UN agencies train former Liberian soldiers to rebuild their war-ravaged country

With local workers needed to replace war-damaged structures in Liberia, the United Nations mission in the country (UNMIL) has launched a vocational training project in the building trades for more than 600 former fighters in the West African country’s 14-year civil war.

"Make the best use of this program as it has the potential to transform your lives," UNMIL chief Jacques Paul Klein exhorted the 640 ex-combatants in Cheesemanburg yesterday participating in the third of a series of training programmes started in the past two months. "Liberia cannot stand on its feet without your determination and resolve to make a difference."

The project is part of the rehabilitation and reintegration phase of the ongoing demobilization of militias. A total of 6,806 disarmed and demobilized ex-combatants have so far received their reintegration benefits, as well as vocational skills training in carpentry and woodwork, masonry, plumbing, metalwork and welding, block and tile production, blacksmithing, painting and electrical installation.

The UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) is training another 120 people as blacksmiths to work in four regional tool production centres and 40 village workshops, with a view to making affordable agricultural tools for farm families.

Under the auspices of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), a West African Examination Council team went to Guinea to administer annual examinations to 1,600 Liberian refugee students in Nzerekore and Kissidougou, the agency said.

Meanwhile, however, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) warned that if donors failed to honour their pledges, the amount of calories in each person's rations, already cut to 1,531 from 2,100 per day, would be further reduced, possibly causing unrest in the camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs). More than 60,000 ex-fighters still have to rely on food aid.

WFP said it had received less than half of the $82 million required to fund its West African programmes.

Although the 30 June deadline has passed for Sierra Leonean refugees in Liberia to return home with UN and Government help, nearly 4,000 of them were still living in refugee camps, UNHCR said. The agency is looking for permanent solutions for registered refugees, including local integration as naturalized Sierra Leoneans.