04 Dec 2006: ISS Today: Liberia - Forwards With Trepidation

4 December 2006: Liberia -- Forwards With Trepidation

Monrovia today: The building in the background is Nancy Doe Jorkpentown General Market on Buchanan Boulevard, Sinkor

The story of Liberia is indeed a melancholy one. As the country achieved its 159th anniversary in 2006, the citizens of Africa’s oldest republic had little to celebrate beyond the ending of 14 years of civil war that had left permanent images of horror and destruction etched upon every Liberian mind.

It is evident to anyone in Liberia, that as President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf completes her first year in office, her government still faces immense and urgent challenges in attempting to return the country to anything vaguely tolerable. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) report released in November 2006, Liberia has the world’s highest newborn mortality rate at 66 deaths per 1,000 births. This situation is compounded by the total collapse of the country’s medical facilities during the war. Other immediate challenges include: the reintegration of ex-combatants and the resettlement of internally displaced persons and returning refugees; the creation of jobs and other income-earning opportunities; the repair and rehabilitation of infrastructure; the restructuring and reform of the armed forces and the police service; the consolidation of State authority throughout the country; and the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The Liberian civil war involved an enormous number of combatants, of whom, at the war’s end, some 103,000 entered the UN-managed programme of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR). At the start of the programme, the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) had estimated the number of ex-combatants to be 40,000. When the number increased unexpectedly at the inception of the DDR process, UNMIL and Liberian society as a whole had to “manage expectations”, to use the anodyne phrase used by UNMIL itself. The biggest problems, however, arose at the reintegration stage, when this huge number of former fighters, many of whom had grown used to the ease of securing a livelihood with a gun, had to be absorbed in a society with an 85% unemployment rate, a collapsed infrastructure and overstretched social institutions. The general dislocation produced by the war also exacerbated illiteracy to critical levels, and this is reflected in the current acute shortage of skills in all sectors of the economy. Similarly, illiteracy among the ex-combatants (most of them having grown up in the war) has hindered many of them from effectively acquiring trading skills, or the management of their reinsertion kits, leading to some of them selling off their reinsertion kits, only to find themselves on the streets again.

General insecurity is on the increase, especially in Monrovia. According to one psychosocial counsellor, the trauma of the conflict and its aftermath of poverty and joblessness have had a deep negative psychological impact upon the entire society, a phenomenon that will take generations to change.

The end of the civil war, however, has seen student enrolment in schools increase tremendously, an aspect that has led to recruitment of unqualified teachers in several instances. Asked why it has to happen this way, one head teacher responded by stating that, “...in a situation where the qualified are not available, the available become the qualified” (1).

Liberia has an estimated population of 3 million (half of which lives in Monrovia, the capital) and a national budget of only US$129 million, while the external debt stands at US$ 3.7 billion (2). Liberia’s challenges are aggravated by the country’s past mismanagement of its natural resources. These include iron ore, rubber, gold, diamond and timber. Generally the country’s rainfall patterns and the fertility of its soils make it highly viable for agriculture. Yet currently the country is dependent on the outside world for its sustenance, leading to a high cost of living (3). Unserviceable roads, which prevent easy access to markets, have proven such a handicap for most of Liberia’s farmers, that many have opted out of farming and have gone to Monrovia to try their luck in other enterprises (4). As a result the country lacks an indigenous manufacturing base. With a coastline of about 350 miles, one would have expected some form of commercial fishing activity but this, too, is not the case.

For the average Liberian, vagrancy is a reality of life that calls for a multi-faceted intervention approach. Complicated as the situation may be, however, the President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf’s efforts to pull the country out of the abyss of despondence are slowly starting to yield fruit. At least a section of central Monrovia has now received electricity, much as the rest of it still throbs with generators. The continuing drafting of the county’s poverty reduction strategy, aimed at outlining the country’s road map to development is another major step. The document, according to the presidency, is due to be circulated to development partners in December 2006 and formally tabled at Liberia’s investment partners’ conference scheduled for Washington in mid-February 2007.

For now, every Liberian remains optimistic that each new day takes him or her closer to a brighter future. One thing is for sure, though, that Africa’s first woman president is faced with one of Africa’s most daunting development challenges. Presently the Liberian environment is still one of uncertainty, and any progress towards greater stability and security depends on how quickly basic services can be restored and the economic engine restarted, followed by the creation of jobs. The best thing that the rest of Africa and the world could do for Liberia now is to provide comprehensive and unequivocal support to President Johnson-Sirleaf and UNMIL’s in their drive to establish the necessary basis for sustained peace and development. Only then will most Liberians’ minds shift from an obsession with the war and concentrate instead on development.

Nelson Alusala (Writing from Monrovia, Liberia), Arms Management Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)

1. Author interview with a head teacher of a primary school in Monrovia, 23 November 2006

2. “Good Samaritans or Money Launderers?” New Democrat, Vol. 13 no. 176, November 2006

3. http://pages.prodigy.net/jkess3/Land.html

4. Author interview with traders in Duala Market, Monrovia, 23 November 2006