieces to construct a four-by-five-metre shelter -adequate for a family of about five - plus stakes and mud for walls, so building a shelter was fairly costly, said camp supervisors Miatta Giddings and Francis Yancy. Fatu Seh, 36, a mother of three children aged between six and 10 years, had also only just started building her hut - five months after arriving at the camp. "I have been given thatch," she said. "Before that, friends have been helping me feed the children." She lost touch with her husband in the thick of fighting in March and had never heard from him again. Unlike most of the other camps, Wilson was started by the internally displaced persons (IDPs) themselves. That was in March. Up to the latter part of August it had not received much attention, although humanitarian agencies said they were planning some interventions. IDPs said sanitation was particularly inadequate and there were not enough latrines. Moreover, the continuous stream of new arrivals stretched the camp's already limited facilities. On 20 August, some 250 newly arrived IDPs were temporarily housed in two tents. Since it was rainy season, the tents leaked, prompting the IDPs to spend more time in ‘child friendly spaces’ constructed by the United Nations Children's Fund. These are areas used as classrooms for two shifts of school-age children. "Many of the IDPs are totally helpless," said Giddings. "The situation is such that at times I have to get money from my own pocket to help the mothers. With this money, they buy necessities such as soap from makeshift shops set up by other IDPs within the camp." Outside Giddings’s office, a crowd of IDPs milled around, waiting and staring through the door in the hope of being given something. Many of the IDPs in Liberia have been constantly on the run. Bonnah Johnson, a former employee of a gold-mining company, said he was displaced three times before ending up in Sergbeh Camp, 14 km outside the capital, Monrovia, together with his father, mother, wife and three children. "I fled the war when the rebels attacked the company - with nothing," Johnson told IRIN. "The shirt and sandals I wear were given to me by the Red Cross. Yet I am a high school graduate - with no job since March." "I require an average of 100 Liberian dollars to provide a single meal for my family, but I have no source of income," he said, complaining that the humanitarian community was not doing enough to enable him "to feed my family well" - a charge which camp officials, including the government representative, said was unfair because the resources available did not suffice to ensure that every family was well fed. Most of the IDP camps were established between March and April when LURD rebels intensified their attacks on government troops. The Liberian Refugees, Repatriation and Resettlement Commission, the state body responsible for IDPs, estimated in August that there were 140,000 IDPs in 11 camps. However, Liberian President Charles Taylor said on 26 July at the official opening of a national conference on peace and reconciliation that many more people, mostly women and children, were hiding in forests. The fighting in Liberia has led to a considerable increase in population movements, resulting in social and economic upheaval, the break-up of families, a general deterioration in the health situation, and many deaths and injuries, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. "[The] needs are too great for the humanitarian community to cope with," it said. The camps were created with a view to making it easier for humanitarian agencies to help the IDPs. "The agencies responded positively to the IDP situation," Muktar Ali Farah, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told IRIN. "Although constrained by resources, they tried to help to the best of their ability." Several UN agencies and NGOs fund and/or are involved in activities ranging from camp management, nutrition, shelter, water supply and sanitation to health and education. Jar Tondo Camp, about nine km outside Monrovia, is one which has received substantial support from NGOs and UN agencies. As was the case in almost all the other camps, women comprised the majority of its 11,450 inhabitants. They headed more than 60 percent of the 2,273 households in Jar Tondo. Several of them said they received essential supplies regularly. Many had also been allocated land near the camp to cultivate some food crops. However, the continuing conflict had stretched the capacity of the NGOs to the limit, officials told IRIN. There was also the issue of protection. Armed men occasionally drove in and out of the camps, contrary to expected practice. In Blamese, a camp 11 km from Monrovia, an IDP was recently attacked and beaten by armed men who suspected him of being an ex-fighter. Despite such incidents, however, IDPs generally found it safer to stay in the camps, humanitarian workers said. While attempts had been made to address health issues in the camps, the situation remained precarious. Only one hospital in Monrovia had been willing to accept IDP cases referred to it, IRIN was told. In Blamese, which had 15,346 IDPs in August, officials said 23 residents had died of disease since March, although the camp's clinic attended to about 60 people a day. Land for setting up the camps was provided by host communities, often at no fee. "We hosted IDPs in 1991/92. This time I have again allocated 158 acres of my own land to IDPs to help them temporarily settle here," Blama Sarnor, a chief in the town of Zuennah in Montserrado County told IRIN. These IDPs included a group of lepers for whom the town was providing food and accommodation. Zuennah is located on the banks of the Po River, which forms the border between Montserrado and Bomi County, to which the fighting spread this year. The rebels had arrived within a short distance from the town, but government forces had routed them a short while earlier, Sarnor said. Talk of the rebels being pushed back had made people in the camps anxious to return home. "They really want to go back to their homes," said Christian Wilson, camp manager for the Lutheran World Federation, lead agency in Jar Tondo camp. "They listen to the radio, and as soon as things get better, many of them will quickly go back." Government officials were cautious. "The rebels have been pushed back towards the Guinea border, but we need to be sure it is safe before letting people return to some of these areas," Jeff Mutada, the Liberian assistant information minister, told IRIN. Diplomats said the situation was unpredictable. "The IDP phenomenon in Liberia will stay for as long the conflict stays - and that is likely to be the case for some time," one envoy said. "The indications are that the war will not stop soon."