Internal Displacement and Post-Conflict Peace-building in Liberia

Abstract

One of the major challenges of the post-conflict peace-building project that is in progress in Liberia is addressing the plight of internally displaced persons (IDPS)—those who have returned to their original places of residence; those who have settled in other parts of the country; and those who are still displaced. This entails that the Liberian state would need to address issues that are specific to these IDPS. Broadly, in order to forestall the reoccurrence of civil war and its associated vagaries, including displacement, the Liberian state would need to address the cultural, economic, political, security and social roots of the civil conflict. In this vein, the Liberian state has taken steps to address the IDP specific issues. Under the overarching liberal peace-building project that was set into motion, various measures are also been employed to ostensibly deal with the undercurrents of the broader civil conflict. In contradistinction, the central argument of this article is that the steps that the state has taken to address IDP specific issues are inadequate. At the macro-level, the article posits that the social democratic framework, if adopted, would be the best pathway to durable peace.