IRIN Focus on IDPs and refugees

After Liberia’s civil war ended in 1997, many displaced people returned to their communities only to find they no longer existed,Samuel Brown, executive director of the Liberia Refugee Repatriation and Resettlement Commission (LRRRC), told IRIN. The LRRRC says it needs to strengthen the capacity of the remaining communities to attract people, including some of the close to 100,000 IDPs in and around Monrovia, to return to the countryside and stay. Between 4,000 and 5,000 displaced persons squat in Monrovia in unfinished highrises, homes, schools and other abandoned buildings such as the once elegant but now mildewed Ducor Intercontinental Hotel and the unfinished housing bank. The IDPs’ situation is worsened by the lack of running water and electricity in Monrovia and its choked sewer systems. “We talk to them, and they want to go home,” Brown said. However, the LRRRC says all it can do for now is register all the IDPs in the country. At the last census, in 1997, there were 157,000 displaced persons in about 36 camps many more outside. The LRRRCs programme officer, James Youquoi, said although the United Nations did not have a specific mandate on IDPs, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) “has consistently assisted” his commission in getting funds. The International Federation of the Red Cross, the British Red Cross and SIDA, the Swedish aid agency, have also helped, he said. With this aid, the LRRRC has been able to relocate 126,243 IDPs since 1998. Youquoi said 300 more were registered for transportation to the southeastern counties of Grand Gedeh, Sinoe and Maryland, but there was no money for the operation. Logistical impediments There is another major impediment: Liberia is at the height of its rainy season and most roads are impassable. This has meant shipping IDPs to the southeastern ports of Grenville and Harper for onward transportation to inland destinations. But resettlement is not just about moving people, Youquoi said, IDPs need the capacity to rebuild their lives. “What is being provided to these people is so minimal that it is barely (enough) to start something,” he said. Each individual gets one 10 X 16-foot (3 X 4.8-metre) sheet of plastic, two cutlasses, one hoe, one kilogramme of nails, twine and a bag of laundry soap. The Liberian Red Cross provides footware and used clothing. “We are unable to do steady monitoring of the coping mechanisms. We need jeeps, we need trucks,” Youquoi said. The UNHCR loaned the LRRRC five trucks a month ago to move IDPs but the Liberian agency says it needs more so they can be prepositioned to move people inland. Reason for resettling southeasterners first The LRRRC gave priority to moving southeasterners from Monrovia because they came from the same region as the late President Samuel Doe. Since Doe’s former enemies now rule Liberia, Youquoi said, people from the southeast felt they might be associated with the former leader and thus become targets. “So staying in Monrovia was almost like a threat to them, through people were not directly pursuing them,” he said. Another compelling factor was a gun battle on the weekend of 18 September 1998 between government forces and supporters of a former faction leader who, like Doe, was a Krahn from the southeast. The fighting caused heavy damage to property and forced residents of the affected area to flee. Many of them were southeasterners. The current situation The LRRRC is still looking for aid for the IDPs and needs between US $1 million to $1.5 million to strengthen its capacity for intervention. It needs communications to link its regional offices to each other and to headquarters so that coordination can be possible but money has not been forthcoming from the cash-strapped government. “So, the IDPs may continue to remain in Monrovia till they can go home on their own,” Youquoi said. Sierra Leonean Refugees Even if it resettles the IDPs, the LRRRC must still care for the Sierra Leonean refugees in Liberia. It serves as the government’s main interlocutor with the UNHCR, which says about 37,000 of the Sierra Leoneans are receiving material aid in Grand Cape Mount and Montserrado counties in the west. Another 42,000 are in upper Lofa County in the north - 12,000 in Vahun and 30,000 in Foya. “They don’t get UNHCR assistance because a natural process of integration is going on,” Ebou Camara, the UNHCR representative in Liberia, told IRIN in early July. When offered help, he said, many chose to remain in Vahun insisting they could fend for themselves. However, the UNHCR does provide water, health, sanitation and food to those in Grand Cape Mount and Montserrado. “These will continue under this programme as long as they are not able to go home voluntarily,” Camara said. Once conditions are conducive, he said, the UNHCR would promote repatriation. This would be done, for example, by using radios in the camps to inform inmates of the conditions back home and programmes that would support their resettlement. Returning refugees LRCCR data shows that as of June, 367,384 Liberian refugees had returned home, but officials told IRIN Mandingos and Krahns still remained in neighbouring Sierra Leone, fearful of being attacked if they went back. Before the civil conflict started in 1989, Mandingos and another ethnic group, the Loma, lived in relative peace in upper Lofa but during the war Mandingos were accused of siding with the Krahn and most fled to Guinea. The Loma who, Brown said, identified with other factions, also accused Mandingos of desecrating their shrines and abusing their culture. When the UNHCR started repatriating Mandingos to the eastern Lofa village of Borkeza, the community there grew to 6,000 - including other displaced people. They were provided with hand pumps, wells, clinics, boreholes and, Camara said, “soon became a thriving community”. But in 1998 the community was attacked and 30 huts were burnt. Most of the Mandingos fled again. Although a national commission on reconciliation has since brokered peace between the two groups, some Mandingos are still reluctant to return. “I think it’s a function of what happened in Lofa last year, especially in April and August 1999 - the two separate incidents which the government attributed to incursions by dissidents,” Camara said. As a consequence of the two incidents, some 10,000 new refugees ended up in the Macenta area of Guinea. When refugees return home, the UNHCR works with local and international NGOs to implement quick impact projects such as the rehabilitation of basic infrastructure for water, health, sanitation and education, and microcredit schemes. “We try to concentrate, as much as possible, on known areas of return (Lofa, Grand Gedeh, Maryland) and we do not make a distinction between returnees from asylum, local communities that never left, and returnees from internal displacement,” Camara said.