afrol News, 30 June - The uncertain fate of uprooted third country nationals and Ivorian citizens is best depicted in and around the rebel-held western Ivorian town of Danané, less than 30 km from the Liberian border. Danané now houses uprooted people of all nationalities.

Danané fell to Patriotic Movement of Côte d'Ivoire (MPCI) insurgents and their pro-Liberian government supporters in early December 2002. The Ivorian military, reportedly backed by anti-Liberian government rebels and Ivorian government-hired mercenaries from Angola, South Africa, and other countries, were unable to recapture Danané and the nearby town of Man.

The violence uprooted the entire population of Danané and most of the surrounding villages and left countless civilians dead. Local officials estimate that some 250,000 people living in the area were forced from their homes.

The majority of Danané's population fled to surrounding villages and remains displaced among the areas stark mountains, hardwood forests, and jungle, where armed elements left a wake of destruction during the violence, stealing food supplies, destroying crops, and razing homes.

Thousands of rural residents simultaneously forced from their homes fled to Danané. According to a local organisation registering displaced persons, an estimated 30,000 persons, mostly citizens of Burkina Faso and other third country nationals, fled into Danané and remain displaced there.

- For nearly six months, thousands of internally displaced persons in and around Danané have lived with no humanitarian assistance, according to Joel Frushone, a policy analyst from the US Committee for Refugees (USCR) currently conducting a visit in Danané. "They exhausted what little food stores they had long ago," said Frushone. "As the security situation improves, as it recently has, international humanitarian assessments and urgent emergency assistance are warranted."

The World Food Program (WFP), which led an effort to open a humanitarian corridor to the Danané region that is now partially secured by French and ECOWAS troops, has distributed food rations to some 10,000 persons displaced in the town. Aside from water and electricity, and the food provided by WFP, little else flows into Danané. Social services, including education, health care, and sanitation stopped functioning soon after the war started and remain suspended.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) recently began operating mobile health clinics in Danané and currently visits the town two to three times per week, security permitting. In addition to offering limited medical support, MSF staff is also transferring severely malnourished children to a therapeutic feeding center at the hospital in Man, a 80 km drive to the east, and through no fewer than one dozen checkpoints manned by mostly teenaged boys wearing strange wigs and toting an assortment of automatic weapons.

The handful of humanitarian assistance workers that have gained limited access to the area have not been threatened or harmed. International humanitarian presence in the Danané region remains virtually non-existent, however. Although welcomed, the WFP provided food rations and MSF medical assistance is only beginning to address the greater humanitarian needs in the region.

- I've worked with many rebel groups in Africa and can say without equivocation that this rebel leadership is more eager for humanitarian intervention than any I've previously encountered, a UN official told USCR. "They understand that it is in their best interest to allow the humanitarian community to meet at least the most basic needs of the thousands of civilians they helped drive from their homes."

Some 300 Liberian refugees are also among the displaced population in Danané. Caught in the middle of a civil war similar to that which they fled, the Liberian refugees are literally running scared. The violence that displaced them from Liberia has escalated and shows no signs of subsiding. The civil war in Liberia has complicated, and, according to many international humanitarian workers in the region, fuelled the Côte d'Ivoire conflict.

- Get us out of here, a frail Liberian refugee man begged USCR. "Liberia was hell, but this is worse. We are no longer welcome here and can't possibly go home."

The outbreak of warfare forced 500,000 to 700,000 people to flee their homes, including nearly 25,000 people that fled to neighbouring war-torn Liberia. Nearly all of the uprooted third country nationals were left with no safe refuge.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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