USAID/OTI Liberia Field Report March 2004
Program Description
USAID/OTI’s Liberian Transition Initiative (LTI) program was launched in April 2004 to help consolidate the gains of the Accra Peace Accord signed between Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), and the Government of Liberia on August 18, 2003. LTI is providing assistance in four areas: good governance, transitional justice, media and youth training. LTI’s implementing partner is Creative Associates International and the FY 2004 budget is $15 million, including $3 million in Transition Initiative funds and $12 million in Supplemental Funds.
Country Situation
From late 1989 until the Accra Peace Accord was signed in August 2003, Liberia was in a constant state of conflict. Tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, lost their lives in the conflict. 300,000 Liberians still live in IDP or refugee camps. Abductions, torture, rape and other human rights abuses have occurred on a massive scale. Estimates are that one in ten children may have been recruited into militias. Many people have been traumatized by seeing their villages razed, their ethnic groups victimized, and their families and friends brutalized.
The Accra Peace Accord and international political pressure forced Charles Taylor to resign as president and ushered in the National Transition Government of Liberia (NTGL), composed of the main warring factions, civil society and political parties. The NTGL has seventeen months remaining in its mandate to establish peace and prepare Liberia for elections, scheduled for October 2005.
The United Nations Security Council, in Resolution 1509, established the United Nations Peace Keeping Mission in Liberia (UNMIL). This force, the largest of its kind in the world at present, sets the stage for disarmament, the reintegration of ex-combatants and a transition to peace and democracy.
Liberia is at a crossroads. The extensive support provided by the international community following Mr. Taylor’s departure presents Liberia with a real prospect to forge long-term peace and stability. A February donors’ conference raised $500 million in pledges from international donors, and some of this funding is now being put to work in Liberia. UN peacekeeping forces, 15,000 strong deployed throughout the country, have been able to improve security in Monrovia and immediate surroundings. The long-awaited UN-led disarmament process has begun. However, significant threats persist, with armed youth continuing to threaten communities and most of the regions still too unsafe to carry out basic assistance programs. Liberia has extensive resources of crop land, timber, minerals and perhaps oil, and yet the lack of security hampers economic activity and growth. The population of three million, exhausted from the violence, has greeted the peace with guarded anticipation.
USAID/OTI Highlights
A. Narrative Summary
The Liberian Transition Initiative began issuing grants in April 2004. Initial activities have focused on helping key government ministries and Liberian NGOs to become functional after having been looted during the violence and chaos following Taylor’s departure in 2003. LTI provided these ministries and organizations computers, desks, chairs, stationeries to allow them to resume their work. LTI has also started initiatives in transitional justice, good governance, and peace building. A post-conflict youth training effort, modeled after work done in Sierra Leone, will begin soon. Highlights of recent LTI activities included grants to:
- Improve conditions at the University of Liberia to keep students, who sometimes are drawn to the violence, from taking to the streets. Work includes in-kind tools for campus clean up, repairing the roof on the student union building, painting and re-glazing the principle building house university classrooms and reconditioning the soccer field.
- Support Parent Teachers Associations (PTAs) of five troubled senior high schools to improve sports facilities and to prepare for school openings.
- Repair wells at the Bo Waterside community, located on the Sierra Leone border and a community susceptible to violence. This activity will improve health conditions and alleviate some of the tension between returned and transiting refugees and the community, including ex-combatants.
- Provide soccer balls, basketballs, soccer nets, pumps and needles to 157 school sports leagues as part of the U.S. Ambassador John Blaney’s Sports Initiative.
- Provide Ministry-in-a-Box start up kits to eleven key Liberian government ministries to enhance their basic performance.
- Provide eight NGO-in-a-Box start-up kits to assist NGOs in restarting their activities.
- Facilitate a conference for the Liberian Refugee Repatriation and Reintegration Commission (LRRRC).
- Develop baseline information through the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG) aimed at understanding Liberian views of justice.
B. Grant Activity Summary – USAID/OTI Liberia
USAID/OTI Summary of Cleared and Completed Activities
| GOOD GOVERNANCE |
$873,000 |
$873,000 |
18 |
18 |
| MEDIA |
$76,000 |
$76,000 |
2 |
2 |
| PEACE & JUSTICE |
$265,000 |
$265,000 |
9 |
9 |
| YOUTH TRAINING |
$0 |
$0 |
0 |
0 |
| TOTALS |
$1,214,000 |
$1,214,000
| 29
| 29 |
NEXT STEPS/IMMEDIATE PRIORITIES
In May, LTI will stage a strategic planning and team building session to determine its future direction. By then, the initial phase of the disarmament and demobilization process should become known.
Plans are to try to launch the youth training program (Youth Education for life Skills or YES) as soon as possible.
The Liberian Transitional Justice Working Group will have completed a survey of Liberian attitudes about fundamental justice, and advocacy sessions will have been held. The challenge then will be to find ways to institutionalize what Liberians want.
For further information, please contact:
In Washington: John Gattorn, Liberia Program Manager, 202-712-0716, jgattorn@usaid.gov
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