Dateline ACT

Liberia 01/02

ACT members help displaced people

Geneva, April 30, 2002
Text by Rainer Lang
Photos by Rainer Lang (2) and Callie Long (2)

With the fighting between rebels and government troops intensifying in Liberia, more and more people are becoming internally displaced. Members of Action by Churches Together (ACT) International - the Concerned Christian Communities (CCC), a member of the Liberia Christian Council (LCC), and Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Liberia - are assisting those who have had to flee their homes. After the latest fighting thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Belefani, Bong county, had to leave their camp for a safer place. The government has declared a state of emergency.

At the beginning of April 2002 CCC reported that the dissidents had stepped up attacks in strategic areas in western and central Liberia. In Suehn, the Baptist Mission was reportedly burnt down and some civilians killed. Then the fighting reached Kakata where two Lebanese were killed and buildings were burnt down. Kakata is the central town of Margibi County and considered a student center, where thousands of people reside, CCC points out. The town is also a transit point to most of rural Liberia. Tubmanburg was attacked again. The town of 20,000 persons was deserted after heavy fighting in March 2002.

The prospect for young people in Liberia is grim. Cynthia Benson attended the Baking Class of the Lutheran Urban Ministry Home Arts Training Programme in Liberia’s capital Monrovia. In the three month course she and 26 other young women were taught how to bake bread so that the participants could open their own small shops - in other classes of the Lutheran Training Programme the participants learnt how to dye, to make soap or how to preserve food. But with the intensifying civil conflict in the country there are very few new business opportunities.

Cynthia Benson had to stop going to school in 1995 because of a brutal civil war in the country. The 24-year old woman had to flee her home in the southeastern part of Liberia and came with her family to Monrovia to make a new start. And she hoped for peace in the country like all the other young women in the training programme.

Since last year the fighting has again escalated throughout the country. At the end of April 2002 people in northern and central Liberia were reportedly running away from a new upsurge in the fighting between government troops and dissident forces known as the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD).

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that thousands of people fled the latest fighting. IDPs in central Liberia left their camps in Belefanai, Bong County – an area about 150 miles away from Monrovia, where CCC has a program for sexually abused women and girls who benefit from trauma and HIV/AIDS counseling, medical and material relief (food and non-food items), skills training and income generation assistance.

The IDPs who had previously fled the fighting between rebels and government troops in nearby Lofa County, had been living in two camps near Belefanai. Most of those who fled have now sought refuge in Weinsu, 15 kilometers south of the provincial town of Gbarnga that is already host to 15,000 displaced people. Gbarnga is the main town in Bong, the county next to Lofa, where most of the fighting between government troops and rebels has occured. Counselors and nurses of CCC who were working in Belefani have moved to Gbarnga as well. CCC takes care of about 100 women and girls who have suffered sexual abuse.

ACT member Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Liberia reports that they had just assumed management responsibilities of the Belefani IDP camp - which was home to 12,000 IDPs - ,in northern Bong near the Guinean border, when people began evacuating the camp after continuous shooting of small arms and heavy mortar fire in the vicinity. LWF reports that the IDPs now are so scared that they don’t wish to return even if the Belefanai area is declared safe again. The IDPs want to remain close to Lofa county from where they had to flee, in order to return to their Lofa homes as soon as possible. Their hopes have now been dashed.

About 2,000 IDPs from Belefanai have made their way through dense bush to the next camp called TV Towers, LWF reports. However the TV Tower camp cannot accommodate more people and they have to leave again. It is presumed they will move closer to the capital Monrovia which is relatively safer. The capital is overcrowded with displaced persons who have been seeking shelter in the city for the last ten years.