Displaced persons in Liberia still stream into refugee camps - UN

A week after the inauguration of a new government in Liberia, a United Nations inter-agency mission has found that displaced persons "continue to stream" into refugee camps, which need to be expanded, according to a report from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The OCHA statement, issued today in New York and based on reports from UN assessment teams fanning out from the capital Monrovia to camps at Totota in central Liberia and Salala, 20 kilometres to the south of it, found "displaced persons continue to stream into the camps."

"Further, the camps there need to be expanded to meet growing numbers of persons seeking shelter as well as urgent implementation of programmes for clean water and sanitation," the statement said.

The OCHA report said "The situation in the transit shelters was generally unsatisfactory as they were overcrowded and people, in most instances, were living there for prolonged periods, beyond the one to two weeks generally considered acceptable. Some had stayed in transit centres for as long as seven months."

In the Salala camp, there was a reported population of 26,091 internally displaced persons (IDPs). Four separate IDP sites in Totota sheltered some 80,000 people, OCHA said.

Food distributions to the camps, which had been interrupted earlier this month, were to resume by the end of October, OCHA said.

In a separate report the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said an assessment visit to the city of Voinjama, 260 kilometres north of Monrovia, discovered that the area had been “completely looted.”

UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski told reporters in Geneva today, "The town hospital was in total ruins but a clinic was operating with very limited supplies. The UNHCR office and our staff houses were destroyed, along with the Catholic mission and an old health facility. Access roads were overgrown with bush. Although the population appears to be in good health and there seems to be no sign of malnutrition, authorities say the residents lack food, medicine and clothing. There was also insufficient drinking water," he said.

Mr. Janowski said that the UN team had found a building near the municipal offices that local officials said would be suitable for a UN office, and the agency "agreed that Voinjama must be accessed by road as soon as possible so that emergency relief could begin."