development and, importantly, absorb some of the migration pressure now centred solely on Monrovia, requires a new national developmental vision. 364. Although Liberian politics are compromised by widespread corruption at national and local levels, it is ultimately counterproductive to consistently short change local authorities and security by keeping their salaries excessively low and denying them infrastructure support they absolutely need, e.g. motorcycles to transport themselves and computers to keep track and record what they are doing. 365. Liberia may find it has much to learn from Colombia. As has been described in these pages, Liberia’s government is undertaking a development strategy that focuses on poverty alleviation and continued peacebuilding as it strives to restore and build national wealth. The often stated goal of reconciliation is far from achieved. The strategy takes as a given that the beneficiaries will include the vast numbers of people who lost years of their lives and their worldly goods in conflict, or who fought in the conflict while young and face the rest of their lives without a viable future. 366. Will these Liberians who are meant to benefit from the national-wide development programmes actually be able to do so? At the present time, there are Liberians in urban and rural areas who suffer not only due to poverty but because they are excluded from community life and from national progress due to their displacement; and because they are still traumatized by their experiences but have received little or no psychosocial counselling. Much of the population is still not settled and still seeks seek durable forms of integration. 367. Liberian policy must take the legacies of displacement more seriously, as Colombia does. Colombian law has obliged the government and its institutions to address the causes of displacement and to incorporate the displaced into the national fabric. If Liberia cannot undertake such a goal to the extent that Colombia has, for structural and economic reasons, it can embrace aspects of the Colombian approach and recognize more fully the consequences of exclusion.
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