SCF worried about vulnerable IDPs

Save the Children Fund (SCF) has expressed concern over the fate of vulnerable people displaced by recent fighting in northern Liberia. “The status of mothers and children on the road is particularly bad,” SCF said in a news release on Friday. It said the fighting between government forces and armed dissidents, formerly concentrated in areas near the border with Guinea, had spread southward towards the localities of Tarvey and Gelmah.

SCF said there was “great concern for those who fled back into the bush and those in the forest on their way to Tarvey”. It said the number of displaced people in the affected area was close to 6,000 and that some of them urgently needed clean water, food and shelter.

For example, it said, one of the area’s communities, Amtel, has hosted more than 2,500 IDPs since 1 April. They have mostly been sleeping in the open, diarrhoea has been increasing and there are a number of heavily pregnant women with no facilities to ensure a safe, clean birth, SCF said. Moreover, the security situation is fragile, it said.

Since the start of April, a team comprising international and national humanitarian agencies, including SCF, has been monitoring the southward movement of people from Tarvey, according to SCF, which said it helped women and children in a bad condition to reach Amtel.

SCF also gave supplies to local schools that have been taking in IDP children.