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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

LIBERIA: Disarmament of combatants to start in January

MONROVIA, 29 October 2003 (IRIN) - The disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of Liberia's estimated 38,000 combatants will start in mid-January when United Nations peacekeepers expect to deploy throughout the country, UN officials have said.

The programme will provide education and skills training for the demobilised fighters and is estimated to cost about US $50 million. That works out at about $1,310 per combatant, they noted.

"The assessment we have done shows that most of them want to go back to school, but there are those above 18 who would require vocational skills," Elizabeth Odour-Noah, deputy resident representative of the UN Development Program (UNDP) in Liberia, told reporters on Tuesday

A National Commission on Demobilization, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) is to be set up to oversee the program. This will include representatives of the three warring parties in Liberia, the Economic Community of West African States, (ECOWAS) and the African Union.

The DDR programme will be carried out by the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), which currently has 4,500 blue berets on the ground, but expects to reach its full strength of 15,000 early next year.

Odour-Noah said: "The DDR policy is not money for guns or rice for guns. It will provide the combatants with packages for their socio-economic welfare so they can build their own capabilities for sustainable livelihood."

The combatants to be disarmed belong mainly to army units and militia groups loyal to former president Charles Taylor and two rebel groups; Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL).

However, the DDR programme will also cover members of various paramilitary groups which participated in earlier stages of Liberia's 14-year civil war.

Relief workers estimated that up to 70 percent of the combatants are below 18 years of age. Many were forcibly recruited into the ranks by the warring parties.

The relief workers said a similar disarmament exercise after the 1989 civil war which led to the election of former president Charles Taylor in 1997, did not cater for vocational and skills training for ex-combatants. This contributed to a resumption of full-scale civil war two years later.

Under the terms of a peace agreement signed in the Ghanaian capital, Accra on 18 August, the warring parties were supposed to confine their fighters at specific locations within the areas they control within 30 days.

However relief workers in Monrovia said there were still so many undisciplined, unpaid often drunk gunmen roaming Liberia’s villages and towns that it was difficult to tell which gunman belonged to which group.

The gunmen continue to engage each other in fighting. In September clashes between government and LURD fighters in Bong county in central Liberia sent nearly 100,000 displaced civilians on the run.

The Accra agreement created a two-year transitional government led by businessman, Gyude Bryant, which was sworn into office on 14 October.

Theme(s): (IRIN) Conflict

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