Liberia: UN Vows to Repossess Another Troubled Rubber Plantation

23 August 2006
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks

Monrovia — The United Nations on Wednesday vowed to help the government repossess a second rubber plantation occupied by former fighters to assist Liberia in establishing security and shoring up its economic interests after 14 years of civil war.

UN peacekeepers and government security forces last week reclaimed the Guthrie Rubber Plantation in northwest Liberia where about 500 former fighters had lived illegally for three years.

Liberia is home to one of the world's largest rubber plantations, Firestone, and rubber accounts for most of the country's export earnings. Although the UN Security Council has temporarily lifted sanctions on timber, logging operations have yet to resume. The war destroyed the country's iron ore industry.

Alan Doss, the UN secretary-general's special representative to Liberia, told reporters in the capital Monrovia on Wednesday that the UN would not allow anyone to continue to "hold up" Liberia's economic resources.

"We will follow up on the Sinoe Rubber Plantation as we did with Guthrie Plantation," Doss said. The Sinoe plantation is in southeast Liberia.

The UN in May released a report citing widespread abuses by former fighters against civilians in the Guthrie and Sinoe plantations.

"In Sinoe Rubber Plantation, [national police] officers are not present and courts do not operate," the report said. "The ex-LURD [Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy] general and self-proclaimed general manager of Sinoe Rubber Plantation, Mr. Paulson Gartey ... is both police and judge on the plantation".

Former fighters have made a living illegally tapping the rubber trees and selling the latex sap to merchants in Monrovia.

One former fighter said it was possible to earn about US $150 a week in a country where the World Bank estimates that most ordinary Liberians exist on less than US $1 per day.

President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf took office in January, pledging to create jobs and a favourable climate for investment in Liberia. The civil war ended in August 2003. Some 15,000 UN peacekeepers are in Liberia overseeing the country's post-war transition.

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]

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