UN urges refugees to wait for repatriation programme

The head of the United Nations refugees agency (UNHCR) in Liberia, Moses Okello, has urged more than 300,000 Liberian refugees scattered across West Africa not to return home, but wait for a UN-organised repatriation exercise scheduled to begin in October. Okello told reporters on Thursday that most of the 50,000 refugees who have spontaneously returned to Liberia from both Guinea and Sierra Leone since the signing of an August peace deal have ended up in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. “It is a very sad thing. People are coming back from one camp and ending up in another camp. Our desire is that Liberians in countries of asylum should wait until an organised repatriation can take place so they do not end up in camps, but rather go to their places of origin,” Okello said. Okello estimated 50,000 refugees had returned to Liberia, of whom about 10,000 came from Sierra Leone, while 40, 000 were documented to have arrived from Guinea. Of these returnees, the bulk have ended up in two crowded IDP camps – Perry Town and Siegbeh - on the western outskirts of the capital, Monrovia. “UNHCR is providing them shelters within the IDP camps, food, medical support and other facilities such water and sanitation”, Okello said. A fortnight ago, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Liberia Abou Moussa announced that an organised repatriation of Liberian refugees would commence in October as the rainy season comes to an end. During the summer rains, many of Liberia’s dirt roads become treacherous and overland travel is near impossible, according to humanitarian workers. Okello said the October dateline for repatriation is meant to allow for progress to be made in the ongoing disarmament and demobilisation of an estimated 40,000 Liberian fighters. “We hope by then conditions in the interior would be much more conducive for returnees to come back,” Okello added. With barely six months left before official repatriation begins, Okello said that UNHCR has already opened six sub-offices in key locations in rural Liberia to handle the process. Those offices are in Gbarnga, servicing central Liberia; Saclepea, Nimba County and Voinjama, Lofa County for the north; Tubmanburg in Bomi County for the north-western region and Zwedru in Grand Gedeh County for the northeast. Another office in Rivercess will service the south-eastern side of Liberia which borders Cote d’Ivoire. According to Okello, the office in Voinjama is already operational and has been assisting Liberians returning from nearby Guinea. Okello said at present his agency is faced with funding problems for the repatriation programme. “Funding is a problem for UNHCR. We have a budget of US$ 39.2 million for these activities, it is very expensive affairs, and we have a shortfall at the moment of US$ 25.2 million. We have sent out appeals, we have responses, some of them very generous.” At the same time UNHCR issued a reminder that assistance for Sierra Leonean refugees would be terminated at the end of June and appealed to all Sierra Leone refugees within Liberia to return home before the programme ended. “Over a period of three years we have assisted well over 30,000 Sierra Leone refugees to back home. We hope that by the end of June we would have assisted all of the Sierra Leone refugees to return to their country”. Early March, the UN resumed repatriating of 13,000 Sierra Leonean refugees in Liberia by trucks. The decision to transport the refugees overland was enabled by the deployment of UN peacekeepers along the Liberian-Sierra Leonean borders.