Key Northern Liberian Town Faces Relief Crisis

This formerly bustling town of 100,000 people in the far northwest of Liberia once lay at the centre of a fertile area of forested hills that produced most of the country's food. But after 14 years of civil war, Voinjama is a burnt out bullet-scarred wreck. Its 5,000 remaining inhabitants do not have enough to feed themselves, let alone send trucks of rice, cocoa and coffee south to the capital Monrovia. "Our greatest problem in Voinjama now is food. We cannot get food available and because of the war, there was no chance to make farms. Our children and women often go to bed hungry,” said Mamadi Taworoh, an elder who lives on the outskirts of town. There are none of the usual street traders selling consumer goods and locally produced food. And Voinjama's looted shops remain closed. To find food, local residents have to forage in the nearby bush. “Most of the time our people here spend the whole day in the forest just looking for what they can find to eat. We are barely surviving on palm nuts and palm kernels,” said Kolubah Lahovah who looked ill and ravaged by life. Voinjama is main city in Lofa County, from where the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel movement launched its bush war to oust former president Charles Taylor in 1999. As Voinjama became engulfed by fighting, most of the town's inhabitants fled over the nearby border to Guinea, where an estimated 170,000 Liberian refugees have taken shelter. There is no sign yet that any of those from Voinjama are beginning to return. The battle-scarred town changed hands several times before peace was finally agreed in August last year and the area around it has been one of the last to be reached by international relief agencies. UN peacekeepers only established a presence in Voinjama in mid-April and now claim to have LURD fighters in the surrounding district under control. Lieutenant Colonel Ghulan Raza, the commander of the Pakistani garrison in Voinjama told IRIN: "There is no problem with security…we have ordered rebel fighters not to roam with their weapons and we removed about 12 checkpoints guarded by fighters along the highway leading from central Liberia to Voinjama. We did this to ensure free movement and security in the area." Raza added preparations were under way to open a new disarmament site for LURD fighters in Voinjama. But he said that the humanitarian crisis in the town was one of the worst he had seen. “For the sake of humanity and as a goodwill gesture, we distributed some bags of rice and clothing to the local people we met here to ease their suffering,” the colonel added. Although food is still in short supply and adequate shelter is difficult to find in Voinjama's bombed and burned out houses, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and International Medical Corps (IMC) have each rehabilitated a health centre in the town. However these are still inadequate to meet the demands of Lofa County as a whole. Doctor Kaisor Jallah, the Liberian government's chief health officer for Lofa County, said there were presently nine clinics located around Lofa, but most were poorly supplied. “We still need a lot of support in the primary health sector including drugs and equipment. We need drugs to combat the high case of malaria, respiratory infections and water-borne diseases among the local dwellers. MSF, ICRC and IMC are doing their best, but more needs to done to address the humanitarian needs now,” Jallah said. The UN children’s agency UNICEF is meanwhile launching a vaccination campaign. “Here in Lofa, where we just got access, we will be targeting 34, 000 children who are between the ages of six months to 16 years for the measles vaccination and the figure of 75, 000 for the yellow fever vaccination," UNICEF doctor Ismaila Maksha told IRIN. UNICEF says it has immunised more than 1.2 million Liberian children against measles since last June, when LURD launched an all-out attack on Monrovia to dislodge Taylor from his last stronghold, but admits that some remote regions of Liberia have yet to be targeted. “Only in Sinoe and Gbarpolu counties has the campaign not yet been undertaken; UNICEF is appealing for the required funding to ensure all the remaining children are immunised,” the organisation said in a report published earlier this week. Sinoe, on the south-east coast and Gbarpolu, just south of Lofa, have yet to be fully secured by UN peacekeeping forces.