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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
LIBERIA: NGO warns UN not to rush disarmament
ABIDJAN, 4 December 2003 (IRIN) - The United Nations risks launching a disarmament campaign in Liberia without sufficient UN peacekeepers on the ground and without adequate rehabilitation programmes in place to ensure that combatants are successfully reintegrated into civilian life, Refugees International said on Thursday.
The Washington-based pressure group expressed concern that disarmament was due to begin this week with only 5,000 of the planned 15,000 UN peacekeeping troops actually deployed in Liberia
It also warned that international relief agencies had so far been focussing mainly on the care of people displaced from their homes by Liberia's 14-year civil war and had limited capacity to support the reintegration of an estimated 38,000 combatants at short notice.
"RI is concerned....that UNMIL is under pressure to apply DDRR (Disarmament, Demobilisation, Rehabilitation and Reintegration) before the programmes are in place to ensure effective implementation of the UN's stated objective," the organisation said in a statement following a recent mission to Liberia.
"DDRR programmes in Liberia have been implemented unsuccessfully twice before and each time combatants took up arms again. It is imperative that the current DDRR process is a success," it added.
Raul Carrera, a disarmament officer with the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), told IRIN by telephone from Monrovia on Thursday that the United Nations was working as fast as possible to open its first disarmament and demobilisation camps next Sunday.
Carrera said one camp for former government soldiers at Scheifflin barracks near Monrovia would definitely be ready by the target date. But he admitted that another disarmament camp for LURD rebel fighters in Tubmanburg, 50 km north of Monrovia and a third for MODEL combatants in Buchanan, 120 km southeast of the capital, would probably take longer to set up.
Refugees International agreed that it was urgent to start disarming Liberia's three armed factions, noting that their idle fighters had spent much of their time harassing civilians since the signing of a peace agreement nearly four months ago.
The organisation said former combatants were still "feeding themselves with their guns," and committing atrocities. But it noted: "Currently, there are no incentives for them to do otherwise. With a nationwide unemployment rate of 85 percent there are no opportunities for them to find work."
Carrera said UNMIL had already been forced to make an unofficial start to disarmament because several hundred starving fighters had come forward spontaneously to surrender their guns.
"Many combatants came to us demanding to disarm voluntarily. They are living under very difficult conditions - with no food to eat. So they came to us to ask to be disarmed," Carrera said. "It was difficult for us to reject them in such conditions."
He added: "Even though some of the cantonment sites will not be ready, we will start. Already in Scheifflin in Monrovia, we have registered more than 800. We are providing food, medical services and other needs to those."
Refugees International pointed out that UNMIL was still operating at only one third of its full strength and was therefore unable to deploy peacekeeping troops in most of the interior. It expressed concern that there was therefore no military pressure for most Liberian fighters to disarm and demobilise.
UNMIL is expected to reach its full strength of 15,000 in late February or early March. At the moment its forces are only deployed in and around Monrovia and along strategic highways leading to the south and the east.
Carrera said: "The only site where we have good security so far is Scheifflin. But we will ensure the others too are secure." he said.
"The LURD and MODEL camps require more work because the combatants have not yet clearly come out to express interest. But we are working on that," he said.
All three warring factions threatened last week to hold up the start of disarmament unless they were given more top jobs in the broad-based transitional government led by Gyude Bryant.
However, LURD (Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy) and followers of former president Charles Taylor have since backed down.
A UN spokesman said on Wednesday that MODEL (Movement for Democracy in Liberia) had also agreed to start disarmament on schedule, but the rebel group has not yet made any public statement on the matter.
The former combatants are expected to spend up to three weeks in the cantonment sites, which will cater for up to 1,000 at a time. They will then be released and given a lump sum of money - about US $300 according to diplomatic sources - before being channeled into education, training and income generation programmes to help them adjust back to civilian life.
Refugees International said these rehabilitation and reitegration projects were crucial to the success of disarmament, but it warned that most non-governmental organisations (NGO) were not yet geared up to handle them.
"Providing reintegration assistance, the most challenging aspect of the DDRR process, will present difficulties," it warned "Programmes must be in place to provide food and money to demobilized combatants in the cantonment camps and perhaps for a period of time to help them reintegrate into society. Job training and education programmes must be established."
It recommended training many of the former combatants as forest wardens.
But Refugees International added: "International NGOs are concerned about their capacity to support reintegration programmes at such short notice, especially when many agencies are also taksed with providing emergency assistance to IDPs (internatlly displaced people."
"Aid agencies are concerned that frustrated and unemployed ex-combatants will end up languishing in Monrovia or in the overcrowded IDP camps that ring Monrovia."
Refugees International said an estimated 15,000 child combatants would need formal education, while women fighters would also need to be specially provided for.
"Many of the women are considered to be 'camp followers' but were actually fighters who should receive similar benefits to the male combatants," it said. "Women and child former combatants have different needs and motivations than traditionally male combatants."
Refugees International urged donors to fully fund UNMIL, so that it could deploy throughout Liberia as soon as possible and ensure that the special needs of women and children were "mainstreamed into all stages of DDRR."
It noted that donors had so far provided less than half the US $50 million needed to finance the DDRR programme. "As of now there is little money for civic education, human rights training, career counseling or psycho-social counseling," it said.
Theme(s): (IRIN) Conflict
[ENDS]
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