When 70-year-old Marie Mangou ran away from her home in Côte d’Ivoire, she trekked for hours through dense jungle and crammed into a creaking canoe to reach the safety of neighbouring Liberia. Now the feisty grandmother cannot manage another step.
”For a week now, I have not been able to walk because my legs are paining from the long distances we had to cover,” she said, lying listless on a plastic mat in the border town of Butuo, which is just 3km from the Ivorian border.
She is one of at least 10 000 Ivorians who have fled their homeland in the last two weeks, fearing a fresh chapter of violence after the government in Abidjan broke an 18-month ceasefire and bombed the rebel-held north.
The refugees, most of whom are women, are strung out along remote areas of the border. Most appeared to have come from the area round Guiglo, on the government side of the frontline in western Côte d’Ivoire, and from around Danane, a rebel-held city near the Liberian border, officials from the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said.
”From the areas we have accessed, our field staff … have registered about 10 000 Ivorian refugees and based on the information from other crossing points, the figure could rise to between 15 000 and 20 000,” Fidellis Swai, said the head of UNHCR’s field office in Saclepea in north central Liberia.
The Ivorian government called off its offensive on the northern rebels after two days when French peacekeeping forces destroyed its handful of jet bombers and helicopter gunships. But many of the people arriving in Liberia said they had continued to hear the ominous sound of gunfire for days afterwards and were worried that full-scale fighting might resume.
”Most of us fled because we heard sounds of heavy gunfire from areas occupied by the Ivorian government troops,” explained Gilbert Pascal, a school-teacher from the town of Bin-Houye, which lies near the buffer zone that is patrolled by UN peacekeepers and supposed to keep the two sides apart.
”We were afraid that another war could break out like in 2002 and that is why we all left with the personal belongings that we could lay our hands on,” another refugee, Eloise Ngbeh, chimed in.
The country the Ivorians have chosen as their refuge is not the best equipped to deal with their needs. Liberia is struggling to recover from 14 years of brutal civil war which only came to an end in August 2003 and is still welcoming back more than 300,000 of its own citizens who fled abroad.
Host community feeling the strain
UNHCR chief Ruud Lubbers sounded the alarm bell two weeks ago, when just 5 000 frightened Ivorians had arrived in eastern Liberia.
”At such a difficult and fragile stage in the rehabilitation of Liberia, a large influx of new refugees from Côte d’Ivoire would be detrimental, creating further poverty and instability,” he said. ”That is why the situation is so worrying, not only for Côte d’Ivoire, but for the entire region.”
Rough terrain, bad roads and dilapidated bridges are hampering the international aid effort and the locals are struggling to make ends meet themselves. However, as is so often the case, the host community is sharing what little it has with the newcomers.
”Because those brothers and sisters who seek refuge here are mostly of the same tribe, we ordered our local dwellers to accommodate them into their homes and share with them whatever food they have,” explained Albert Fanga, the government superintendent of the Zoe-Geh district, which includes Butuo.
”But the food is getting low,” he warned.
Butuo had a population of about 1 000 at the beginning of November but that has sky-rocketed to 6 000 following an influx of refugees. Host families are sheltering up to 10 refugees in their homes.
”Since we came here, about a week ago now, the little food our Liberian brothers and sisters had to share with us has not been enough,” said Guei Saye Prosper, the head of the refugees in Butuo.
”The situation is getting bad for us as more people are coming in on a daily basis. We cannot farm now and the harvest here is still two months away,” he said.
For aid workers to get to Butuo from field offices in Saclepea, it is a hard 80km drive along unpaved, potholed and muddy roads.
Ten makeshift bridges span the various rivers and streams, but would not be able to bear the weight of trucks laden with food and other aid items, and some river crossings have decayed completely.
Although most of the recent arrivals look healthy at the moment, aid organisations are worried about the weeks to come.
”Food stocks are quickly depleting — malnutrition could be a serious issue in two weeks,” Margaret Itto, the health coordinator for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), said on Friday.
UNHCR said in a statement on Monday that UN peacekeeping helicopters had been roped into the aid effort, and were airlifting relief supplies along the border. The agency also said that food distribution would now target the local Liberian population, as well as the refugees.
Water, medicine, security also a worry
Water is a big problem too. Officials say only one water pump is actually working in Butuo and with the sudden surge in population, people are drinking from the streams, raising the risk of disease outbreaks.
”Water points need to be protected, established and chlorinated,” Moses Okello, the head of UNHCR in Liberia, said. ”This is one of the biggest priorities for humanitarian agencies at the moment.”
The Ivorian refugees flooding into Liberia are also complaining about the lack of medical supplies.
”There were some drugs brought by a humanitarian group to assist us, but the drugs that were stored in a local clinic have all finished and this is worrying as we do not know when we will get drugs again,” said one refugee, Honore Detriote Nankan.
A local health worker assigned to the only clinic in Butuo confirmed the problem, and said they were seeing malaria cases, and people with bad diarrhoea as well as refugees with leg problems after their long trek through the bush.
With people coming and going in large numbers across the porous border, some aid workers are worried that while the refugees are coming one way, combatants and arms could be going in the other direction.
”(We are concerned) that many of the Liberian child combatants recently disarmed, demobilised and reunified with their families … will be re-recruited by the fighting factions in Ivory Coast,” said Samuel Kamanda, a child protection officer with the IRC, the US-based relief agency.
Fanga, the Liberian official in charge of the district where the bulk of the Ivorian refugees have gathered, said he was also worried about the Ivorian conflict being exported to Liberia and other neighbouring countries.
”The borders are open. We need a detachment of peacekeepers from the UN Mission in Liberia to be assigned along the borders to prevent anyone from crossing over into Liberia with arms, with the sole purpose of causing another war,” he said. — Irin