LRRRC Launches Anti Stigma Campaign

By R Joyclyn Wea

The Executive Director of Liberia Refugee Repatriation and Resettlement Commission (LRRRC), Festus Logan has officially launched the platform called anti-stigma campaign on National Internal Displaced Persons with special needs (zogos).

LRRRC Boss, Rev Festus Logan

National Internal Displaced Persons with special needs are people who are directly associated with drugs abuse, selling drugs, producing drugs or importing drugs, and some enforcement officers who are in contact and conflict with the law.

He disclosed that the LRRRC and LIS have setup a technical working group that is developing a comprehensive master plan to address the DED program in Liberia.

He explained that good number of women, youth and children were cast not new and unfamiliar role, taking up arms to protect themselves from sexual violence during war, to becoming the main bread winners for their families.

He further disclosed that the United States President and the Government of America has reached the decision to end the temporary protected status (TPS) program that has allowed approximately 3,600 Liberians to stay in the U.S. for over two decades, giving them one year from now to leave the country or face deportation.

LRRRC had started working with IOM, LIS and MoFA to firstly setup a technical working group that will establish contact with embassies in the region to share the manifesto of the stranded Liberian migrants living in the sub-region.

He holds that these vulnerable young people find themselves lost in jungle of unskilled and directionless unemployment, thus roaming the streets daily doing petty trade, picking pokets, and some are even selling their bodies as a means of sustaining themselves.

The Government of Liberia through LRRRC and partners will continue to provide, out of meager resources, the needed funding to provide international protection and assistance to refugees, stranded Liberia migrants, DED, NIDPs and other persons of concern (PoC’s).