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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
LIBERIA: Thousands still in need of urgent relief aid, UN says
MONROVIA, 21 October 2003 (IRIN) - Thousands of Liberians caught up behind rebel lines deep in the interior have been without any assistance for several years and urgently need relief aid, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
The UN which sent a mission by helicopter on Saturday to assess the situation in Voinjama, the headquarters town of Lofa County in northwestern Liberia, said there was an urgent need for humanitarian agencies to quickly move into this and other rebel-held areas of the interior.
Abou Moussa, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Liberia, told a news conference that on Wednesday, the heads of UN agencies in Liberia would visit Buchanan, a port city 120 km southeast of Monrovia, which is controlled by the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) rebel group.
"We felt that apart from the regular visits by our staff, it is time for us to go there and see the progress of our assistance to the people and how best we can improve our activities on the ground," Moussa said.
Relief agencies have been carrying out food distribution, immunization campaigns and chlorination of water wells in Buchanan, the second largest city in Liberia, since the signing of a peace agreement in August ended 14 years of civil war.
People interviewed by the UN exploratory mission to Voinjama said thousands of civilians normally resident in the town were roaming the nearby bush searching for food. Voinjama is the headquarters of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD, the largest rebel group in the country . It has been off limits to relief agencies since 1999.
Moussa said: "Within the next seven to 10 days we will be going back to Voinjama with a humanitarian convoy because what we found there in the areas of health, education and other sectors require immediate response by the humanitarian community."
He said the UN would send a truck convoy carrying food and other relief items to the town, which lies on the Guinean border 307 km northwest of Monrovia.
Moses Okello, head of the UN refugee agency UNHCR in Liberia, said he was planning to reopen a UNHCR office in Zwedru, the headquarters town of Grand Gedeh County in southeastern Liberia. The area is under the control of MODEL.
"We are in discussion with MODEL authorities to see how we can move into Zwedru. We are looking at reestablishing our presence in Harper," Okello added.
Prior to the emergence of MODEL as a rebel movement in March, UNHCR had two offices in both Zwedru and Harper that assisted more than 41,000 Ivorian refugees who had fled a civil war in their own country. Harper is a port town near the border with Cote d'Ivoire .
The UN country plan for Liberia also calls for the opening of UN offices in Voinjama and the town of Gbarnga and Saclepea in north-central Liberia.
Relief workers said these would only be opened once UN peacekeepers had been deployed more fully in the interior. So far just over 4,500 blue helmets have arrived in Liberia and these are mainly deployed around Monrovia. The force is due to build up to a full strength of 15,000 men over the next three months.
The UN troops have recently begun to patrol some key highways like the Monrovia-Gbarnga road and relief workers said these patrols were likely to prompt an early resumption of food distribution in the interior by the UN World Food Programme (WFP)
WFP suspended food distribution outside the Monrovia area last week because of fears for the safety of its staff in the light of continuing skirmishes between government and rebel forces in the interior.
But WFP officials told IRIN on Tuesday that the organisation planned to resume food distribution to nearly 100,000 displaced people living in camps at Totota, Salala and Kakata on the road to Gbarnga early next week. Thereafter, it aimed to send some food by road to Buchanan and some by ship to Harper, they added.
Meanwhile UNICEF reported that it had successfully chlorinated 5,872 wells in Monrovia and its environs, as part of an emergency programme to improve the safety of drinking water. The wells provide water for hundreds of thousands of people in the city, but most are contaminated. Untreated wells have been widely blamed for fanning a cholera epidemic which has swept the capital in recent months.
Theme(s): (IRIN) Health & Nutrition
[ENDS]
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