OCHA Situation Report No. 1
Humanitarian Voices
West Africa
10 April 2003


Source: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)

January - March 2003
Dedication

This issue of Humanitarian Voices is dedicated to our humanitarian
partners who were killed recently in eastern Liberia and western Cote
d'Ivoire. OCHA, on behalf of the entire humanitarian community, would like
to extend our most heartfelt condolences to the families and close
colleagues of the deceased.

   Mr. Emmanuel Sharpulo, ADRA Liberia
   Mr. Musa Kita, ADRA Liberia
   Mr. Kaare Lund, ADRA Liberia
   Mr. Gonzreu Kloueu, Ivorian Red Cross
   Mr. Thierry Kloueu, Ivorian Red Cross
   Mr. Te Goue, Ivorian Red Cross
   Mr. Vally Camara, Ivorian Red Cross

Cote d'Ivoire: The Humanitarian Crisis Worsens


Overview to Situation Today

The Linas-Marcoussis accord, signed by all parties to the Ivorian conflict
in France on 24 January, has received the full support of the United
Nations, the European Union, the African Union and the United States,
among others. UNSG Special Representative for Cote d'Ivoire Mr. Albert
Tevoedjre, as President of the international Monitoring Committee of the
Marcoussis accord, and consensus Prime Minister Mr. Seydou Diarra, as well
as ECOWAS, have been actively conferring nationally, regionally and
internationally with all concerned groups to bring about the successful
formation and functioning of the new government.  The French "Operation
Unicorn" forces and the ECOWAS forces, newly dubbed "ECOMICI", already
monitoring the cease-fire, are mandated by UN Security Council Resolution
1464 to protect civilians and ensure a secure environment for the National
Reconciliation Government to take root in.  A National Security Council
has also been formed to oversee protection and national defense matters in
a consensual forum.  UNSC resolution 1467 was recently unanimously
adopted, and addresses the proliferation of small arms and light weapons,
mercenary activities and the phenomenon of child soldiers in West Africa.

After the signing of the Marcoussis accord, violent protests - often with
strong anti-French tones - rocked Abidjan, spurring an exodus of foreign
nationals and the closure of some embassies and major companies.  On 5
February the UN authorised Security Phase IV for the whole of Côte
d'Ivoire, effectively realigning the efforts of the United Nations
Agencies, Funds and Programmes present in the country towards emergency
humanitarian interventions.  A symptomatic economic development is the
temporary evacuation of the African Development Bank to Tunis. Sporadic
fighting between Government troops and rebel elements has erupted along
the northern cease-fire line, and fairly regular skirmishes between
Government, rebels and other armed elements have been taking place in the
extremely troubled western region of the country, where two rebel groups,
MPIGO and MJP, Liberian mercenaries and, reportedly, local armed militia
are present.

Ministers from the rebel forces attended for the first time a cabinet
meeting of the National Reconciliation Government on 3 April. Despite this
positive political development, humanitarian conditions on the ground
continue to worsen.


Cote d'Ivoire: Humanitarian Concerns

General Humanitarian Context

Each day that political and military issues go unresolved, the
humanitarian situation becomes more alarming.  The effective partitioning
of the country has left central, northern and western zones without public
services. Administration structures, schools, hospitals and health clinics
are generally not functioning in these areas.  The closure of banks is
also causing a cash flow problem in some areas in the north, creating
difficulties for merchants, cash crop farmers and other residents.  The
southern, government-controlled portion of the country has received
displaced populations from the north and arrivals continue from the west
due to ongoing violence.  There are currently an estimated 750,000 IDPs
within Côte d'Ivoire's borders, the vast majority of whom have found
shelter with host families.  As the crisis continues, however, the
resources of host families are dwindling and the vulnerability of both
IDPs and their hosts is rising.

Access and Security are currently among the principle concerns of the
humanitarian aid community. While access to northern areas control has
been fairly smooth, western Côte d'Ivoire, along the border with Liberia,
has become a hotbed of violent activity involving several armed elements,
presenting serious dangers for local populations and humanitarian workers
alike. Three ADRA humanitarian aid workers were killed in late February in
eastern Liberia during an attack on Toe's Town, close to the border with
Ivory Coast. The attack was reportedly launched from western CdI. The
bodies of four Ivorian Red Cross volunteers who had been missing since 12
January were also recently found in the western Ivorian town of Toulepleu.
In this violent, unpredictable environment, thousands of extremely
vulnerable IDPs and local populations are without urgently needed aid due
to the lack of security for humanitarian operations.  It is also feared
that the delivery of food aid and other supplies to civilian populations
in these areas could turn them into targets and fuel the conflict.

Health issues for IDPs and others affected by the conflict are becoming
critical. NGOs such as Medecins du Monde and Medecins Sans Frontiers, as
well as the ICRC and Ivorian Red Cross have been active from the outset of
the crisis in providing emergency medical services and supplies in certain
areas of the north. In the south, large concentrations of IDPs in host
families and transit centers are having a negative impact on hygiene
conditions.  Outbreaks of cholera, measles and meningitis have already
occurred, although with quick intervention by the Ministry of Health, WHO
and UNICEF, they have been contained.  With the rainy season around the
corner, the threat of epidemics will rise. Children in the north and IDP
children in the south and west have also not benefited from regular
vaccination campaigns, although the Ivorian Government, UNICEF, WHO and
NGO partners have been actively trying to seek and vaccinate these
children.

Education for children in northern rebel held zones has all but ceased due
to the flight of teachers and administration officials.  IDP children who
have moved to government held territory have also suffered from a break in
their school year.  The Ministry of Education in cooperation with UNICEF
organised a second school year for a portion of these children in
February, and a third school year is being organised for the spring.  IDP
children have continued to trickle into functioning school systems causing
problems including lack of teachers, lack of school materials, and lack of
accommodating structures.  Ad hoc educational structures have been
established in the south to accommodate some of the overflow, and UNICEF
and NGO partners have been distributing educational and recreational kits.
UNICEF is also supporting a community based initiative in the north to
keep children involved in structured, educational and recreational
environments.

HIV/AIDS rates in Cote d'Ivoire were the highest in West Africa, with
about 1 million people, including 10% of the population between 15 and 49
years of age, infected as of 2000.  Insecurity linked to population
movements and IDP living conditions, the halting of sensibilisation and
education campaigns within the development context, and the violent
conflict in the west are indicators that we will see infection rates
skyrocket if peace and security are not re-established.

Food-Security is not related, per se, to the availability of food in Cote
d'Ivoire.  There is no food shortage here. There is, however, a lack of
access to food among large portions of the population. In the north, a
besieged economy and cash flow problems are creating food insecurity for
people there.  In the south, high unemployment, concentrations of IDPs in
transit centers, and most importantly dwindling resources of households
hosting IDPs are the major sources of food insecurity.  WFP with its NGO
partners, including CARE, ACF, Solidarites and others, is providing food
aid both in the rebel-held north and in the south, mostly to IDP transit
centers and host families.  WFP is also using food aid as a way to ensure
that public services in the north continue to function, through Food For
Work programmes, and is supporting agriculture through Food For
Agriculture programmes.  WFP is also working in close cooperation with the
Ministry of Education and UNICEF to further strengthen its award-winning
School Cantine programmes, adapting and enlarging them to keep children in
school and protect them from possible recruitment by armed elements.

Refugees remain of paramount concern in Cote d'Ivoire.  Prior to 19
September, over 75,000 Liberian refugees lived in western Cote d'Ivoire,
in an area designated the Z.A.R. or zone d'accueil des refugies. Just
under 4,000 of the most vulnerable of these, due to their ethnicity, lived
in Cote d'Ivoire's only refugee camp, Nicla, just outside the town of
Guiglo. After the outbreak of violence in the west, the involvement of
Liberian mercenaries, and the reported recruitment of Liberian refugees by
both sides of the Ivorian conflict, public opinion has turned against
them, resulting in serious threats to their security.  To date, over
40,000 Liberian refugees have returned to the "lesser of two bad choices",
namely, their strife-torn homeland, and the population of Nicla camp has
more than doubled.  UNHCR is providing voluntary repatriation for Liberian
refugees in Cote d'Ivoire, and has for months been pressing the Government
to indicate a safe site for their relocation within the country.  UNHCR
has also been repeating pleas to third countries to provide temporary
asylum to the refugees.  Over 1,000 refugees, mostly Liberian, who were
left homeless after the destruction of shantytowns in Abidjan are
receiving shelter and care in UNHCR-supported transit centres in Abidjan.

Regional Population Movements



Follow-up on IDPs

Cote d'Ivoire Presents Challenges

IDPs do not necessarily need humanitarian aid.  However, they do
constitute a vulnerable group, and as such should be comprehensively
tracked and monitored to ensure that their rights are addressed, and to
ensure that the humanitarian community is prepared for events that may
increase their vulnerability.

The weeks and months following the violence of the 19 September coup
attempt saw population movements mainly from the central areas of Cote
d'Ivoire towards the south, and from areas further north into neighboring
countries.  Based on accounts coming out of rebel-held zones, including
that Cote d'Ivoire's northern "second" city Bouake (pop. 600,000) had
become a ghost town, it was estimated that as many as 600,000 people had
been displaced by mid-November.  Then two more rebel groups emerged in the
west, and that violence created further displacement, roughly estimated at
500,000.  In January of 2003, however, given differing estimates of the
number of IDPs among various UN Agencies and the Government, a concerted
effort to tackle the issue was begun.  OCHA held two ad hoc working groups
on IDPs in February, which were followed by a workshop held in Abidjan in
March by an OCHA IDP expert sent from Geneva.  The current estimate, based
on the information and data available, is that approximately 750,000 IDPs
are currently in Cote d'Ivoire.

Available information and data are, however, insufficient due to a variety
of factors.  The majority of population movements occurred before
humanitarian structures were in place; the humanitarian community lacks
targeted information on IDP presence in large portions of the north; the
west is almost completely inaccessible due to violence and insecurity; the
Government Solidarity and Humanitarian Action Cell is lacking in human
resources and technical capacity to tackle the issue in the south;
registration and monitoring to date have been largely ad hoc and
incomplete; and perhaps most important, approximately 80% of IDPs have
found shelter with host families, making them hard to locate.

The HIC, operational since mid-February, is closely involved in the task
of aiding the Government in coordinating humanitarian data collection
through the design of a common evaluation form to be used by all
humanitarian actors performing evaluations in the field.  The data
collected will be hosted in a comprehensive database on humanitarian
populations affected by the crisis.  A follow-up IDP workshop is also
planned for early May, with the return of the OCHA IDP expert and the
added participation of Government and local NGOs, to form a concrete IDP
strategy for this complex environment.

Liberia Spilling Over - Spilling In

The 19 September 2002 fighting in Western Cote d'Ivoire has to date
displaced over 94,000 returnees, refugees and Third Country Nationals
(RR&TCN) into Liberia (UNHCR).  At the start of 2003, fighting between
Government forces and rebels escalated in the northwest and central part
of Liberia, displacing populations into Monrovia and into the Bong camps.
It is now estimated that over 200,000 IDPs are in camps in Liberia
receiving humanitarian assistance. The primary challenges faced by IDPs,
RR&TCN and the humanitarian community include:

(1) Protection is a major concern of the humanitarian community.  Due to
the escalation of violations of Humanitarian Law and other abuses
committed by both government and rebel groups, the humanitarian community
and government agencies have established an inter-agency forum to address
protection issues.

(2) Security of humanitarian workers is also a major concern. The
Humanitarian Coordinator expressed his concern to the Government on
protecting humanitarian workers following the unfortunate incident in the
southeast in which three aid workers were murdered.

(3) Repatriation of an estimated 10,000 Third Country Nationals, mainly
Burkinabes, trapped in eastern Liberia where the security situation
continues to deteriorate.

In the absence of IOM which is seeking funding for USD1,474,150, the
United Nations are mobilizing resources to move these nationals into safer
locations before they are repatriated to their countries of origin.

(4) Inadequacy of facilities, particularly shelter, resulting in
over-crowding at transit centers and IDP camps; the humanitarian community
provided more transit centres and assistance for individual shelter
construction.

(5) Food Insecurity as a result of the security situation in most of the
host communities have worsened coupled with influxes of refugees,
returnees and third country nationals.  Due to the increasing need for
food assistance, WFP resources have been overstretched and in order to
continue to provide food assistance to affected populations, WFP
instituted a reduction in the cereal ration and pulses by 25% in February
and March due to pipeline problems.  Oil was also cut by 20%.  Poor
funding of humanitarian activities has led to aid agencies not meeting the
minimum Humanitarian standards.  The CAP 2003 has so far been funded at
1.5% of the 42.7 million requirement.

The conflict in Liberia has created an influx of refugees to neighboring
Sierra Leone (51,861) and Guinea (116,509) as well as Ivory Coast (see
above) further straining limited available resources in those countries.

CAP 2003 for Cote d'Ivoire and the Sub-region

In the Shadow of Iraq

Donor response to the November Flash Appeal for Cote d'Ivoire and the
Sub-region was disappointing.  As of end March, approximately 25% of funds
had been received.  The CAP for CdI and the Sub-region for 2003, to be
launched around the third week of April covers the period April through
December.  Given the donor response to the Flash Appeal, efforts were
redoubled to include donors, as well as Government and NGOs, in
discussions on the development of sector strategies and the coordination
and distribution of activities within projects.

With the eyes of the world on the war in Iraq, major efforts will be
necessary to ensure that the crises in Cote d'Ivoire and Liberia, and
their effects on the West African sub-region, are not overlooked by the
international community.


distributed by
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Center for International                  web: www.cidi.org
    Disaster Information             listserv: www.cidi.org/listsub.htm
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
comments/suggestions/requests to incident@cidi.org