Funds flow in for emergency UN refugee work in Liberia, but more still needed

Following an urgent appeal last week for more funds to prepare for the return of an estimated 150,000 Liberian war refugees this year, the United Nations refugee agency announced today that it had received an additional $11 million from the United States but was still $25 million short of its goal.

The arrival of thousands of spontaneous returnees, after a peace accord last year ended Liberia’s almost 15 years of civil war, has temporarily slowed, “but we expect it to rise again next week following food distribution in the camps in (neighbouring) Sierra Leone,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Ron Redmond told a news briefing in Geneva.

Refugees tend to wait for the food distribution in Sierra Leone before making the return trip to Liberia, he added. UNHCR has so far helped 1,600 refugees with transport from the border to Monrovia, the Liberian capital, where a way station and a camp hold about 6,000 returnees who cannot go back to their home areas due to security concerns.

The agency reported last week that it had received only $3 million of the $39.2 million it had sought for Liberia for 2004, as well as only $3 million of the $8.8 million needed for preparatory work in Sudan, where a potential peace accord in the two-decades old war between the government and southern rebels is expected to lead to a flood of more than half a million returnees.

No additional funds have so far been received for Sudan. “Although repatriation is not yet a reality in Sudan, we have deployed an emergency team in the south to prepare the ground, vehicles, trucks and telecom equipment, and pre-positioned relief material for 40,000 people,” Mr. Redmond said.

“All this needs to be funded if we want to be ready once the situation stabilizes and conditions are right for the return of some 600,000 Sudanese refugees from eight neighbouring countries,” he added.