Four-country Tour by CWS Peace Delegation Prompts Aid to West African Refugees
Episcopal News Service. August 2, 2002 [2002-185]
Carol Fouke-Mpoyo, Communications Director for the National Council of Churches and was a CWS delegate and media liaison for the peace delegation
(CWS) The findings of a just-completed Church World Service peace delegation to West Africa are already galvanizing emergency response to the troubled region by the international humanitarian aid agency and its partners.
The Rev. Benjamin Musoke-Lubega, partnership officer for Africa of the Episcopal Church and a CWS board member, and Kirsten Laursen, an Episcopalian and CWS deputy director for programs, were part of the eight-member delegation that went to Guinea, the Gambia, Sierra Leone and Liberia July 2-18 in response to an invitation from church councils in the four neighboring countries.
Led by the Rev. John L. McCullough, CWS executive director, the delegation immersed itself in the people's struggles and hopes in a region battered by poverty and civil wars that have spilled refugees across one another's borders.
Open conflict between rebel and government forces in Liberia has sent tens of thousands of Liberians fleeing for safety across the border to Sierra Leone in recent weeks. Based on the immediate needs the delegation reported from its visit July 2-18, CWS is shipping more than $100,000 in supplies for Liberian refugees in and around Freetown, Sierra Leone. The shipment includes CWS blankets, health and baby kits along with additional supplies donated by CWS partner Lutheran World Relief.
Concurrently, CWS is seeking to raise an additional $100,000 to support the efforts of CWS partners, including the Council of Churches in Sierra Leone (CCSL), the United Brethren in Christ and the Baptist Convention of Sierra Leone, in caring for this new influx of refugees.
Funds raised also will help Sierra Leoneans displaced during that country's devastating, 11-year civil war get back on their feet. The war ended in January, 2002.
An estimated 25,000 Liberians have entered Sierra Leone since January. As many as 500 border crossings an hour have been reported by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), fleeing the conflict between Liberian government forces and the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD).
Reports by the CWS delegation and other sources say many of the Liberian refugees and Sierra Leone's own returnees are ill, require medical attention, and some are in severe need of food.
On the heels of its peacebuilding delegation, and beyond immediate emergency response action, CWS is accelerating further support plans for West Africa. A team of CWS emergency response and immigration specialists is already on the ground in the troubled region.
Dr. Susanne Riveles, CWS director of education and advocacy for international justice and human rights; Joe Roberson, director of CWS immigration and refugee programs, and Ivan DeKam, CWS emergency response program, are now visiting councils of churches and partners in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Ghana.
They are responding to the CWS peace delegation's accounts of the deep wounds and critical needs that were echoed across much of the West Africa sub-region. The program team is focusing on issues of refugees and the internally displaced, special needs of women and children affected by conflict, peace and reconciliation, and long-term needs for trauma care and counseling.
CWS advocacy staff also are arranging visits for members of the delegation to debrief government leaders in Washington, D.C., in the coming weeks, hoping to galvanize more stable financial and political support for the struggling countries.
Wide range of encounters
In an intensive 16-day tour, the CWS delegates traveled across the four-country region, meeting with church councils, government leaders, UN officials and NGO partners, and visiting refugee, IDP and amputee camps and sites destroyed by war.
Musoke-Lubega said he was especially moved by visits to Liberian refugees who have sought safety in camps in Kenema District in Sierra Leone's northeast and to a war amputees camp in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital city.
"The refugees have nothing, the host communities have nothing, the Sierra Leoneans returning have nothing. You have everybody desperate, with nothing," he said, emphasizing the need for peace in Liberia and for peacebuilding and development in Sierra Leone.
At the amputees camp in Freetown, Musoke-Lubega was deeply moved by the little boy, now 4, whose right leg had been chopped off below the knee by rebels when he was only 2 months old. "I have a son that child's age," he said. "The visit to the amputee camp was a very good experience for me although it was very troubling. It brought out that the amputees aren't getting as much attention as others."
In a final press conference July 17 in Monrovia, Liberia's capital city, the delegation decried the "alarming, continuing destabilization" that the region is experiencing. "The crisis situations prevailing in this sub-region and the plight of the people who feel that their basic human rights are severely compromised have become a matter of deep concern," the delegation said.
As other delegation members making their way back to the United States, on July 18 Victor Hsu, senior advisor to the executive director of Church World Service, met with Liberia's President Charles Taylor.
It is estimated that one third of Liberia's population is displaced by fighting
between the Liberian military and rebel forces (LURD). A flurry of peace conference efforts may hint at reconciliation, but the country's condition remains critical, on top of a debilitated economy and virtually non-existent infrastructure.
Unemployment in Liberia in the formal sector is at 80 percent, U.S. Ambassador to Liberia Bismarck Myrick told the CWS peace delegation on July 15, and many who are employed are not getting paid. "Illiteracy is at 80 percent," he said. "There is no central water or electrical systems that work, not even in the capital. Health care facilities are inadequate."
Taylor: "The problem of Liberia is the United States"
Taylor asserted that "the problem of Liberia is the United States," Hsu reported. "Taylor asked, ‘Why does the U.S. hate us Liberians so much? My people have suffered too much, under both U.S. and UN imposed sanctions.'"
He also charged that the United States has been training Guinean soldiers to infiltrate Liberia. "Liberia always regarded the U.S. as a big brother, a good friend and ally," Taylor told Hsu. "If the U.S. wants to, it can dramatically change the situation in Liberia immediately."
Taylor told Hsu that he hoped that CWS would convey to the Bush administration the desire of the Liberian government to receive a high level delegation from the U.S., to hold talks on ways and means of improving relations between the two. Hsu said he replied that the CWS peace delegation would be sharing its report with the Bush administration, members of Congress, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and the secretariat of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Hsu said Taylor told him he was "pleased to work with President Kabbah of Sierra Leone" to help bring about peace in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea--three countries joined in what is called the Mano River Union. Taylor confirmed that a second meeting of the heads of state of the Mano River Union would be held early in August.
"Taylor's call for a high level meeting with the U.S. is newsworthy," Hsu said after the meeting. "The continuing peace process of the Mano River Union is also noteworthy. Without peace or ceasefire there won't be much effective humanitarian aid outside Monrovia. And without an urgent ceasefire, fair, open and inclusive elections scheduled for early in 2003 can't be held."
While in Liberia, the delegation also met with the Liberian Council of Churches' executive committee, with Liberia's foreign minister Monie Captan, and with government officials working to organize a "Liberian National Conference on Peace and Reconciliation."
The Liberian Christian Women's Peace Initiative used the occasion of a meeting between a broad group of Liberian church leaders and the CWS delegation to issue its own statement asking for an immediate ceasefire by both government and LURD forces. Liberia's interreligious council has been advocating for peace for some time, talking to government and rebel leaders.
Thousands in Liberian camp don't qualify for aid
CWS delegation members also visited the Jartondo Town Internally Displaced Persons Camp, a few miles outside of Monrovia. Kai Jelly from Lutheran World Federation, the lead agency in the camp, and Chris Wilson, the camp manager, said most of the 10,000 people there had fled recent fighting in Grand Cape Mount and Bomi counties. Many of them have been displaced more than five times.
Jelly described the camp's services: five wells, 28 family latrines, 28 bathhouses, and a monthly food ration brought by the World Food Programme. Then he called the CWS delegation's attention to the camp's biggest problem: People can't get food if they aren't registered, and they can't register unless they have a shelter.
Requiring people to have a shelter--and thus, an address--helps prevent people from making the rounds of several camps, picking up a monthly food ration at each camp. The World Food Programme delivers food address by address.
But at Jartondo Town camp, there are between 6,000 and 7,000 people without shelter and therefore also without a food ration Some have just arrived, but some have been at the camp for more than three months. Many can't come up with the approximately US $45 to build their shelter. Others, such as the ill or mothers with babies, simply aren't able to build their own shelter.
"This is embarrassing for the Lutheran World Federation," Jelly admitted. "We can't go around the World Food Programme's rules, but as a result we have 6,000 to 7,000 hungry people on our hands."
Poverty, suffering in four countries
"The people of this region have suffered too much," McCullough said on return from the region. Tens of thousands of refugees from Liberia's ongoing civil war are displaced within Liberia or are refugees in Sierra Leone, Guinea and the Gambia. Sierra Leone is itself struggling to recover from war. Guinea and The Gambia have been spared civil conflict, but their people are desperately impoverished.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) withdrew from the Gambia last year, but now that country is experiencing a new influx of refugees from Liberia and from fighting in southern Senegal and has asked the UNHCR to come back, Gambian government officials told the CWS delegation.
In Guinea, the UNHCR staff reports that more than 81,000 Liberians and Sierra Leoneans were in their care by the end of June 2002, with between 600 and 2,000 more Liberians arriving every week.
"But halfway through their budget year, UNHCR had only received between $7 and $8 million in cash and pledges against a $27 million budget," reported CWS's Laursen. The Christian Council of Guinea is helping with supplementary food, clothing, soap and other necessities.
Sierra Leone: 'Something very evil happened'
Sierra Leone is struggling to balance the need for justice with the need to reintegrate its tens of thousands of ex-combatants, especially the rebels who ravaged the country from north to south, killing, raping, hacking off people's limbs and looting and burning property.
McCullough told church leaders there, "Something very evil happened in this country. I'm not using that word lightly," he emphasized. "And your sons did it. You have got to figure out why they did what they did," he urged. "What are the root causes of the frustration, the anger, the disenfranchisement, that caused them to act in such an evil way in respect to their neighbors?"
Laursen said, "People all across [Sierra Leone] have been traumatized by what happened. And psychologically and socially and emotionally and spiritually they need help; and this is probably the most urgent and pressing issue before this country," Laursen observed, offering Church World Service's expertise in trauma recovery to assist in the healing process.
The war devastated Sierra Leone's economy. "I lack the words to express how bad things are," U.S. Ambassador to Sierra Leone Peter Chaveas told the delegation, arguing for sustained U.S. and international attention and input. "It's going to be a long, hard process to rebuild."
"What's critical," Musoke-Lubega said, "is to avoid any naiveté about what it will take for Sierra Leone to consolidate peace. The country needs, and deserves, economic development, skills and leadership training, and trauma counseling. The United Nations peacekeeping force should stay until the Sierra Leone government can say confidently that it can ensure security nationwide."
Signs of hope and recovery
Yet there are signs of recovery and hope in the region, say CWS peace delegation members. In their meetings with the four country's church leaders and other groups, the delegation saw signs of healing and progress.
In Liberia's Siegbeh Town IDP Camp, the Concerned Christian Community, a partner of CWS and the United Church of Christ, is helping new arrivals bridge the system to qualify for food, by building big transit tents that qualify as fixed-location first shelters.
The CCC also has a program for women at the Jartondo IDP Camp, offering rape counseling and training for income generation. Women in the program are qualifying for food aid, whether they have permanent shelters or not, said Mariama Brown, CCC's national director.
In Sierra Leone, the Council of Churches in Sierra Leone has a strong, diverse program that includes development and environmental health, reintegration of ex-combatants, peacebuilding, advocacy for good governance and national reconciliation with justice, youth development, women's empowerment, communications, HIV/AIDS prevention, children's rights, trauma counseling, church relations, theology, research and much more.
"Church World Service is interested in supporting the best quality of programs, and CCSL has demonstrated that," Laursen said. She added, "I hope we can be more than funders, but focus on doing something together in an organic relationship between CWS and CCSL. That will be so much more."
Ambassador Chaveas said that the new Kabbah administration "is a government with much more credibility," given its mandate in June elections that were basically "free and fair and almost devoid of violence. This government," Chaveas said, "has five years ahead of it and the prospect to do something."
Guinea continues to welcome streams of refugees, though at a strain its own security. And the six-month-old Christian Council of Guinea, reports the CWS delegation, has a presence and plays a role in society that is already respected by the Guinean government.
"That a newly organized council has that much clout in a predominantly Muslim country impressed me," Musoke-Lubega said. "We need to support the council and help it increase its capacity to be the voice of the voiceless."
In the Gambia, church and government officials are openly working together to prevent the HIV/AIDS pandemic from spreading in that country.
Summing up the impact of their visit, CWS delegate the Rev. Philip Reed of the Society of Missionaries of Africa, said, "In one refugee camp, the question ‘Who is my neighbor?' came to mind. I looked at the refugees there and thought, ‘These are my brothers.'"