Ruud Lubbers, the head of the United Nation's refugee agency UNHCR, said on Wednesday that he would seek to repatriate foreigners from several West African countries who became combatants in Liberia's civil war. Lubbers told a press conference at the end of a three-day visit to Liberia that a number of foreigners were handing in their guns as part of Liberia's disarmament, demobilisation and rehabilitation exercise, which began last month.

The head of the United Nations refugees agency (UNHCR) in Liberia, Moses Okello, has urged more than 300,000 Liberian refugees scattered across West Africa not to return home, but wait for a UN-organised repatriation exercise scheduled to begin in October. Okello told reporters last Thursday that most of the 50,000 refugees who have spontaneously returned to Liberia from both Guinea and Sierra Leone since the signing of an August peace deal have ended up in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps.

UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and Liberian soccer legend George Weah has suggested that heads of warring factions in the country should face justice for arming innocent Liberian children during the country's recent bloody conflict. Weah said it was a violation of local and international laws, conventions and treaties for warlords to have given weapons to children to fight. He observed that most of the children who joined the various armed groups, were either raped or conscripted against their will. The UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador pointed out that it was important for warlords to face justice in order to explain why they armed innocent Liberian children.

In 2002, allegations of sexual exploitation of refugees by humanitarian workers in West Africa rocked the humanitarian world. Workers stood accused of abusing their power by trading access to scarce relief supplies for sex. The UN and its implementing partners responded by establishing codes of conduct and stronger performance standards for humanitarian staff. Two years later, however, despite the increased attention to the issue, conditions are ripe for another public sexual exploitation scandal in Liberia.

Hundreds of rebel fighters in Liberia converged on the central town of Gbarnga last Thursday to hand over their guns to United Nations peacekeepers as the country began a relaunched disarmament scheme. Clutching AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, fighters from the rebel group LURD (Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy), assembled at a disarmament site at a farm owned by exiled former President Charles Taylor.

With the re-commencement of the disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation, and reintegration (DDRR) of fighters of Liberia’s warring factions on15 April 2004, UNICEF is mobilizing resources to provide immediate care and reintegration support to the estimated 15,000 children who will come through the demobilization process. Extensive awareness campaigns have been conducted jointly with UNMIL to prepare children for demobilization and reintegration. The campaigns have also aimed at preparing families and communities for the reunification of the returning children.  Sensitization messages have focussed on peace and tolerance, the importance of disarmament, sending children to school and protecting their rights.

The World Press Freedom Committee says it is "deeply alarmed" to learn that a writ of summons has been issued by the Civil Law Court in Monrovia on the management and editorial staff of four newspapers, namely, the National Chronicle, Monrovia Guardian, The Forum and The Heritage, for their editors and certain staff members to appear before court. This is after Labour Minister Lavella Supuwood filed a suit against the journalists, following a series of publications by the newspapers chronicling instances and names of people who allegedly committed crimes against the people of Liberia during the country's bloody 14-year civil war.

The guns in Liberia's civil war have been silent for several months now, as the country makes tentative efforts to establish lasting peace. But in many respects, inhabitants of the capital - Monrovia - have simply exchanged one sort of war for another: the battle against criminal activity. Fourteen years of intermittent fighting have stripped government departments of the personnel and equipment needed to perform their duties. The result is that citizens have taken to meting out mob justice to real and perceived criminals.

The United Nations will begin the orderly repatriation of more than 300,000 Liberian refugees dispersed in other West African countries in October once the rainy season is over, Abou Moussa, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Liberia, said on Wednesday. Moussa said that would allow time for the disarmament of an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 former combatants to take place beforehand.

The United Nations has confirmed that the delayed disarmament programme in Liberia will restart on Thursday after a four-month delay. Jacques Klein, the head of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), made the announcement on Saturday at a joint press conference with Gyude Bryant, the Chairman of Liberia’s transitional government, in the capital Monrovia.

Some 300 fighters of the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), apparently angered by delays to a disarmament programme that carries incentives for them, robbed people in the centre of the country at the weekend, a radio correspondent said Wednesday. The correspondent in central Liberia for Roman Catholic Radio Veritas cited victims as saying the LURD fighters beat up traders and commuters and fired indiscriminately in the air to scare them into handing over their money and personal effects.

A first group of displaced Liberian teachers have gone home with UNHCR assistance under plans to resume basic services and restore normalcy for tens of thousands of returnees in post-conflict Liberia. They had fled their homes and jobs at Zwedru's Multilateral High School at the height of the conflict last year, and are returning now as part of efforts by the Ministry of Education to kick-start basic services like education in areas of return.

This report, by Human Rights Watch, explores the human rights situation of child soldiers in Liberia through a series of interviews with former and current child soldiers undertaken in the country in late 2003. The report argues that approximately 15,000 boys and girls under the age of eighteen, some as young as nine and ten years old, were involved in the fighting in Liberia. Since the enforced ceasefire of August 2003, an extensive demobilisation program which includes specific provisions for child soldiers, has been put in place. The rehabilitation of child soldiers, however, remains an enormous challenge: whole communities have been destroyed; populations have been displaced; and many children have lost one or more family members.

The government of Liberia has ordered the closure of the “Informer” newspaper. A statement issued and signed by Deputy Information Minister for Administration, Bernard Warity, explained that the paper was not registered with the Ministry of Information. The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) regrets that after years of repression under the Taylor regime, the fate of the press in Liberia continues to depend on the disposition and benevolence of the government of the day.

Violence erupted on Saturday afternoon in Liberia’s second city, Buchanan, about 120 kilometres southeast of the capital, Monrovia. According to reports from Buchanan, fighters from the rebel Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) ran amok, looting properties and harassing civilians. One civilian was later confirmed dead. Witnesses who fled the area and later contacted IRIN talked of MODEL fighters letting off weapons at random intervals, causing civilian casualties.

An organisation seeking to promote and stimulate the ideals of good governance in the country has been established. The Liberia Organisation for Good Governance (LOGG) which is headed by Dr. Nathaniel R. Richardson as Interim President, was formed recently by a group of concerned Liberians. At a press conference to announce the formation of LOGG, Dr. Richardson said the organisation was not for profit, non political, non-governmental and represented no political group.

While a United Nations-backed war crimes court opened with much fanfare in Sierra Leone last week, human rights activists in Liberia are calling for their own war crimes tribunal. The two conflicts, which both saw many child soldiers involved, were intertwined, and former Liberian President Charles Taylor has been indicted by the court in Sierra Leone. But Nigeria, where he is living in exile, has refused to hand him over, saying it offered him a safe haven to stop the bloodshed.

Suspected yellow fever cases have appeared in eight of the 15 counties in Liberia, three of them along the border with Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire, a senior official of World Health Organisation (WHO) revealed in the capital, Monrovia. Dr Mekonnen Admassu told IRIN last Thursday at the WHO-Liberia offices that the government and his organisation had received reports of 39 suspected cases of yellow fever, a potentially fatal disease that is transmitted by mosquitoes and is spreading rapidly through the country.

Human rights monitors are travelling around Liberia documenting crimes of sexual violence during the country's 14-year civil war in a project backed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Over three months, 22 monitors will interview a random sample of 4,000 Liberians and give the results from those interviews to the country's soon-to-be established Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the agency announced on Tuesday.

A Liberian government team is due in the northeast of the country this week to investigate reports that hundreds of fighters loyal to exiled president Charles Taylor are undergoing training there. A senior government official said the gunmen, mostly from Liberia and Guinea, were at a camp in Nimba County, the region near Ivory Coast from where Taylor launched a rebellion in 1989 that triggered nearly 14 years of war.