Liberia: IDPs begin to move home spontaneously

Thousands of the 350,000 Liberians who fled abroad as refugees to neighbouring Sierra Leone, Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire and other West African countries as far away as Ghana and Nigeria, have begun the long trek home. They have been unwilling to wait for the UN refugee agency UNHCR to begin its official mass repatriation programme in October once the rains end and Liberia's dirt roads become more possible. UNHCR estimates that about 50,000 refugees have already spontaneously made the journey home since Liberia's three warring factions signed a peace deal in August 2003.