More Funding for School Feeding; To Include Refugee Kids

Passionate about the right of every child to education and having observed that a line of demarcation has been drawn between children of Liberian descent and their Ivorian counterparts, who fled their country, neighboring Cote d’Ivoire [with or without] their parents to escape soaring post-electoral violence in their homeland, Lord Paddy Ashdown has pledged his unwavering resolve to lobby with the British Government to ensure more and effective funding to UNICEF-Liberia for the education of these refugee kids.
Lord Ashdown, along with 8 others [including Cathy Turner and David Bull], were visiting Liberia as a high level UNICEF UK delegation. According to key members of the team, their four-day fact-finding mission afforded them a priceless chance to get a firsthand feel of happenings in the field.

Following a tour of some Monrovia-based projects being supported by UNICEF, the delegation was taken on a field tour along Liberia’s borders with Cote d’Ivoire, especially to those communities that are playing host to thousands of Ivorian refugees. By the close of their visit, Lord Ashdown had already mapped out areas of UNICEF-Liberia’s work that require more funding, particularly its school feeding program.

“I’m taking back some very strong messages to my good friend who and I run the Department for International Development (DFID) about the need in some areas for more money,” he said.  “I was particularly struck by the fact that even though young children are receiving education, the refugee children in the Zwedru Dirstict [of Grand Gedeh County, southeastern Liberia] are not being fed at school, but the Liberian children are. That seems to me to be a piece of discrimination, which is both wrong and unhealthy. We want to get these kids educated. So I think this is a very important matter for the British Government to ensure that it funds this effectively.”

Liberia’s Recovery

Liberia is recovering from 14 years of civil conflict, which left severe devastating impacts on the country’s infrastructures ranging from roads, health centers to schools, only to mention a few. In the contemporary context, however, the country is treading on an irreversible path to recovery. To witness this transition firsthand and get a deeper understanding of the role of UNICEF in these processes, the UNICEF UK delegation embarked on its just completed mission to the West African nation. While in Liberia, the delegation was privileged to meet and hold an hour-long discussion with President Ellen Johnson, among other stakeholders.

“The aim of our visit to Liberia,” Lord Ashdown, who is also president of UNICEF UK, said, “is to assist UNICEF-UK understanding of why the job we do to raise money for UNICEF Liberia is so important. We are here to take a look and see what’s happening on the ground. You know when you invite people to give their money for something, you must be able to give them a very clear idea of what their monies are being used for. I am astonished and very impressed at some of the things I’ve seen here.”

With some significant experience in post-war rebuilding, and wealth of knowledge from his deep involvement in trying to create a sustainable peace in Bosnia after the war in that country, Lord Ashdown is of the strongest conviction that Liberia has made more progress towards it recovery than any country he can think of.

“It is miraculous. My warning would be that you need to keep this going. However, it is very, very easy to return to conflict. The reason is although you may create the institutions for peace, it is what goes on in people’s heads – the software of the state [that matter the most in this rebuilding process]. And that’s why I’m so proud of the work that UNICEF does here because begins to tackle the problems of the most disadvantaged, especially those who threaten peace,” he added.

‘We Have Nothing to Fear’

Regarding the state of the Liberia woman and child, Lord Ashdown observed that after all, Liberia is still a traditional African society where women have not had a very good place in society. But on the other hand, he was especially struck by the self-confidence and even assertiveness of young girls and young women that he met and interacted with in Liberia.

“If they are the future of this country, [then] we have nothing to fear. So, whatever the past is, it seems that Liberia is making a really determined attempt to break out of that past. And it is the job of the international community, especially the job of UNICEF to support that process,” he said.

Meanwhile, Lord Ashdown has described Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s preferment to co-chair the MDG Panel, alongside UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, as a guarantee that the progress that’s being made to help children in the most impoverished areas is going to be sustained.

Lord Ashdown: “She is a widely respected on the international scene. Her position on the MDG Panel is exceptionally important for this reason: the MDG Panel this year will move toward sustainability and environmental responsibility in the world. It’s really important that the progress that’s being made to help children in the most impoverished areas is not lost. I think she is the world’s guarantee that all that success and hard work that is already being carried out is going to be sustained and isn’t swept away.” 

More Lobbying for UNICEF

For her part, Cathy Turner, vice president of UNICEF UK, has disclosed that, moving forward, members of the delegation will have several actions to specifically follow-up on, and especially making sure that the support already in hand is enhanced.

Buttressing Lord Ashdown’s comment on the biased treatment of refugee children, the UNICEF UK Vice President said they (members of the delegation) will push the UK Government for more support to UNICEF-Liberia because they learnt during a tour of host communities of Ivorian refugees that if the refugees are being cared for in the communities rather than in the camps, then their kids are not entitled to the food program.

“So we will be going back to lobby; saying that is not acceptable. There is no basis for that. We will do quite a lobbying on this issue,” Cathy, also a renowned banker, said. “On the softer side, I think we will be ambassadors for the purpose of Liberia. There are a lot of countries competing for space in people’s mind. So, when you say ‘I’ve been there, I’ve seen it firsthand; there is a tremendous effort by the Liberians to move forward’, I think we can connect with the business people, politicians, the charity sector and hopefully become a reliable and passionate advocates for this country.”

What Cathy finds very uplifting is to see the amount of hope, energy and commitment for Liberia to revolve and move forward.  Beyond that, she described the colleagues from UNICEF that she met on the ground as a “really fantastic” team.  She, however, warned that the tremendous amount of aspiration and good work being done in Liberia shouldn’t be allowed to cloud the fact that there is a lot more to be done.

UNICEF UK executive director David Bull did not mince words when he said the challenges facing women and girls in Liberia are enormous, despite the level of progress made thus far.

“Liberia is an important country because it is recovering from a war which was terrible. But we’ve also seen how determined Liberians are to make a difference in their lives. We wanted to bring our guests in to where they can see all the range of work that UNICEF does; in all the different kinds of environments in which we work -- from a refugee environment to a rural and urban environment; working on health, education and child protection.  We know that we can see all of that in Liberia, a relatively small country. So, it’s a good place to bring people to show and make them feel positive about development,” Director Bull said.

He continued: “There seems to be a really commitment from the leadership of this country to making things better for women and children. That’s the starting point. You have to have that, if you are going to be better. We have still a long way to having all the rights of women and children fully respected in Liberia. I think it is particularly shocking to see how many girls are mothers and pregnant while they are still teenagers, which is so damaging to their life chances and the prospects of those girls; to find that many of them have their first experience of sex through force and to know about the FGM being so prevalent in the country. So there are a lot of problems that need to be resolved, especially for girls and women.”

For Director Bull, he is taking back a feeling that, despite all the problems and challenges that Liberia and the people of Liberia face, there seems to be a good spirit of hope for a better future and that there is a determination on the part of all Liberians to not fall back into the past. He observed that building peace right from the bottom is absolutely vital for Liberia. “And it is the young people are the ones who have the potential to do it. Ignoring those young people and not giving them enough education, enough attention, enough support, enough trust will eventually cause things to fail.”

A special Article Written by me for UNICEF-Liberia