Struggling Liberia has insisted it is ready for sanctions on its diamond and timber industries to be lifted, but a wary United Nations, mindful of security concerns, has again advised that they remain in place.
Liberian leader Gyude Bryant appeared before the UN Security Council last week asking that sanctions be lifted to boost the West African state’s war-battered economy and curb unemployment that has crested beyond 80%.
”Sanctions have had a great impact on the economy of this country. Liberia is losing about R40-million [in diamond exports] every year under the sanctions,” said Minister of Mines Jonathan Mason, describing job losses upwards of 35 000 people in the diamond sector.
But despite acknowledging valid and pressing economic concerns in a country battered by back-to-back civil wars since 1989, the UN panel said ”tenuous” civil authority backed by an ”unpredictable” security situation make lifting sanctions risky and unviable.
Their recommendations and a recent status report from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Liberia’s security are likely to form the basis of closed-door discussions on Thursday by the UN Security Council.
”Disarmament is progressing, but there is a strong possibility that factions may have cached weapons either within Liberia or in neighboring countries” such as Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the panel said.
”As a result, regional stability continues to be a subject of concern.”
A tentative peace settled over the country of three million with the flight into exile last August of former president Charles Taylor, though parts of Liberia — particularly the heavily-forested southeast — remain beyond the control of a
15 000-strong UN peacekeeping mission.
Sanctions were first imposed in 2001 to compel Taylor to end his support for the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rampaging across next-door Sierra Leone.
Timber sanctions were added in May 2003 to increase pressure on Liberia’s three warring factions to end their war, pitching the industry responsible for 20% of state revenues and more than 7 000 jobs into crisis.
Since a peace deal and power-sharing pact were signed in August, pressures on Liberia’s feeble public infrastructure mount daily with the steady release of ex-combatants into communities unable to receive them.
The looming return of hundreds of thousands of refugees spread out across the region has also sparked fears that there will be nothing for them when they arrive, despite promises of more than $500-million in reconstruction aid committed in February by international donors.
A rash of petty crime has broken out across Monrovia, with international aid groups and local civilians complaining of robbery, assault, vandalism and car theft.
The slaying in May of a US national at a luxury hotel in the capital only a few steps from the heavily-secured US embassy only underscored the culture of lawlessness threatening peace in the capital.
For rights watchdog the International Crisis Group, the question is not about lifting the sanctions per se but the timing of that decision.
”When disarmament has progressed far enough, and there is full deployment of peacekeepers… then you can actually [lift sanctions] in a responsible way, which is good because it is pretty dire in Liberia economically,” said ICG director Mike McGovern.
”But one cannot be too sanguine about the possibility, for instance, that cutting down the forest will benefit the majority of Liberians; quite possibly the vast majority of any revenue will remain in the hands of a very small number of people.” – Sapa-AFP