Focus on IDPs

Security and resources are the two main sources of concern for relief workers who have been trying to help tens of thousands of people displaced by fighting in northern Liberia's Lofa County, humanitarian sources in the Liberian capital told IRIN. "Our first problem is scarce resources," one NGO official said. "There is a big question mark with regard to the donors because we still do not know what they are prepared to do, and this is a big problem for the humanitarian community here." The word coming out of recent coordination meetings involving relief organisations in Monrovia is that many NGOs can sustain their activities on behalf of internally displaced persons (IDPs) only until September and "this is only because they are stretching their resources, because they are using them efficiently," Trang Nguyen, an intern with the International Rescue Committee (IRC), told IRIN. "If the caseload increases, she said, that would put extra pressure on them." The caseload has, in fact, been increasing, according to the Liberian Refugee, Repatriation and Resettlement Commission (LRRRC), a state body whose mandate includes supervising and coordinating IDP-related activities. Up to 23 July, 32,620 persons had been registered in the country's six IDP camps. "These are people who have been verified and assisted, but people come in daily," LRRRC Executive Director Samuel Brown told IRIN. Brown said another 5,000 IDPs who had sought refuge in villages were being relocated to camps, while an estimated 10,000 persons were living with relatives in Monrovia. Clashes in Lofa between pro-government and dissident forces began about three years ago. Since then people have constantly been on the move, according to the LRRRC. "This is their seventh time fleeing and so they are not in a hurry to go back," Brown said. "It started in 1999. They came, and after some time they would go back. But this time it is more sustained." One sign that the refugees are unlikely to return to their villages in the next few weeks is that many have signed up for NGO-run agricultural programmes under which they are provided with seeds and tools, relief workers said. The latest round of displacements started around February, but picked up in early May following the outbreak of fighting in the districts of Salayea and Zorzor, humanitarian sources told IRIN. Henry Massaquoi and his family were among the thousands who went on the move around that time. When his village in Zorzor was attacked on the night of 9 May, Massaquoi, his wife and their four children aged 8, 11, 15 and 18 walked for a day and a half to Gbalatuah, a transit centre for IDPs. A fifth child aged five years was carried by his older relatives. This was not the first time Massaquoi had been forced to leave his home. After graduating in 1978 as a teacher, he taught for nine years, went to an agriculture college for a year and then fled to Guinea in 1993, at the height of Liberia's civil war. He remained there for four years, returned to Liberia in 1997 and went back to Lofa, where he taught at a junior high school. Now, four years later, he is one of just over 25,000 IDPs registered by 23 July in four camps in Bong, the county east of Lofa. Close to 2,500 were in Bopolu, the administrative centre of Gbarpolu, a new county which used to be known as Lower Lofa. About 4,400 others were in Jenemana camp, along the border with Sierra Leone, according to LRRRC figures for 23 July. Various UN agencies and non-governmental organisations have been providing assistance to the IDPs, who include many of the 44,971 former refugees who went back to Lofa (including Gbarpolu) with the help of UNHCR after the civil war in the 1990s. Some relief agencies have built wells. Others have provided sanitation facilities, medical care, food, tools and seeds. Yet others have been involved in protection activities, including reunifying separated children from their families. IDPs are totally dependent on whatever assistance they can get from relief bodies, humanitarian workers told IRIN. A few also participate in the effort to help their fellow IDPs. MSF-France told IRIN that IDPs formed the bulk of the local staff at health clinics which it has been running in some of the camps. Schools run by NGOs are also staffed by displaced teachers. Massaquoi, for example, teaches at one of three schools run by the IRC in the Bong County camps, with support from UNICEF. The IRC had anticipated about 2,000 pupils but has 3,460 children on register in the three schools. "We need benches, chairs and tables for pupils and teachers," said the IRC's Education Programe Manager in Bong, Myrline Keculah, herself a former refugee. For the time being children sit on the floor but she hopes to procure benches if the IDPs remain displaced beyond September, when the new school year starts. There are other needs, too, IDPs said. Some complained that their shelters were small. Others said they had little clothing, a cry echoed by the LRRRC, which itself is prevented from adequately performing its functions - which include coordinating and monitoring the relief effort - by a shortage of human and financial resources. However, addressing the material needs is likely to be simpler than solving less visible ones, such as repairing the effects the war and the subsequent insecurity have had on children. Keculah, who served as principal of two refugee high schools during the seven years she spent in Guinea, knows from experience the effects war and displacement have on children. Many of them are traumatised, she told IRIN. Their ability to learn, to analyse, is also affected by their experiences, such as seeing their parents beaten, being maltreated themselves. Some mature before their time, and become parents at an early age. Generally, their education is disrupted. Those enrolled in her schools, for example, range in age from six to 25 years. Relief groups have another major concern: security. According to another humanitarian worker, NGOs tried in vain to get the government to relocate some of the camps. "We're a bit worried about the security situation for those people if something happens," the official said. He pointed out that while three of the Bong camps are close to the county seat, Gbarnga, the northernmost camp, Belefanai, "is too close to Lofa and too far (about 70 km)from Gbarnga," while Bopolu is "in the middle of nowhere" and "the road is bad, so access is going to be difficult if it rains too much". Incursions reported in Gbarpolu County during last week lent extra weight to the NGOs' fears.