UN to establish four new camps for internally displaced people in Liberia

The Government of Liberia has agreed to the establishment of four new camps for internally displaced people, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs announced today.

The camps, which will be set up by the UN and its non-governmental partners in the capital, Monrovia, will ensure that humanitarian agencies have better access to needy populations, OCHA said. In addition, they will allow better tracking of the numbers of newly displaced, previously impossible as new people were directed to existing settlements.

UN humanitarian staff will visit the Liberian town of Gbarnga tomorrow, to get a more accurate idea of how many Liberians are fleeing to Cote d'Ivoire, and to look into reports of newly displaced persons arriving in the area.

Of the 34,772 internally displaced people currently registered with humanitarian agencies in Monrovia, some 19,842 are children.