U.S. Committee for Refugees World Refugee Survey 1997 - Liberia
Some 755,000 Liberians were refugees at the end of 1996: an estimated 400,000 in Guinea, 320,000 in Côte d’Ivoire, 15,000 in Ghana, 15,000 in Sierra Leone, and about 5,000 in Nigeria and other countries. An estimated one million Liberians were internally displaced. Approximately 100,000 refugees from Sierra Leone were in Liberia at year’s end. Liberia’s fragile peace process collapsed in mid-1996 as combatants battled and looted on the streets of the capital, Monrovia. Hundreds of thousands of Liberians fled their homes and makeshift shelters yet again.
Pre-1996 Events Civil war erupted in Liberia in late 1989 when rebel troops of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) attacked government forces. Fighting quickly converged on Monrovia, the capital, and degenerated into ethnic massacres on all sides. Hundreds of thousands of civilians fled their homes to neighboring countries or to Monrovia. West African countries operating under the auspices of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) deployed peacekeeping troops, known as ECOMOG (ECOWAS Monitoring Group). A two-year cease-fire froze Liberia into a divided country: NPFL rebels controlled 95 percent of the countryside; an interim Liberian government ruled Monrovia, protected by ECOMOG troops. An estimated 80,000 Liberian refugees spontaneously repatriated during the fragile cease-fire. The peace process collapsed in 1992 when fighting flared between the NPFL and a new armed faction, the United Liberation Movement for Democracy in Liberia (ULIMO). During 1992-93, thousands of civilians died and hundreds of thousands fled their homes anew as fighting concentrated in Monrovia and elsewhere. By 1994, as many as 11 armed factions existed, turning Liberia into a patchwork of armed fiefdoms. Civilians - including those living in camps for internally displaced persons - were the primary targets of violence. Most factions appeared to have no particular political ideology other than sustained warfare, exploitation of natural resources, and looting. Despite several peace agreements, violence actually intensified. General insecurity kept most of the country inaccessible to relief workers and peacekeeping troops. In 1995, inter-factional warfare continued in three regions until a peace accord was signed in August - the thirteenth peace treaty in nearly six years of war. As part of the new peace process, a new transitional government took power, headed by a six-member Council of State. The factions failed to honor their pledge to disarm, however, and ECOMOG struggled to obtain funding to expand its peacekeeping efforts. Isolated skirmishes occurred, but the cease-fire generally held in most areas. USCR conducted a site visit to Liberia in late 1995 to determine conditions for repatriation. USCR concluded that the situation remained unstable. Small numbers of refugees repatriated, but large sections of the country remained inaccessible to regular humanitarian relief as the year ended. By the end of 1995, six years of civil war had killed an estimated 150,000 Liberians. More than half of Liberia’s estimated three million people were uprooted inside and outside the country.
War and Politics - 1996 During the first three months of 1996, Liberians endured what one observer called “a peace without conviction.” The country’s peace process was paralyzed, no meaningful disarmament occurred, and armed skirmishes forced new population displacement in isolated areas. Seven of the country’s 13 counties remained largely inaccessible to relief agencies. ECOMOG peacekeeping troops gradually deployed to new locations. Although several thousand refugees returned home, most Liberians remained skeptical that the country’s fitful peace would continue. Doubts about the peace process were warranted. Full-scale violence erupted in Monrovia on April 6, involving three armed factions and individual combatants linked to other groups. Up to 3,000 persons, including civilians, died in two months of violence and anarchy, according to one estimate. Property and equipment belonging to the UN and NGOs suffered wholesale looting. Private Liberian homes and businesses were ransacked as well. U.S. troops landed in Monrovia to protect the American embassy compound and evacuate 2,300 persons, primarily international aid workers and selected Liberians. The UN Security Council demanded that faction leaders should restore order, withdraw all fighters from the capital, and make Monrovia a safe haven. “The faction leaders have clearly demonstrated their disregard for the aspirations of the Liberian people for peace,” the UN Secretary General said in May. ECOMOG did little to curb the violence, and many peacekeeping troops participated in the looting, according to Liberians and foreigners on the scene. ECOMOG belatedly restored order in June. About 100 ECOMOG troops died in the violence, according to U.S. officials. Faction leaders signed a revised peace agreement in August that pledged a new cease-fire, set a new schedule for disarmament and elections, and appointed a new leader to the ruling Council of State. Overt warfare ceased in Monrovia, replaced by increased crime that many Liberians blamed on combatants lurking in the city. Factional violence continued in the southwest and southeast corners of the country through the end of the year. Liberia’s interim government, municipal police, and the judicial system remained factionalized. “Officials are maintaining the facade of a functioning government,” an assessment by U.S. and European relief officials stated. As the year ended, the disarmament process was far behind schedule, and ECOMOG was requesting 10,000 additional peacekeeping troops and $132 million in special funding.
Liberians Flee The year began with cautious hopes for refugee repatriation. UNHCR increased its staffing to prepare for the possibility that 400,000 refugees might return by mid-year if the peace process remained intact. UNHCR appealed to international donors for $60 million to fund an 18-month repatriation program, and pushed to establish aid operations in previously inaccessible regions of Liberia. Some 30,000 Liberians repatriated, mostly without UNHCR assistance, during mid-1995 to March 1996. Much of Liberia remained underpopulated in early 1996 due to persistent insecurity, however. An estimated 1.5 million persons - most of them internally displaced - lived in the two major cities of Monrovia and Buchanan. Only a quarter-million to a half-million persons lived in the rest of Liberia. More than 700,000 Liberians remained refugees outside the country. Renewed violence in April pushed an estimated 300,000 persons from their homes in Monrovia and devastated the morale of many Liberians. Families fled to Monrovia’s schools, warehouses, dilapidated government buildings, and to private homes in safer parts of the city. Up to 20,000 fled to a Monrovia military base that subsequently came under attack. Another 20,000 took refuge in the U.S. embassy’s residential compound. Outside Monrovia, tens of thousands fled to the central Liberian town of Gbarnga in search of safety. Many who tried to escape the country by road had their possessions looted along the highway. Some would-be refugees reportedly became trapped near the Côte d’Ivoire border because they could not afford to pay combatants to let them leave the country. Some Liberian refugees managed to gain entry into neighboring Sierra Leone only by posing as Sierra Leonean citizens. Some Liberians fled the country on dangerously overcrowded boats. Some 2,000 Liberians and other nationals living in Liberia jammed onto a vessel, the
Bulk Challenge, and languished at sea for ten days before Ghana granted them entry. The
Victory Reefer, a boat packed with about 1,000 persons, including 100 Liberians, belatedly gained permission to land in Sierra Leone after several days off-shore. About 400 Liberian refugees aboard a third boat, the
Zolotitsa, were denied entry by Ghana, Benin, Togo, and Côte d’Ivoire. The boat and its passengers returned to Liberia after three weeks at sea.
Humanitarian Conditions UN and NGO relief operations suffered enormous damage in the April-May carnage in Monrovia. Most relief workers evacuated the country with assistance from U.S. marines. Combatants and bandits ransacked $20 million worth of supplies and equipment belonging to international aid agencies, and stole 489 vehicles. Despite the destruction, WFP managed to deliver modest amounts of food relief to internally displaced persons scattered throughout the capital in April-May. Small numbers of international relief workers returned to Monrovia in later months as ECOMOG troops gradually regained control of the city and its suburbs. Catholic Relief Services, Save the Children Federation/United Kingdom, Oxfam, and ten other NGOs issued a joint statement after the violence pledging that relief programs should be limited “to targeted, minimal, life-saving interventions.” The NGOs stated that “we will neither resume nor support full operations until the faction leaders agree and demonstrate commitment” to the neutrality of humanitarian assistance. “The purpose of this united stance is to minimize the opportunity for our goods and equipment to be stolen by warring faction members and thereby contribute to the prolongation of the conflict and suffering of innocent Liberians,” the NGOs’ statement concluded. As a stunned calm settled on Monrovia after the violence, tens of thousands of residents returned to their homes only to find them devoid of possessions. Many residents were reluctant to rehabilitate their dwellings, for fear that additional violence might bring more destruction in the near future. U.S. officials evicted the last displaced persons from the American embassy compound in August. Most of the displaced persons who were congregated in the coastal city of Buchanan returned to their homes outside that city, some for the first time in several years. In an effort to improve health conditions and encourage a return to normalcy, relief workers gradually closed 20 to 30 sites for displaced persons in Monrovia. In September, according to UN estimates, 650,000 displaced Liberians continued to live at 99 officially designated shelter sites throughout the country, including nearly 40 in Monrovia. Tens of thousands of other displaced families resided in crowded private homes with no outside humanitarian assistance. Aid workers reported late in the year that serious human rights abuses persisted despite the official cease-fire. Some 40 hungry Liberians were massacred in September hours after they received bags of relief food from international aid workers. Reports of forced labor and Liberians held captive by factions remained common. Combatants “have subjugated the populations, but it is not enough for them to treat them like slaves,” an official of
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) observed. “They are preventing them from leaving, because the civilians are their sole source of food.” “The humanitarian community is routinely restrained in its freedom of movement,...” UN relief officials reported. “Once the humanitarian community has gained access to an area, patterns of abuse of whole populations have been consistently observed throughout these areas. We are certain that these patterns are replicated throughout Liberia.” Disruption of relief programs produced health problems in the last half of the year. Continued fighting and abuses near the western town of Tubmanburg resulted in more than 4,000 deaths among 26,000 inhabitants, MSF reported. More than one third of Tubmanburg’s youngest children perished, and up to 80 percent of the town’s surviving children suffered severe malnutrition. The central region of Liberia reported pockets of 40 percent malnutrition. Residents of Buchanan town experienced a “dramatic degradation” in health after April, MSF reported. In Monrovia, children in internally displaced families reportedly suffered 25 percent malnutrition rates, compared to 15 percent malnutrition among nondisplaced children. An outbreak of cholera hit Monrovia in August.
Sierra Leonean Refugees A rebel insurgency in neighboring Sierra Leone forced as many as 150,000 Sierra Leonean refugees into Liberia in the early 1990s. Up to 120,000 Sierra Leoneans remained in Liberia at the start of 1996. More than half of them were beyond the reach of humanitarian assistance due to the war. An estimated 100,000 were still in Liberia at the end of 1996, though insecurity in the countryside made an exact census impossible. About 20,000 were believed to have repatriated to Sierra Leone during the year. The temporary closure of UNHCR operations in Liberia because of renewed warfare in mid-1996 eliminated assistance to all Sierra Leonean refugees for several months. When UNHCR resumed limited operations later in the year, dangerous roads kept relief operations small and made simple assessment missions difficult. UNHCR managed to conduct an assessment of some refugee sites in August, but was unable to reach all refugee locations. USCR’s site visit to Liberia in late 1996 found that Sierra Leonean refugees suffered from the same atrocities and deprivations that afflicted local Liberian civilians. About 60,000 Sierra Leoneans continued to live in settlements in the northwest corner of Liberia, according to UNHCR. Factional fighters and bandits subjected the refugees to forced labor, seizure of crops, and looting. Many refugees lived in homes abandoned by Liberian refugees. Approximately 15,000 Sierra Leoneans lived in the extreme western corner of the country, Cape Mount county. Continued warfare in that area made relief deliveries minimal, at best. Several thousand refugees in the western county of Bomi suffered severe malnutrition, were forced to forage for food, and fled when combatants attacked and burned their homes. Several thousand refugees apparently migrated to rural areas within 35 miles of Monrovia, in Montserrado county, where security and opportunities for food relief were somewhat better - though still risky - at the end of 1996.
USCR Actions USCR published a brief update on the Liberian situation in January, following a site visit to the country a month earlier. USCR reported that “tens of thousands of Liberian refugees are returning to their homes despite continued security concerns in many areas.” USCR warned that “additional setbacks and disappointments may await [Liberians] on the road to national recovery.” In February, USCR wrote to the U.S. Attorney General urging that Liberian nationals in the United States should continue to receive Temporary Protected Status under U.S. law, “until Liberia’s fragile peace process proves permanent.” In May, USCR publicized the plight of Liberia’s boat refugees: “It is shocking that West African countries with long traditions of generosity toward Liberian refugees are shutting the door in the most inhumane way.... West African governments are claiming that Liberians aboard these ships are not valid refugees, yet they deny the refugees a screening interview at which they could assert the legitimacy of their safety concerns,” USCR said. USCR stated that U.S. military ships stationed off the Liberian coast should be prepared to rescue refugee boats in distress. USCR conducted a site visit to the Liberia region during late May-early June, including an assessment in a Liberian border area. USCR and three other NGOs published a report, “Africa’s Forgotten Refugees: Liberians and Other Urban Groups.” The report suggested that internally displaced Liberians in areas inaccessible from Monrovia should receive cross-border humanitarian assistance via neighboring Côte d’Ivoire. The report recommended strong international support for Liberians’ food needs, and criticized U.S. policies on refugee admissions, resettlement, and evacuation that “have separated [Liberian] families already torn apart by the conflict.” USCR documented the plight of Liberian “boat people” who fled by sea and were repeatedly denied entry by neighboring countries. USCR’s report concluded that “the recent outbreak of violence in Liberia has convinced most Liberians that the situation...is hopeless.” USCR stated that “plans for repatriation, much alive just a few months ago, are now abandoned” by many Liberian refugees. In September, USCR joined with other NGOs in urging the Clinton administration to liberalize the process of Temporary Protected Status in order to provide legal safe haven in the United States to more Liberians. “The current peace process in Liberia is by no means a sure thing,” the joint letter noted. “The current climate in Liberia does not allow for the immediate return of Liberians who have fled.” USCR and 19 other organizations sponsored a “Liberia Advocacy Day” in the U.S. Congress in late September. Participants met with members of Congress and their staffs to push for assertive U.S. leadership to help end Liberia’s war. “International efforts to prevent the factions from holding whole communities hostage and ensure safe passage of humanitarian assistance are crucial to giving Liberians the chance to rebuild their country,” stated a written summary for “Liberia Advocacy Day.” In October, USCR conducted a second site visit to the region, including two weeks in Liberia, to assess conditions for repatriation and the reliability of the peace process. USCR provided support for a Monrovia conference for indigenous NGOs. USCR met with scores of displaced Liberians and issued updates from the field chronicling almost daily security problems that impeded relief operations. USCR reported on high death rates in one Liberian town and explained that some malnourished Liberians were refusing food aid for fear that food distributions would attract combatants. USCR issued a public statement warning that the mixture of humanitarian, political, and security problems in Liberia was “forcing international humanitarian agencies to reconsider their standard approaches to relief.” USCR conducted several briefings in Washington, D.C. during the year to inform U.S. officials and NGOs about the findings and recommendations of USCR’s site visits to Liberia. In November, USCR published a report that urged UNHCR to “exercise caution in providing assistance to refugees from Sierra Leone [in Libera], being careful that aid provided to refugees does not attract attacks from armed elements.”
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