Since a disputed election in Ivory Coast at the end of 2010, more than 100,000 Ivoirians have fled to Liberia.

Ivory Coast, once West Africa’s economic powerhouse, is now a shambles. Laurent Gbabgo, the incumbent president, lost an election declared fair and free by the United Nations and other international observers, but he has refused to step down. He’s currently locked in a power struggle with the winner of the election, Alassane Outtara. While the conflict hasn’t yet been labeled a civil war, it has all the trappings of one. Outtara’s forces quickly took most of the countryside and are now besieging the financial capital, Abidjan. Gbabgo’s gun men are struggling to maintain control, and Ivorian civilians are caught in the brutal crossfire. More than 500 have died since the conflict began, and recent massacres have claimed the lives of at least 800 others.

In rural Liberia, things were already quite dire. There’s rarely enough to eat, few water and sanitation resources, fewer clinics, and little to offer to the sudden influx of people. But the borders remain open. After all, just a decade ago, people fled in the opposite direction when Liberians took refugee in Ivory Coast.

Photos commissioned by UNHCR. See additional photos on www.glennagordon.com.

 

ivorycoast01 Ivorian refugees flee heavy fighting to remote and impoverished regions of Liberia

ivorycoast02 Ivorian refugees flee heavy fighting to remote and impoverished regions of Liberia

ivorycoast03 Ivorian refugees flee heavy fighting to remote and impoverished regions of Liberia

ivorycoast04 Ivorian refugees flee heavy fighting to remote and impoverished regions of Liberia

ivorycoast05 Ivorian refugees flee heavy fighting to remote and impoverished regions of Liberia

ivorycoast07 Ivorian refugees flee heavy fighting to remote and impoverished regions of Liberia

ivorycoast08 Ivorian refugees flee heavy fighting to remote and impoverished regions of Liberia

ivorycoast09 Ivorian refugees flee heavy fighting to remote and impoverished regions of Liberia

ivorycoast10 Ivorian refugees flee heavy fighting to remote and impoverished regions of Liberia

ivorycoast11 Ivorian refugees flee heavy fighting to remote and impoverished regions of Liberia

ivorycoast12 Ivorian refugees flee heavy fighting to remote and impoverished regions of Liberia

ivorycoast13 Ivorian refugees flee heavy fighting to remote and impoverished regions of Liberia

ivorycoast14 Ivorian refugees flee heavy fighting to remote and impoverished regions of Liberia

ivorycoast15 Ivorian refugees flee heavy fighting to remote and impoverished regions of Liberia

ivorycoast16 Ivorian refugees flee heavy fighting to remote and impoverished regions of Liberia

ivorycoast17 Ivorian refugees flee heavy fighting to remote and impoverished regions of Liberia

ivorycoast18 Ivorian refugees flee heavy fighting to remote and impoverished regions of Liberia

ivorycoast19 Ivorian refugees flee heavy fighting to remote and impoverished regions of Liberia

ivorycoast20 Ivorian refugees flee heavy fighting to remote and impoverished regions of Liberia

ivorycoast21 Ivorian refugees flee heavy fighting to remote and impoverished regions of Liberia

    •

    About Scarlett Lion

    Photo 66

    I’m an American photographer and journalist traipsing around Africa on the lookout for the ordinary and the extraordinary, using my camera as a pretext to enter worlds not otherwise available.

    This space is a scrap book of web and life trawlings – photography, music, arts, politics, and other sundry subjects. It is also a vanity press for my unpublished (and occasionally) published work.

    I found the scarlett lion on the roof a friend’s house in Kampala back in 2006 when I went through a crate of discarded items he and a few other artists had gathered. On that day, I was looking for something and I found the lion: a discarded kid’s toy made in China on the cheap, that somehow found it’s way to East Africa. Something about the hollowed out, paint chipped figurine appealed to my understanding of this amazing continent: I’d never seen a real lion, after all.

    Previously based in Uganda, currently in Liberia. Always roaming.