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Tightening sanctions against Liberia would hurt population, Annan says

Tightening sanctions against Liberia would hurt population, Annan says

Tightening the sanctions against Liberia would further weaken the economy and negatively affect the most vulnerable people there, Secretary-General Kofi Annan says in a new report to the Security Council, issued today in New York.

"The Liberian economy is highly dependent on the export of traditional primary products and continues to be highly vulnerable to ongoing political and economic instability," the Secretary-General writes. "Any restrictions imposed on this already weakened economy would probably have negative impacts on employment, social services and government revenues."

The report estimates that, if a ban were imposed on Liberian timber exports, it would probably cause the loss of up to 10,000 relatively well-paid jobs, and hurt an industry that accounts for about 9 per cent of the national budget. Any international sanctions on Liberian rubber would affect even more people, potentially leading to the unemployment of the more than 20,000 people employed by that industry.

According to Mr. Annan, a tightening of the existing sanctions regime would also have repercussions on the financial environment, with worsening exchange rates, increasing prices for essential commodities, decreased savings and more capital flight. These additional aggravating factors and their implications, he says, would particularly affect Liberia's poorest people, whose "resilience and coping capacities are next to exhausted," he says.

The Secretary-General recommends that, if the Council decides to establish additional sanctions, it might want to consider setting up a mechanism to review their impact on the humanitarian and economic situation in Liberia. This, he says, would enable the Council to avoid unintended negative effects on Liberia's population and help counter public misrepresentations of the sanctions regime and its objectives.

The Council had established sanctions against Liberia in March, in response to evidence that Monrovia was actively supporting the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone, and that diamonds leaving Sierra Leone through Liberia were a major source of income for the RUF. In its sanctions, the Council had prohibited the sale or supply of arms to the country, banned the import of all rough diamonds from Liberia whether or not such diamonds originated there, and prohibited travel abroad by senior members of the Liberian Government, its armed forces and their spouses.