UN food and repatriation schemes threatened by funding shortfall

More than 300,000 Liberians will go hungry at the end of this year while thousands more living abroad as refugees will be unable to come home unless donors provide US$ 34 million of additional funding in the very near future, two of the biggest UN relief agencies in Liberia said. The refugee agency UNHCR complained earlier this week of a US$ 23 million shortfall in funding that threatens the planned launch of its repatriation programme in October. And the World Food Programme (WFP) has told IRIN that it still needs US$ 11 million to buy food for the rest of this year for a hungry population struggling to rebuild their lives after 14 years of civil war. "You cannot have a stable situation if you have over 300,000 people going hungry," Justin Bagirishya, the head of WFP in Liberia said in an interview on Tuesday. "The big problem is if people start rioting." "Between now and the end of December, we need about US$ 11 million for more than 19,000 metric tonnes of food to see the country through until the end of the year," Bagirishya added. Each month on average some 500,000 people receive food assistance from the WFP. One in six of Liberia's three million inhabitants is directly dependent on international food aid. The 10,000 residents of Mount Barclay camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) in the eastern suburbs of Monrovia receive essential rations of bulghur wheat, beans, oil, protein-rich corn-soya blend, salt and sugar. Although some petty trading of surplus food takes place within the camp, its inhabitants are entirely dependent on WFP handouts. "WFP give us food to eat every month and for that we are thankful," Hawa Sah, the representative of women on the camp, told IRIN. Liberia is currently in the middle of its lean season when foodstuffs are in short supply as people await the next harvest at the end of the rainy season in October. But even in these circumstances, WFP is having to put a break on any expansion of its programme. "Already as we speak, we are having to instruct colleagues to stop expanding our interventions up-country because if we don't have the resources, we should not be raising the hopes of the population," Bagirishya said. Food distribution programmes that were already underway would continue so long as WFP still had stocks to hand out, he added. UNHCR complained of a similar cash crunch. It aims to repatriate some 300,000 refugees from Sierra Leone, Guinea, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria between October 2004 and the end of 2006. But just three months before the repatriation programme kicks off, donor contributions are in short-supply. Andrew Mbogori, the reintegration officer for UNHCR-Liberia, said the organisation had appealed for US$ 39 million but only US$ 16 million had been received. He said initial funds had been spent on establishing UNHCR branches offices and transit centres around Liberia, but more cash was needed. "The slow pace of donor funding will have implications on the repatriation programmes. We need additional funds for trucking and airlifting refugees and providing resettlement packages to those would-be returnees," Mbogori said on Tuesday. UNHCR wants to bring 100,000 Liberians back home between October and the end of the year, of whom 40,000 would be transported by truck from neighbouring countries. "If the funding is not made available, we could not bring some of those we want to truck back home," Mbogori said, without giving further details.