LIBERIA TO WELCOME HOME 17,000 MORE REFUGEES BY DECEMBER
Posted on
Sep 9, 2012
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Displaced Ivorian villagers wait outside the local town hall in the the western village of Tai, on June 16, 2012, after sporadic violence on the border region with Liberia. Liberian refugees displaced by years of civil war have been streaming back home, with over 30,000 expected to have returned by the end of this year.
Liberia is expecting an additional 17,000 refugees to return home by the end of this year as the west African country continues to recover from years of damaging civil war that ended in 2003.
The UN and the Liberia Refugee Repatriation and Resettlement Commission say that 16,000 refugees have since February this year returned from countries where they had sought refuge.
The Commission's Information Officer, Mr Edward Kemokai, told reporters on the capital Monrovia that the returnees however still faced the challenge of integration back into the community and urged the government to provide jobs for those with skills.
Both organisations are also appealing to international donors to help returnees without skills acquire them so that the could contribute to the society and help nurture the prevailing peace.
The Liberian civil conflict took place in two phases starting in 1989 and claimed an estimated 250,000 lives while displacing an estimated one million people.
Liberia has a current population of four million and has been making steady progress over the last decade in its reconstruction effort.
