Liberia calls on refugees

2006-01-17 13:37

Geneva - Newly sworn-in Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has backed efforts to get tens of thousands of people driven into exile by years of civil war to come home, the UN refugee agency said on Tuesday.

Sirleaf, who formally took office on Monday and is Africa's first elected woman head of state, recorded a video for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) urging Liberian exiles to consider returning to help rebuild their homeland.

UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond said the video was part of a mass information campaign by the agency aimed at about 190 000 Liberian refugees still scattered across West Africa.

The UNHCR has been trying to step up its return programme, launched after a UN-brokered peace deal in 2003 that brought an end to the raging civil wars that gripped Liberia from 1989.

At the height of the Liberian crisis, about 850 000 people were displaced by violence - half a million within the country, and the rest in neighbouring nations.

"The success of the repatriation depends less on logistics than on long-term development programmes to sustain Liberia's recovery," Redmond told journalists.

"President Johnson Sirleaf acknowledged that many refugees are worried about not being able to find a home or a job upon their return," he added.

In the UNHCR video, Sirleaf told the refugees that she understands their apprehensions, which also include security, a lack of schools and clinics and land disputes, Redmond said.

The president pledged to work with the UNHCR to "create a viable environment" so that refugees who go home can live in peace, he said.

- AFP