UN appeals for $69 million in emergency aid for Liberia

The United Nations today launched an appeal for some $69 million in emergency aid for war-torn Liberia, with Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other UN officials urging world governments to seize the opportunity to help end the unnecessary suffering of nearly 1 million Liberians and to let them know they are not alone in the quest for development and peace.

With the request for aid underway in New York, the rollout of peacekeeping troops continued on the ground in Liberia as the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) airlifted 112 more Nigerian troops and other equipment - including three armoured personnel carriers (APCs), two land rovers, three tons of ammunition and one fuel tanker - to the capital Monrovia. They join 184 troops who arrived Monday and 152 more that hit the ground yesterday.

The build-up is expected to continue as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) leads the efforts to enforce a ceasefire and clear the way for the distribution of food and medicine to hundreds of thousands of people uprooted by fighting between forces loyal to President Charles Taylor and rebel factions, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and the Movement for Democracy and Elections in Liberia (MODEL).

The revised appeal by UN humanitarian agencies and their non-governmental partners seeks $22 million to buy food, $9 million to care for the staggering number of homeless and refugees - estimated to be about 450,000 in Monrovia alone - and $8.5 million for urgent to meet health care needs.

The West African country of about 3.2 million people has been gripped by war on and off for 14 years. An estimated 80 per cent of the population lives on less than a dollar a day. Since June, nearly non-stop fighting between Liberian rebels and government forces has devastated Monrovia. Countless civilians have been killed or wounded and thousands of others have streamed into the capital seeking refuge from the fighting. Many have been living in the streets with little if any access to clean water, sanitation and food. UN agencies now say the city is in the grips of a cholera epidemic.

"Logic of this emergency appeal is simple: without urgent action, more lives will be lost," the Secretary-General said in a statement delivered by his Special Representative for Liberia, Jacques Paul Klein. Mr. Annan urged international donors to support the appeal to help avert "an acute humanitarian crisis, which was now affecting some 1 million men, women and children…and communities now facing the additional burden of hosting hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced form their homes."

For his part, Mr. Klein said Liberia was a founding member of the UN with strong historical ties to the United Sates. Politically, Liberia was a key to survival and stability in the whole of West Africa, he stressed, adding that if appeals to help the country met with indifference or were ignored altogether, much of the good done in the region " risked coming to nothing."

The UN's earlier appeal for Liberia, launched in November 2002, raised only about a fifth of the $42 million requested, officials have said. Though all projects in the original appeal remain valid, new projects - water trucking, health promotion and reintegration of former child combatants - have been added to today's request in order to respond to the increased humanitarian needs.

Carolyn McAskie, the Deputy UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, outlined the details of the three-phase revised appeal, which covers the period from July to December and presents a plan of action that is divided into three operational phases, each of which is closely tied to the prevailing security situation.

She said that funding activities had been divided into several sectors, including mine action, food, refugee protection and return, shelter and other needed elements such as communications. The first phase covers the limited activities that can be attempted during the current insecure environment. The second and third phases assume an improving security environment, in which the scope and scale of assistance will be increased, initially for Monrovia and then outward into the rest of Liberia.

It was particularly critical that the international community responded as urgently as they had done in Iraq where $2 billion was raised, of which $1 billion came from governments represented, Ms. McAskie said. "Can we also raise a modest $69 million for Liberia?"