LIBERIA: Aid groups say resettlement of displaced people is too hasty

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

MONROVIA, 6 May 2005 (IRIN) - International and local aid workers are critical of the haste with which displaced Liberians are being resettled, saying the pressure to get as many people as possible back home in time for crunch elections is stacking up problems.

Liberia, which is on the long road to reconstruction after 14 years of civil war, is due to hold presidential and parliamentary elections on 11 October. But authorities have banned voting in camps and said all internally displaced people (IDP) must return home to cast their ballot.

That, say some aid workers, means that people are being encouraged to go back to their original towns before proper arrangements have been put in place.

"The current process is politically driven.... we will be having elections in October and time is very short," said Edward Mulbah, the president of LINNK, an umbrella group of 310 Liberian non-governmental organisations.

The Norwegian Refugee Council argued the same point in a report published last month.

"There are concerns that the UN's desire for a success story ahead of October 2005 elections in Liberia is the main reason for what is widely seen as a rushed and poorly planned return and reintegration process," said Raymond Johansen, the council's secretary-general.

The Norwegian group said that in some of the more remote areas to which Liberian IDPs are returning, the 15,000-strong UN peacekeeping force had little or no presence and so the safety of returnees was a major concern.

Another common complaint is that not enough time has been spent coordinating the finer logistical points of getting people home.

Olivier Bousquet, the head of the International Organisation for Migration in Liberia, told IRIN that there had been riots last week in the Maimu camps in the central Bong County.

People about to leave the camps got angry because there were not enough blankets and cooking utensils to give them before they returned home, nor enough cash to help them cover the cost of getting to their village, he said.

"This (rioting) caused us to suspend all our activities and withdraw the field staff from the camps until a proper coordination mechanism is put in place," Bousquet explained. "And this is just one of the problems we experience, always because of the lack of strategy."

Returnees frustrated

Abraham Bavor, a district commissioner in neighbouring Bomi County painted a similar picture of frustration, this time sparked by promised food rations not being available to those who had returned home.

[ENDS]