By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 16 2003 (IPS)

The international community is so obsessed with its fight against global terrorism that it continues to neglect ongoing humanitarian crises in Africa and Asia, a leading aid organisation complained Tuesday.

In the first three months of the U.N.’s 2003 Iraq appeal, donors mobilised nearly two billion dollars, or 74 dollars per person in need, said Oxfam America in a report relapsed Tuesday.

In comparison, the Democratic Republic of Congo has received only 17 dollars, and the appeal for Indonesia is funded to less than seven dollars per person, added the report.

”World leaders should provide humanitarian assistance on the basis of need rather than political priorities,” Barbara Stocking, director of Oxfam, told reporters.

Donor governments claim they do not have funds for neglected and long-term emergencies, but then they find billions of dollars within weeks for crises such as Iraq, which are suddenly in the political spotlight, she added.

One of the neglected nations most in need is Liberia, say experts.

U.S. President George W. Bush is also planning to spend a staggering 87 billion dollars for the reconstruction of Iraq and for the continued military occupation of that country.

In July, the United Nations increased its appeal for emergency aid for Liberia to almost 70 million dollars, but it has received only 13 per cent of that, excluding contributions of food.

”For the past two years, appeals for Liberia have raised only around 30 per cent of their requests,” said Nathaniel A. Raymond of Oxfam America.

Ross Mountain, U.N. special humanitarian coordinator for Liberia, told reporters Tuesday that the country is facing a massive humanitarian and political crisis. ”It’s an absolute disaster,” he said.

”There is lack of food, lack of water, lack of shelter and lack of electricity.”

Stocking conceded that tackling terrorism is of critical importance to the world at large. ”But the international community must also live up to obligations to protect the world’s forgotten victims,” she added.

These victims include the three million people of Liberia, of which one million have been displaced by 12 years of civil war.

Jacques Paul Klein, the U.N. special representative in Liberia, told the Security Council on Tuesday that for the past 12 years, Liberians lived in ”hellish limbo, suffering at the whim of warlords and despots, exploited by a criminal kleptocracy without help or relief in sight”.

Today, Klein said, Liberia is not even listed in the human development index of the U.N. Development Programme. The index measures a country’s economic growth rate, literacy, life expectancy and per capita income.

Seventy-five percent of the three million Liberians are living below the poverty line; the unemployment rate is 85 percent; literacy is at 38 percent; and 50 percent of the population is under 15 years of age, said Klein.

”Added to this is that 70 percent of the belligerents are child soldiers, coerced, psychologically traumatised, manipulated and exploited by self-appointed military leaders.”

”I have witnessed first hand that Liberia’s conflict has resulted in a humanitarian catastrophe impacting not only on Liberians but also on refugees from Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast,” he added.

Klein said that Liberia was a unique country in that ”the younger population is less well educated than their parents”.

Under pressure from the international community, the president of Liberia Charles Taylor resigned in August and sought political asylum in Nigeria.

Taylor has already been indicted by a special war crimes tribunal in neighbouring Sierra Leone, where the former Liberian president is accused of supporting rebel groups trying to overthrow the government.

Klein told reporters he hoped that Taylor would face justice there but that, unfortunately, the tribunal is concerned with crimes related to Sierra Leone, not Liberia.

Taylor’s departure from Liberia last month was followed by the deployment of the 3,500-strong West African peacekeeping force, led by Nigeria.

The force includes troops from Senegal, Mali, Guinea-Bissau, Benin, Togo and Ghana, described as some of the world’s poorest nations. It is scheduled to be replaced by a blue-helmeted U.N. peacekeeping force by Oct. 1.

In a report to the Security Council released Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has recommended a troop strength of about 15,000 for the new U.N. Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) whose primary task would be to facilitate implementation of a peace agreement reached by the warring parties in the country.

This force will be deployed in advance of the installation of an interim National Transitional Government in Monrovia on Oct. 15.

Many of the 3,500 Africa troops now in Liberia, are expected to be absorbed into UNMIL.

New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Tuesday that both government forces and rebel fighters are committing grave human rights abuses while peacekeeping forces in Liberia remain inadequate.

Despite assurances by U.S. soldiers based offshore and the West African peacekeeping force, marauding armed bands continue to commit murder, rape, forced recruitment and looting, HRW said.

Ragtag government militias and fighters from both rebel groups operate with little discipline or command control, partly because they are hungry and not being paid, it said.

”Government and rebel fighters continue to terrorise and abuse civilians in Liberia,” said Peter Takirambudde, executive director of HRW’s Africa division. ”This is a critical moment for immediate U.N. action in Liberia,” he added.

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