Liberian Refugees Continue to Face Desperate Future
Episcopal News Service. July 25, 1996 [96-1534]
(ENS) As Liberia has disappeared from the front pages of American newspapers, pushed aside by other crises, the desperate needs of refugees uprooted by the vicious fighting there have continued unabated, a four-person team of refugee experts found during a two-week trip to West Africa.
Fighting between factional groups has displaced an estimated 80 percent of Liberia's population, reported Richard Parkins, director of Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM), one member of the team. The staggering plight of Liberians left homeless within their own country or forced to flee to neighboring countries, however, is only one piece of an ongoing human tragedy, he said.
"The crisis of Liberian refugees has created the opportunity for the United States to really give due attention to the crisis of African refugees across the board," Parkins said. Because of the long-standing connections between Liberia and the United States, he noted, "we may finally get the administration and Congress and private agencies to take the crisis of African refugees more seriously."
The team reported on its findings to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva, the United States Department of State, and other government offices, as well as other organizations engaged with refugees. Parkins already has been appointed to serve on a special working group established by the state department to address many of the issues of Liberian refugees the team identified.
The team, which included Elizabeth Ferris, director of Church World Service's Immigration and Refugee Program; John Fredriksson, Washington representative of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service; and Jana Mason, congressional liaison of the U.S. Committee for Refugees, visited Senegal, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Ghana, Sierra Leone. Members of the team also visited Kenya and Zambia to assess the situation of other urban refugees.
While those countries have been particularly generous in their assistance to refugees, the team found that the welcome for Liberians and other displaced peoples is wearing dangerously thin.
"The first wave of refugees who fled Liberia in 1990 were originally welcomed in Sierre Leone and other countries," according to the team's report. Those countries now, however, "have grave concerns about the ongoing violence in Liberia." Several incidents of West African countries refusing to permit leaky boats carrying refugees to land serve as graphic illustrations of the growing reluctance to admit more Liberians.
"Several West African countries that have traditionally hosted refugees are now facing political and economic problems that limit their hospitality to more arrivals from Liberia," Parkins said.
The countries providing the assistance are facing their own refugee challenges as well. "Since the Liberian conflict spilled over the border into Sierra Leone in 1991, as many as 1.5 million persons have become internally displaced," the report noted. "Among Sierra Leoneans and many aid workers, there is a prevalent feeling that the Western world is paying much attention to Liberia but has become oblivious to Sierra Leone."
At the same time, the continuing violence "has convinced most Liberians that the situation in that country is hopeless, and that there will be no easy end to the civil war," the team found. "Plans for repatriation, much alive just a few months ago, are now abandoned."
Many refugees have been unable to even reach the neighboring countries, Parkins said. As many as 100,000 Liberians may be stranded on the road that leads north from Monrovia, Liberia's capital, to Guinea or Ivory Coast. Unable to pay the necessary bribes for safe passage past factional forces' check points, the refugees are "without food or shelter as the rainy season starts," the report warns.
And urban refugees, such as former residents of Monrovia, which has been the site of the fiercest fighting, face particular challenges, unaccustomed to the "isolation and harshness" of the rural refugee camps, the team noted. "Many of these urban refugees arrive destitute and are given the choice of either meager food assistance and seeds/tools in the rural settlement, or no assistance if they reside in the urban areas," the report states.
Even those who stay in the camps find that the assistance provided is barely adequate. "Food assistance programs for Liberians are meager, delays in handing out rations to new arrivals are excessive, and the appropriateness of food stock items is questionable," according to the report.
Noting that "the international community must not continue 'business as usual"' in the face of the "suffering and desperation of the people," the team strongly urged renewed efforts at bringing an end to the Liberian war. "This is a major and complex task," they acknowledged. "The combatants must be disarmed, political solutions must be established, and appropriate international support must be mobilized."
Even as many aid agencies have limited their work in Liberia, frustrated and threatened by the chaotic situation, ways to increase assistance to displaced refugees must be found, the team states. In late May, 12 major international aid agencies announced that they would "severely limit" their work in Liberia, noting that agencies, including the United Nations, had lost more than 400 vehicles and other equipment and resources valued at $35 million, as well as thousands of tons of material aid.
There is also concern that aid would "enrich the coffers of the war lords and prolong the war," Parkins said. The team, he said, was advocating support for refugees in other countries and along Liberia's border where delivery could be monitored.
In early June, the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief approved a $40,000 emergency grant to send food supplies to Liberian refugees in other countries, and Archbishop Robert Okine of West Africa received $15,000 to assist Liberian refugees displaced in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Ghana and the Ivory Coast.
Parkins said he was also particularly impressed by the work of the Anglican Church of Liberia, which is ministering even as it endures its own diaspora.
Priests in refugee camps and other areas populated by refugees are "giving support and comfort not only to Anglicans but to the Liberians in general," he said. "They are really committed to keeping the church alive."
When peace seemed possible earlier this year, Liberia's newly consecrated bishop, Edward W. Neufville, returned to his home country from his temporary exile in Sumter, South Carolina. But in April's renewed fighting, Neufville had a taste of the refugees' experience when his residence in Monrovia as well as the diocesan cathedral and offices were looted, and he was evacuated to Sierra Leone with other religious leaders. Although he hoped to return to Liberia with aid, he instead returned to South Carolina when the continuing chaos in Liberia made that impossible.
In May, the Episcopal Church's Liberia Covenant Committee meeting at the Episcopal Church Center in New York with Neufville and Okine endorsed a call for a United Nations peace-keeping force, later included in an Executive Council resolution. Approved by the council in June, the resolution asks that such a force be "sent to Liberia as soon as possible."
The council also called on the U.S. government to "commend and encourage" the West African countries that have provided refuge for Liberians, and to encourage the international community to provide aid for those countries.
The council said "the people of the United States share the agony of the Liberian people. . . an agony that must be brought to an end as soon as possible."
Parkins said the team also has recommended that the U.S. government give "immediate consideration to reuniting Liberian families" separated when U.S. citizens and foreign nationals were evacuated in April.
"Most U.S. resettlement agencies, including Episcopal Migration Ministries, hear daily from U.S. resident Liberians about close relatives stranded as refugees in West Africa," Parkins said.