IDPs return home to the southeast

A shipload of 343 internally displaced persons (IDPs) returned home on Wednesday to south-eastern Liberia, the executive director of the Liberia Refugee Repatriation and Resettlement Commission (LRRRC), Alexander Kunu told IRIN on Thursday. The IDPs left Monrovia on Sunday and they had arrived within four nautical miles of the south-eastern port of Grenville on Monday, when the engine of their boat failed. They had to wait on board for two days until it could be fixed, according to Kunu. Their arrival brought to roughly 1,200 the number of people from the southeast who have returned home under a programme run by the LRRRC for some 10,884 persons who were displaced by fighting in Monrovia in September 1997, Kunu said. The fighting pitted soldiers loyal to President Charles Taylor and former rebels from the Krahn ethnic group from southeast Liberia. The vast majority of the IDPs on the programme, Kunu said, were Krahn. The LRRRC has also resettled all but 11,000 out of a total of 157,000 persons who had been living in recognised IDP shelters after being forced from their homes by Liberia’s 1989-1997 civil war. The time frame within which it will be able to resettle the other IDPs will depend on how much help it gets from the international community, according to Kunu, who said donor response has been slow.