6 August – The United Nations today launched an appeal for some $69 million in emergency aid for war-torn Liberia, with Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other UN officials urging world governments to seize the opportunity to help end the unnecessary suffering of nearly 1 million Liberians and to let them know they are not alone in the quest for development and peace.
As the roll-out of peacekeeping troops continues on the ground in Liberia, UN humanitarian agencies and their non-governmental partners gathered at the world body's New York Headquarters to launch the revised appeal, where about $22 million of the total will be sought to buy food, $9 million to care for the staggering number of homeless and refugees - estimated to be about 450,000 in the war-wrecked capital Monrovia alone - and $8.5 million for urgent to meet health care needs, U.N. officials said.
The poverty-stricken West African country of about 3.2 million people has been gripped by war on and off for 14 years. An estimated 80 per cent of the population lives on less than a dollar a day. Since June, nearly non-stop fighting between Liberian rebels and government forces has devastated Monrovia. Countless civilians have been killed or wounded and thousands of others have streamed into the capital seeking refuge from the fighting. Many have been living in the streets with little if any access to clean water, sanitation and food. UN agencies now say the city is in the grips of a cholera epidemic.
In a statement delivered by his Special Representative for Liberia, Jacques Paul Klein, the Secretary-General said "logic of this emergency appeal is simple: without urgent action, more lives will be lost." He urged international donors to support the appeal to help avert "an acute humanitarian crisis, which was now affecting some 1 million men, women and children.and communities now facing the additional burden of hosting hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced form their homes."
Mr. Annan also demanded that the parties to the Liberian conflict "cease their fighting immediately and allow humanitarian aid to reach the people who so desperately need it." He added that the deployment of the Multinational Force will be critical for ensuring such access, but that is only a first step: providing adequate relief in Monrovia would undoubtedly be difficult, but addressing the dire situation in the rest of the country - virtually cut-off from aid for months - "would present equally formidable challenges."
For his part, Mr. Klein said Liberia was a country in the lead - with strong historical ties to the United Sates and a founding member of the UN. Politically, Liberia was a key to survival and stability in the whole of West Africa, he stressed, adding that if appeals to help the country met with indifference or were ignored altogether, much of the good done in the region " risked coming to nothing."
The UN's earlier appeal for Liberia, launched in November 2002, raised only about a fifth of the $25.3 million requested, excluding food aid, officials have said. Including food, that earlier appeal totalled $42 million. Though all projects in the original appeal remain valid, new projects - water trucking, health promotion and reintegration of former child combatants - have been added to respond to the increased humanitarian needs.
Carolyn McAskie, the Deputy to the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, outlined the details of the three-phase Revised Appeal, which will cover the period from July to December, and presents a plan of action divided into three operational phases, each of which is closely tied to the prevailing security situation.
She said that funding activities had been divided into several sectors, including mine action, food, refugee protection and return, shelter and other needed elements and also included communications. The first phase covers the limited activities that can be attempted during the current insecure environment. The second and third phases assume an improving security environment, in which the scope and scale of assistance will be increased, initially for Monrovia and then outward into the rest of Liberia.
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