UN refugee agency short of funds to help Liberians home

Nearly three years after the guns fell silent in war-torn Liberia, over 150,000 Liberian refugees remain scattered across West Africa and the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, is massively short of the funds needed to help them home, officials said on Wednesday. According to UNHCR Liberia’s spokesperson Annette Rehrl, UNHCR has only 20 percent of the funds needed to finance a US $37 million refugee repatriation programme. A related programme to help resettle tens of thousands of internally displaced Liberians is also short of cash, having received only 17 percent from donors of the US $30 million needed. During a visit to Sinje, in northwest Liberia, to welcome home 100 refugees who had been sheltering in neighbouring Sierra Leone, the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres urged donors to tip up more cash for Liberia. “Liberia as a nation returning from conflict needs the biggest assistance now, and not later. The resources needed to support Liberia’s reconstruction are not adequate and very small in UNHCR’s budget. The humanitarian assistance to Liberia is just a drop in the ocean,” Guterres said. Liberia’s 14 years of civil warfare left tens of thousands of men, women and children dead and half a million of Liberia’s 3 million population fled for their lives. Many have spent the last decade and a half living as refugees in camps in Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea or Sierra Leone. The signing of a peace deal in 2003 and the disarming of tens of thousands of rebel and pro-government militia fighters has encouraged some 200,000 Liberian refugees to make their own way home, say UNHCR. Many more refugees will be assisted with transport and basic essentials such as tarpaulins and cooking utensils to help them get on their feet. Recent returnees in Sinje said they were happy to be home. “Living in your own town is far better than staying in a refugee camp. We know that peace is here and there will be no more war. We are here to stay forever; make our farms without trouble and enjoy our country” said Musu Fahnbulleh, who returned last week after spending almost eight year in refugee camps in neighbouring Sierra Leone. So far, UNHCR calculates that some 70,000 refugees have been helped home since its repatriation programme began in October 2004. A further 163,871 Liberian refugees in camps across West Africa, are due to be helped home before the end of the year. Liberia’s first elected peace-time President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, also present of the ceremony in Sinje, said the return of refugees was a mark of confidence in her six month old government, and boosted prospects for continued peace in Liberia. Sirleaf called on the remaining refugees to return and help the battered country’s reconstruction efforts. “We urge those of our compatriots who are still in refugee camps to return home and join hands with those already here to rebuild our country. Reconstruction will not be done from outside,” President Sirleaf told reporters on Tuesday. But many Liberians say they are frightened that if they return to Liberia, they will be persecuted by the very people who drove them out in the first place. They want to be resettled to a third country, such as the United States, instead. Earlier this month, Liberian refugees living in Sierra Leone attacked UNHCR headquarters in the capital Freetown over plans to end their food distributions, saying they wanted to go to the US, not back to Liberia. The US government accepted several thousand Liberian refugees as part of a special emergency programme to relocate them from Cote d’Ivoire after fighting erupted in that country too. But that resettlement programme has long since finished, though a parallel programme to enable Liberians to bring their families to join them in the US will continue until later in the year. ak/ss/cr