Founded by freed American slaves 157 years ago, Liberia is Africa’s oldest republic. Liberia was relatively calm until 1980 when William Tolbert was overthrown by Sergeant Samuel Doe after food price riots. By the late 1980s, arbitrary rule and economic collapse culminated in civil war when dissidents of Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front overran much of the countryside and executed Doe.

Over half of the population of Liberia fled their homes in terror during its long and bloody civil war. Thousands of children were separated from their parents and ended up in rebel gangs, living in the bush for years. After fourteen years of anarchy, the international community has arrived in force in an effort to stabilise the country. Many see this as Liberia’s last chance.

Jacques Klein, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Liberia, says: “The international community should be ashamed of itself for standing by for 24 years – for murder, rape, mayhem and chaos here and they did nothing.”

Jacques Klein

In December 2003 the first attempt to disarm and demobilise warring factions was overwhelmed by the huge numbers of combatants wanting to hand in their weapons – a second attempt is now well underway. Over 14,000 UN troops from 49 countries have been deployed to demobilise up to 45,000 combatants. It’s a concerted effort to encourage all the fighters to finally hand in their weapons. Today, the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in Liberia - UNMIL – is the largest peacekeeping mission in the world.

Twenty thousand weapons (and nearly 5 million rounds of small arms ammunition) have been handed in to date. With every fighter thought to have at least three weapons, there are still many more to come to light. Children – both boys and girls - formed a large part of the warring factions. ‘Moses’ had been living with rebel fighters since he was six years old. His real name cannot be revealed, to protect his identity. He’s now 11.

Joe Mistry, UNMIL Commander, explains: “Children are used because they are easy to manipulate – you catch them, force them to do things, order them to do things, and they will do them perfectly without questions. So children have been very easy targets for these people.”

“These children look like normal children,” says Josephine Tengbeh, of the Christian Children’s Fund. “But they have so much sorrow inside – so much hurt inside – and once you start talking to them, you know they are hurt. We want them to be reintegrated in society.”

Half a million people live in Internal Displacement Camps.

Most Liberians still live away from their original homes. Some live in makeshift accommodation in Monrovia – hospitals, old hotels and schools. Half a million people live in Internal Displacement Camps. There are 24 official and a further 15 unofficial camps throughout the country.

Thomas and Winifred Kessellie and their family were forced to move camp six times in eight years. Like many others, Winifred lost members of her family when she was fleeing an armed attack. Winifred’s desperate for the violence to end. She’s tired of war, she just wants to find her family and go home.

Most Liberians would agree. Wesley M Johnson, Vice Chairman of the Liberian Interim Government, says: “We have a difficult government to run – a government of inclusion but by the will of God we are trying to do our best. And one of the cardinal reasons happens to be that all Liberians are fed up of the war – and so we say we have to put a halt to this nonsense.”

Milton Gertee from the International Red Cross is trying to help Moses find his mother, but it is difficult because Moses doesn’t know where or when he was born. “Because of the low education given to the children, many of them don’t know the home address of their parents – or even the home town they come from. So we in tracing are finding difficult to find some of the parents – this is why some of the cases will take a long time.”

Winifred reunited.

Winifred has finally – after 5 long years – been reunited with her brother Anthony and sister Helena. But half a million people like Winifred, living in camps, need to be resettled and given the chance of a new start. The country itself needs to be almost entirely rebuilt. At present the country is almost totally dependent on foreign aid.

Within its allotted term of two years, the transitional government must oversee the disarmament, resettle its citizens, hold free and fair elections and get the country back to work.

Wesley Johnson

Wesley Johnson says that people must be given something to live for: “One of the fundamental problems we have today is the lack of jobs – everybody is yearning for money and the government here is relying almost entirely on the goodwill of the international community. We need to put our people back to work, we need to put them back to work, there is no way out.”

Jacques Klein says that Liberia is potentially rich, with gold, timber, diamonds and rubber. With more than fifty nine thousand fighters demobilised in the last three months and another fifteen thousand waiting to follow, the priority for Liberia today is to find a way of engaging them in rebuilding their country – to sustain the peace, so that individuals like Winifred and Moses can have a future to look forward to - and can finally go home.

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