A vast effort by the United Nations refugee agency and the Liberian government to return an estimated 500 000 internally displaced people to their home counties was poised to begin on Monday.
The operation is seen as a key step in helping Liberia prepare for elections set for October next year.
A first convoy carrying 500 people was to depart from the capital, Monrovia, bound for Grand Cape Mount county, on Liberia’s western border with Sierra Leone, said Francesca Fontanini, spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Aboard the convoy were 200 people who had fled to the capital during the back-to-back civil wars that battered the West African state from 1989 until last year.
The other 300 people are what the UNHCR calls ”spontaneous returnees” who escaped to a neighbouring country but considered up until now their home counties too unstable to risk returning, and opted instead to settle in the capital.
The operation had been due to get under way last week but was postponed after riots in the capital that left at least 18 dead.
The return of all refugees and displaced people to their home counties is considered crucial to ensuring that all eligible voters are accounted for in time for next year’s elections.
Legislation to set the guidelines for the elections has, however, stalled in the fractious Parliament amid charges of rampant government corruption leveled against the majority of the deputies.
The return of the internally displaced to their home counties is also aimed at easing pressure on Monrovia, crammed with 1,5-million of Liberia’s 3,3-million people, who do not have regular access to drinking water, electricity or effective sanitation. — Sapa-AFP