Further population movements expected in areas near Guinea, Cote d'Ivoire

A team of UN and NGO officials who conducted an assessment last week in the Liberian border area of Ganta found more than 21,000 people displaced by fighting in the northeast of their country, a spokesman for one of the agencies that participated in the assessment told IRIN.

IDPs told the team that "although the situation is now quiet, they are not comfortable staying there," WFP regional spokesman Ramine Rafirasme said on Monday. This, he added, meant that at any sign of increasing insecurity, they could go on the move again. Ganta is about 15 km from the Guinean border and around 55 km from the border with Cote d'Ivoire.

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Rafirasme said some families had arrived in Ganta with small quantities of food, cash and valuables but have used up most of the food and cash and or have sold their valuables. Basically, they have been surviving on the little rice they have been able to obtain in the area, he said. He added that the team had found no major signs of malnutrition but that if access to the IDPs "is blocked again and we can't provide food, the situation will be desperate".

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the mission comprised representatives of NGOs, the LRRC (the Liberian state body that deals with displacement) and UN agencies. It visited various IDP settlement sites and held a meeting with humanitarian organizations based in Ganta.

Key findings indicated overcrowding in the schools accommodating the IDPs, lack of medicines and medical supplies, inadequate water and sanitation facilities, lack of food and need for protection of the IDPs and local residents, OCHA said.

There are over 110,000 registered IDPs in Liberia but tens of thousands are dispersed in villages or in the bush, Rafirsame said. "These are a source of concern," he added, since humanitarian workers do not have access to them. On Monday, WFP started distributing food in Ganta and another location in Nimba County, Totota, which has about 28,000 IDPs. On 25 May, WFP completed the distribution of food to some 9,500 IDPs in Gbondoi, farther to the west.