Old Loguatuo

Marguerite de Quesee and her children fled their home in Ivory Coast after it was looted.

Lucy Albert and her six children walked three days through dense jungle to escape gunfire between battling factions in Ivory Coast, among thousands of Ivoirians fleeing the political fallout of November’s disputed elections, straining the resources of already strapped villages and putting pressure on aid groups to finish a refugee camp before the rainy season. 

“The townspeople are taking good care of me, but there’s not enough food,” said Albert, 35, as she cradled her newborn son, Crisis. 

The political standoff began when Alassane Outarra was recognized by the UN and Ivory Coast’s electoral commission as the winner of the nation’s Nov. 28 elections.  The incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo, has refused to cede power, using military force to blockade Outarra in a hotel in the capital, Abidjan. The disarray has sent more than 32,000 refugees across the border to Liberia, with the UN expecting the number to swell to 50,000 by the end of this month.  


The refugees fled out of fear the tensions would reignite Ivory Coast’s 2002-2003 civil war. Rebels still controlling the north of Ivory Coast have said they are ready to fight alongside West African states if they launch an intervention to end the violence between the competing political factions. About 300 people have died in post-election unrest and the UN fears further turmoil.                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Since November, more than 10,000 Ivoirian refugees have fled west into the tiny Liberian border town of Old Loguatuo. Two refugees died in December because of a lack of medical attention, according to the International Crisis Group, which is in charge of the camp. The town has one well and 16 toilets, and the small stockpile of food has been depleted.

“The same thing happened to us – we went to Ivory Coast, so we’re hosting them the right way,” said the town chief, Victor G. Wonlea, referring to the Liberian exodus to Ivory Coast during Liberia’s 14-year civil conflict. “The food we have, we give to them. The lodging, we give to them. We can’t allow them to sleep outside.  Now we’re asking the government and the NGOs to bring some assistance. The little we had, everything’s finished,” he said.

In nearby Tiaplay, the small mud and thatch roof huts are crammed with as many as sixty people. “I am not comfortable here but I cannot go home. The rebels said they would burn down my house and kill me,” said Glougoua Nestor Au, the refugees’ representative and, as a town chief in the Ivory Coast border town of Ligbepleu, a backer of Gbagbo.

Marguerite du Quesee, 40, fled in January along with her three children and neighbors. “Our country has two presidents and many rebels,” she said, molding clay to form the wall of a new hut. The rebels broke down the door and looted her home, she said. “I was very afraid.”

Despite the crowded conditions in the villages, the refugees have nowhere else to go. The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, is building a 250-acre camp in Bahn, 65 km from the border, for 15,000 people, and will truck in the first 500 refugees by mid-February, according to UNHCR emergency coordinator Yvan Sturm. Aid groups are rushing to finish the camp before the rainy season begins in April. The site, formerly used to grow cassava and plantains, has been cleared, but remains littered with heavy machinery, bladders filled with water from a newly dug well and piles of bamboo.

Many of the refugees say they would rather stay in the host communities, where they share the common Guio language and have easy access to the border. But villagers say their resources are already strained.

“Some refugees are acknowledging the fact that their lives are starting to be difficult for themselves and for the communities. It’s quite possible that those who came recently haven’t received food, so they’ve started to think about the camps,” Sturm said.       

The African Union team of experts tasked with finding a peaceful solution to Ivory Coast’s political impasse is meeting this week with representatives of the two men claiming victory. They will present their findings to a panel of five African presidents established by the continental union at a meeting in Addis Ababa last month.